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201. Minority Women’s Hard Choices when Seeking Redress for Multiple Discrimination

Author:
Tove H. Malloy
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Abstract:
Minority women face several dilemmas when they seek redress for multiple discrimination through international human rights instruments. Although human rights instruments are universal in nature, they address either specific issues or they target specific categories of beneficiaries. A minority woman suffering multiple discrimination cannot, therefore, claim her rights in one place but must direct her petition to several instruments. Since this is rarely feasible, minority women may have to make the very hard choice between seeking redress as women, or as members of a minority, or as individuals experiencing specific discrimination. This is no small matter as minority women often suffer discrimination on multiple accounts as members of both social and cultural groups. This Issue Brief explores the legal obstacles that minority women encounter because of their complex human condition.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Minorities, Ethnicity, Discrimination, and Identity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

202. License to Be Yourself

Publication Date:
05-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
When trans people’s passports, driver licenses, and national ID cards, do not reflect their gender identity, it can exclude them from fundamental aspects of daily life—like receiving health care, schooling, housing, or a bank account. And it can prevent trans people from exercising basic liberties like the right to vote or freedom of movement. The vast majority of trans people around the world cannot obtain official documents under their appropriate name and sex that match their gender identity. Where this is possible, trans people often face highly restrictive laws or regulations for changing name and sex that violate human rights obligations. These restrictions may involve excluding trans people who are married or have children, or require compulsory medical diagnoses or proceedures, including those that result in sterilization. License to Be Yourself documents some of the world’s most progressive and rights-based laws and policies that enable trans people to change their gender identity on official documents. It shares strategies that activists have successfully used in a variety of global and legal contexts, and features case studies from Argentina, Australia, Hong Kong, Kenya, Ukraine, and the United States. This report is a resource for activists working on human rights issues for trans people, local communities examining best laws and policies, and policymakers seeking to uphold the rights of trans people.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Human Rights, LGBT+, Sexuality, Identity, Legal Sector, and Transgender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

203. Financing for the Implementation of National Action Plans on UN Security Council Resolution 1325: Critical for Advancing Women's Human Rights, Peace and Security

Author:
Dewi Suralaga and Mavic Cabrera-Balleza
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
Abstract:
In 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted the landmark resolution 1325(2000) on Women and Peace and Security, a historic recognition of the gender dimension of conflict, the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls, and the significant, yet often unrecognized, contributions women have made – frequently in the face of grave threats and unrelenting opposition – to sustained conflict resolution and peacebuilding. As we approach the 15-year anniversary of the resolution and the world continues to be plagued by unresolved conflicts and new threats to peace, human security and dignity, efforts to implement UNSCR 1325 and, indeed, the full Women and Peace and Security agenda) must be redoubled. The time is ripe to accelerate adequate and predictable funding. Though a host of factors contribute to the success of resolution 1325 (2000) implementation, adequate funding remains paramount among these. Yet, OECD recently reported that only three per cent of peace and security funding targets gender equality and women’s empowerment as a principal objective.1 Therefore sustainable and adequate financing continues to be a significant challenge. Despite being at the forefront of work to advance the Women and Peace and Security agenda, women’s rights groups, networks and movements face uniquely difficult obstacles in accessing sustainable funding for their work, particularly at the grassroots level. While governments hold primary responsibility for the implementation of resolution 1325(2000), women’s rights groups and movements are vital to addressing the context specific root causes of conflict and building a transformative and sustainable peace. Funding women’s rights groups and movements would go far in addressing the “implementation deficit” faced by the WPS agenda.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, United Nations, Women, Peace, and WPS
Political Geography:
Global Focus

