Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Keera Allendorf for providing research support on this paper. We would also like to thank

Measuring Women's Empowerment as a Variable in International Development

The articles in this special issue of Social Politics take these debates forward in many significant ways. Most of the articles contributed to and drew from a series of seminars funded by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council on gender mainstreaming. They address the meaning of gender equality as well as the project of gender mainstreaming (Verloo) engage with diverse inequalities and their intersectionality and their implications for theories of democracy (Squires) consider the implications of the wider economic and political context for the potential of gender mainstreaming to create change (Perrons) address the tension between the agenda-setting potential of the strategy and integration into the mainstream (Lombardo) and investigate the relationship between theory and practice in diverse European settings (Daly). (excerpt)

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Gender Mainstreaming: Productive Tensions in Theory and Practice

The concept of intersectionality is reviewed and further developed for more effective use. Six dilemmas in the debates on the concept are disentangled, addressed and resolved: the distinction between structural and political intersectionality; the tension between ‘categories’ and ‘inequalities’; the significance of class; the balance between a fluidity and stability; the varyingly competitive, cooperative, hierarchical and hegemonic relations between inequalities and between projects; and the conundrum of ‘visibility’ in the tension between the ‘mutual shaping’ and the ‘mutual constitution’ of inequalities. The analysis draws on critical realism and on complexity theory in order to find answers to the dilemmas in intersectionality theory.

Intersectionality: Multiple Inequalities in Social Theory:

This article examines and explains the adoption of gender mainstreaming by the European Union (EU), and traces its implementation in five issue-areas of EU policy: Structural Funds, employment, development, competition, and science, research and development. The EU decision to adopt gender mainstreaming, as well as its variable implementation across issue-areas, can be explained in terms of three factors derived from social movement theory: the political opportunities offered by EU institutions in various issue-areas; the mobilizing structures, or European networks, established among the advocates of gender equality; and the efforts of such advocates to strategically frame the gender-mainstreaming mandate so as to ensure its acceptance by EU policy-makers.

Mainstreaming gender in the European Union

This article locates mainstreaming within a typology of inclusion, reversal, and displacement and maps these three approaches to mainstreaming, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of each. It focuses on the potential of the transformative approach and suggests that, if augmented by the resources of deliberative democracy, this transformative model of mainstreaming is best placed to respond to the increasingly important demands of diversity. It suggests that deliberative mechanisms, such as citizens' forums, could be useful in enhancing this transformative model of mainstreaming.

Is Mainstreaming Transformative? Theorizing Mainstreaming in the Context of Diversity and Deliberation

The first part of this essay on mainstreaming women in development outlines the hard-won achievements of the womens movement in the past 20 years and acknowledges that the movement has failed to gain its fundamental objectives of transforming social and gender relations and creating a just and equal world. Considering the central question of why progress has been so elusive for women the essay notes that the agenda the movement articulated challenged male power and privilege and called for investment in women that would require reallocation of existing resources or finding additional sources of revenue. Because women are differentiated by class race and nation it is difficult to shape women into a powerful political constituency. Thus the womens movement should adopt an agenda-setting approach and take a consistent stand on a core agenda. The next part of the essay describes some of the changes that a shift from an integrationist to an agenda-setting approach will entail and notes that this approach will require: 1) women to play a proactive leadership role and to clearly articulate a core agenda 2) the strategic positioning of gender concerns in a period of change 3) strengthening womens groups and networks 4) using a new communication strategy to expand support 5) developing context-specific concepts and analytical tools and 6) building institutional capacities of aid recipients. The final section of essay notes that agenda-setting will raise awareness of the need to promote the equitable sharing of responsibilities in institutions such as families communities national governments and global institutions.

The elusive agenda: mainstreaming women in development.

https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/8969/8146

The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development

Pakistan: failure in national integration

Bangladesh Politics: Problems and Issues

This article is inspired by a recent debate in Bangladesh about the representative credentials of members of parliament (MPs) who have started to assert a pre-eminent and exclusive role for themselves as people's elected representatives. It investigates three dimensions of their representative role. Political representation is analysed by fairness of the electoral process and the space for opposition. Representation of social diversity is evaluated by gender, religion, ethnicity and socio-economic background of MPs. Constituency representation is explored with a particular focus on parliamentarians' involvement in local development work. Provision of constituency services by the MPs, through control and partisan distribution of public resources, has led to allegations of corruption and conflict of interest. Adoption of a code of parliamentary conduct is essential to establish a formal mechanism to hold MPs accountable to citizens.

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Rounaq Jahan

Papers

The elusive agenda: mainstreaming women in development.

The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development

Pakistan: failure in national integration

Bangladesh Politics: Problems and Issues

The Parliament of Bangladesh: Representation and Accountability