In August 2008, Heads of State of the Southern African Development Community adopted the ground-breaking SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. This followed a concerted campaign by NGOs under the umbrella of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. By the 2013 Heads of State summit, 13 countries had signed and 12 countries had ratified the SADC Gender Protocol. The Protocol is now in force. With two years to go, time is ticking to 2015, when governments need to have achieved 28 targets for the attainment of gender equality. In keeping with the Alliance slogan: "Yes we must", this 2013 Barometer provides a wealth of updated data against which progress will be measured by all those who cherish democracy in the region. The SADC Gender and Development Index (SGDI), introduced in 2011, complements the Citizen Score Card (CSC) that has been running for five years to benchmark progress.

In August 2008, Heads of State of the Southern African Development Community adopted the ground-breaking SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. This followed a concerted campaign by NGOs under the umbrella of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance. By the 2013 Heads of State summit, 13 countries had signed and 12 countries had ratified the SADC Gender Protocol. The Protocol is now in force. With one year to go, time is ticking to 2015, when governments need to have achieved 28 targets for the attainment of gender equality. In keeping with the Alliance slogan: Yes we must! this 2014 Barometer provides a wealth of updated data against which progress will be measure by all those who cherish democracy in the region. The world, and SADC, is also looking to the future with the post 2015 agenda. Now is the time to strengthen resolve, reconsider, reposition, and re-strategise for 2030.

No Sales rights in German-speaking countries, Eastern Europe, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, South and Central America

Gender relations in Muslim-majority countries have been subject to intense debate in recent decades. In some cases, Muslim women have fought for and won new rights to political participation, reproductive health, and education. In others, their agendas have been stymied. Yet missing from this discussion, until now, has been a systematic examination of how civil society groups mobilize to promote women’s rights and how multiple components of the state negotiate such legislation. In Bargaining for Women’s Rights, Alice J. Kang argues that reform is more likely to happen when the struggle arises from within. Focusing on how a law on gender quotas and a United Nations treaty on ending discrimination against women passed in Niger while family law reform and an African Union protocol on women’s rights did not, Kang shows how local women’s associations are uniquely positioned to translate global concepts of democracy and human rights into concrete policy proposals. And yet, drawing on numerous interviews with women’s rights activists as well as Islamists and politicians, she reveals that the former are not the only ones who care about the regulation of gender relations. Providing a solid analytic framework for understanding conflict over women’s rights policies without stereotyping Muslims, Bargaining for Women’s Rights demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Islam does not have a uniformly negative effect on the prospects of such legislation.