Gender Justice, Development, and Rights

Recent years have seen a shift in the international development agenda in the direction of a greater emphasis on rights and democracy. While this has brought many positive changes in women's rights and political representation, in much of the world these advances were not matched by increases in social justice. Rising income inequalities, coupled with widespread poverty in many countries, have been accompanied by record levels of crime and violence. Meanwhile the global shift in the consensus over the role of the state in welfare provision has in many contexts entailed the down-sizing of public services and the re-allocation of service delivery to commercial interests, charitable groups, NGOs and households. Gender Justice, Development, and Rights reflects on this ambivalent record, and on the significance accorded in international development policy to rights and democracy in the post-Cold War era. Key items on the contemporary policy agenda-neo-liberal economic and social policies; democracy; and multiculturalism-are addressed here by leading scholars and regional specialists through theoretical reflections and detailed case studies. Together they constitute a collection which casts contemporary liberalism in a distinctive light by applying a gender perspective to the analysis of political and policy processes. Case studies from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, East-Central Europe, South and South-east Asia contribute a cross-cultural dimension to the analysis of contemporary liberalism-the dominant value system in the modern world-and how it exists, and is resisted, in developing and post-transition societies. Contributors to this volume - Cecilia Blondet is a member of the board of directors of TRANSPARENCIA and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Civil Society Project (Ford Foundation and the IDS-Sussex.) Diane Elson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK. Anne Marie Goetz is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK. Shireen Hassim teaches Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Jacqueline Heinen is Professor at the University of Versailles St-Quentin-en-Yvelines and at Sciences Po-Paris. Aida Hernandez Castillo has a PhD in Anthropology (Stanford University 1996) and is Researcher-Professor in the Center for High Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico City. Maznah Mohamad is the 2001 Visiting Chair in ASEAN and International Studies at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. Maxine Molyneux is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, with appointments in the Law School, the Philosophy Department, and the Center for Gender Studies Parvin Paidar works in international development. Anne Phillips is Professor of Gender Theory and Director of the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics. Stephane Portet is in charge of research at the University of Warsaw for the European network "Women in European Universities". Shahra Razavi is Research Coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Veronica Schild is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario. Ramya Subrahmanian is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies Aili Mari Tripp is Associate Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.