Gender-based violence

This article recounts experiences of Oxfam’s ‘Women’s Linking Project’ (WLP). This has evolved from organising at regional level, to raising the profile of gender as a development issue in North and South. One main aim is to integrate a Southern understanding of gender into Northern policies. Two current priorities for WLP are examined in this […]

We women of the South, chosen by regional meetings of the Women to Women Linking Project in Africa, Latin America, South-East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East to participate in the Global Meeting of Women Linking for Change, held in Bangkok from 20-23 February 1994 are concerned that there is an increasing concentration of […]

In apartheid South Africa, rape became not only acceptable but also legitimised. The law recognises rape only in limited instances and fails to take effective preventative or punitive action. So expected is the violence that schoolgirls sometimes assist rapists. Armstrong links rape to poverty, race and class, with poor black women being targeted most often. […]

Views of sexuality around male dominance and female suppression are not always accurate. Khanna examines changing views in colonial and post-colonial India, to show an ongoing fight by women for control of their sexuality. Her journey goes through child marriage, prostitution, missionary influence, and expectations of motherhood, to campaigns and programmes for contraception and safe […]

Filipino women are fighting back against unrecognised household work, underpaid income-earning employment, the burden of foreign debt, and debt repayment conditionality’s. One important initiative is the Women’s Committee within the ‘Freedom from Debt Coalition’. The latter works for sustainable development, and the former ensures that gender issues are integrated into all its policies. The author […]

Western organisations need to ensure that violence against women is a central concern in development policies. They can do this by: supporting women in the South; tackling misconceptions that surround different forms of violence; and being prepared to confront unequal power relations that provide a framework to the violence. A case study of an NGO […]

Violence against women is a complex, worldwide, issue of human rights. It has so far been scarcely documented, and this article provides a crucial overview of the key issues. Gender-based violence is one manifestation of unequal power relations between men and women, in the realms of politics, economics, society, and culture. The authors show how […]