204. Women Count: Security Council Resolution 1325: Civil Society Monitoring Report 2014

Author:
Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, Eleonore Veilet Chowdhury, Helena Gronberg, and Annalise Moser
Publication Date:
10-2014
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
Abstract:
The forthcoming 15th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 once again brings to the fore the importance of monitoring policy implementation. In the last 15 years, greater accountability to the resolution has been a consistent call from civil society, the UN and Member States. However, only a handful of Member States are actually monitoring the progress and achievements as well as the gaps and weaknesses in the implementation of the resolutions. The 2014 edition of Women Count, Security Council Resolution 1325: Civil Society Monitoring Report, demonstrates once again that while it is labor intensive and time consuming, monitoring is a doable and relevant exercise. It also illustrates that while funding is absolutely necessary, the lack of it should not be an excuse to not monitor. On the fifth year of Women Count, the civil society monitoring of UNSCR 1325, civil society groups from Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Kenya and Libya are participating in this independent monitoring report for the very first time. Moreover, we are for the first time including a territory, Nagorno-Karabakh in monitoring and analyzing the applicability of the WPS resolutions in different socio-political and cultural contexts. 21 countries were monitored in 2014 bringing the total number of countries monitored in the last five years to 24. Beyond just a figure, this number represents the wealth of data, information and analysis on how UNSCR 1325 has impacted the lives of women around the world—in conflict-affected countries, in developed and non-conflict countries, in middle income countries; in countries with or without National Action Plans. GNWP’s participation in the ongoing Global Study on Women, Peace and Security is informed by the findings and recommendations in the last five years of this monitoring exercise. I would like to emphasize that some of the findings and recommendations such as those on women’s lack of representation in official peace negotiations, lack of local level action, as well as the persistent problem on lack of funding for women’s peacebuilding work at the grassroots level are not new and in fact some of them have been articulated prior to 2010. However, the civil society monitoring initiative presents new evidence and fresh insights.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Security, Gender Issues, United Nations, Women, Negotiation, Peace, and WPS
Political Geography:
Global Focus

205. Ethnic Diversity, Gender, and National Leaders

Author:
Katherine W. Phillips, Nicholas A. Pearce, and Susan E. Perkins
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
National leaders have the ultimate responsibility to balance the needs of a diverse set of constituents in society while using their country’s unique set of resources to grow the economy and to gain comparative advantages. Salient to many observers, the United States of America, the world’s largest economy, has never had a female president or vice president and has had only forty-four women serve in the 224-year history of the U.S. Senate. Moreover, if women do make it into top-ranked government leadership positions, whether or not they perform notably different from their male counterparts still remains unknown. Though studies presented by several psychologists validate that women’s leadership styles differ from their male counterparts (i.e., more democratic, inclusive, participative and transformative), how this plays out nationally and in terms of setting national policy agendas and making key decisions for society is explained only anecdotally.[2] For example, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, affectionately known to her countrymen as the “Iron Lady,” was said to bring a “motherly sensitivity” to her post-war torn country, Liberia; Michelle Bachelet, the Republic of Chile’s first female national leader, won in 2006 on a campaign championing “gender equality” and “inclusion;” and most recently, Park Geun-hye won the presidential election in the Republic of Korea under the political platform of “disarming vicious cycles of distrust and building peace” with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.[3] These anecdotes all suggest an association with a gender-specific perception of governance, as well as a gender-specific expectation for substantive policy changes with a female taking the lead at the national level. To develop a better understanding of the unique contributions of female national leaders, this article uses global cross-national comparative leader data from 188 countries to explore the following questions: 1) How have global trends of national female leadership changed over time? and 2) Is there evidence that having a female—as compared to a male—leader has differential consequences for economic growth as ethnic diversity increases?
Topic:
Gender Issues, Economic Growth, Feminism, and Diversity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

206. What Happens to Wage Elasticities When We Strip Playometrics? Revisiting Married Women Labour Supply Model

Author:
Duo Qin, Sophie van Huellen, and Qing-Chao Wang
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This paper sheds new light on the well-known phenomenon of dwindling wage elasticities for married women in the US over the recent decades. Results of a novel model experiment approach via sample data ordering unveil considerable heterogeneity across different wage groups. Yet surprisingly constant wage elasticity estimates are revealed within certain wage groups over time as well as across two widely used US data sources, the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). These findings refute the assumed presence of a single-valued aggregate wage elasticity for working wives. Although women’s responsiveness to wages remains largely unchanged over time, we find that the composition of working women into different wage groups has changed considerably, resulting in decreasing wage elasticity estimates at the aggregate level. All these findings were methodologically impossible to acquire had we not dismantled and discarded the stereotyped endogeneity-backed instrumental variable route, which hitherto blocked the way towards sample data ordering.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Inequality, Discrimination, and Wage Growth
Political Geography:
Global Focus

207. Gender Polymorphism in the Context of Gastronomic Culture: A Sociological Dimension of the Problem

Author:
V. V. Nikolenko
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Studies of Changing Societies Journal (SCS)
Institution:
Studies of Changing Societies Journal (SCS)
Abstract:
The paper presents an attempt to explore several features of interaction between gastronomy and social life using sociological optics (thinking). In particular, it draws a conclusion that gender dimension of gastronomic culture against the social interaction background both in its historical context and nowadays takes quite polyaspect forms of manifestation. Thus, in a society of traditions, gender hierarchization of the meal/table somewhat hindered processes of interaction between men and women during their food practices, cooking processes, which fact to some extent secured the marginal status in society, for women in the first place. These patterns were directly reflected in culinary everyday life and a variety of other gastronomic situations, particularly, during the meal itself. However, gender characteristics of gastronomic culture (feminine) may serve as a "litmus test" to reflect the nature of the state power, including that of a totalitarian regime (according to I. Sokhan). This, in turn, affects the attitude on the part of those in power, expressed through the exercise of their feeding function, to society as a whole. By contrast, we believe that in modern times the most relevant/prominent are other notable characteristics of gender content of gastronomic culture. They are recorded primarily in sustainable cross-cultural peculiarities of selection of a specific menu for for each sex (male/female), which, in turn, is formed under the influence of archetypal social legislation (the term by I. Sokhan) on the one hand, and is sensible to substantial determination of topical social challenges of today on the other.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Totalitarianism, and Socialization
Political Geography:
Ukraine and Global Focus

208. Understanding the Issue of Gender Discrimination as a ‘Crime’ of Gender Apartheid and Placing Violence against Women at the Centre of this Matrix

Author:
Shazia Naureen Qureshi
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
This paper using the model of Racial Apartheid, once prevalent in South Africa, attempts to ask whether some of the severe forms of gender discrimination can be treated and termed as Gender Apartheid. It argues that class domination/segregation regime does not always have to follow the exact South African model in order to qualify for the crime of apartheid, the proof that discriminatory acts are severe, systematic and institutionalized are enough to establish the crime. The article notes that despite many commonalities between the two types of crimes, the degree of condemnation that practices of Racial Apartheid receive is far greater than the comparable acts of gender apartheid. It recommends that Apartheid, whether racial or gender, should be treated equally, and gender apartheid should accordingly be considered ‘crime against humanity’.
Topic:
Apartheid, Gender Issues, Race, Women, Discrimination, and Violence
Political Geography:
South Africa and Global Focus

209. Transforming Health: International Rights-Based Advocacy for Trans Health

Publication Date:
02-2013
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Open Society Foundations
Abstract:
Trans people across the world face substantial barriers to adequate health and health care. They are targets of discrimination and violence, are at greater risk of contracting HIV, and experience a higher incidence of mental health problems like depression. They face discrimination from health care providers, a lack of doctors trained to address their needs, and the refusal of many national health systems and insurance providers to cover their care. Yet trans communities are building alliances to promote trans health and to fight for policies that respect gender diversity and human rights. This report profiles projects from 16 organizations in twelve countries that address these barriers. These projects offered general health services as well as those related to gender transition, trained health care providers to respond to the needs and concerns of trans patients, conducted public education campaigns about discrimination against trans people, advocated for legal and medical policy changes, and organized trans communities to empower themselves. Collecting insights from these projects, Transforming Health makes recommendations to governments, rights advocates, health professionals and public health organizations, and health and rights donors.
Topic:
HIV/AIDS, Gender Issues, Health, Discrimination, LGBT+, Public Health, Sexual Health, and Transgender
Political Geography:
Global Focus

210. Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War

Author:
Laura Sjoberg
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
Laura Sjoberg positions gender and gender subordination as key factors in the making and fighting of global conflict. Through the lens of gender, she examines the meaning, causes, practices, and experiences of war, building a more inclusive approach to the analysis of violent conflict between states. Considering war at the international, state, substate, and individual levels, Sjoberg's feminist perspective elevates a number of causal variables in war decision-making. These include structural gender inequality, cycles of gendered violence, state masculine posturing, the often overlooked role of emotion in political interactions, gendered understandings of power, and states' mistaken perception of their own autonomy and unitary nature. Gendering Global Conflict also calls attention to understudied spaces that can be sites of war, such as the workplace, the household, and even the bedroom. Her findings show gender to be a linchpin of even the most tedious and seemingly bland tactical and logistical decisions in violent conflict. Armed with that information, Sjoberg undertakes the task of redefining and reintroducing critical readings of war's political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions, developing the beginnings of a feminist theory of war.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, War, International Security, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Global Focus
Publication Identifier:
9780231520003
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN