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191. Key Issues and Policy Recommendations, Conference 8

Author:
Philipp H. Fluri, Oleksiy Melnyk, and Nazli Yildirim
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Razumkov Centre
Abstract:
This publication offers the Key Issues and Policy Recommendations based on the results of the Eighth International Conference “Human Rights and Security Sector Governance: Ukraine’s Reform Challenges”. Since 2014, Ukraine’s security sector has been undergoing reforms. The implementation of state reforms are supported and monitored by Ukrainian civil society and the international community. Whereas certain aspects of reforms have been considered successful, the need for enhanced human rights compliance in the security sector of Ukraine, in particular with respect to ensuring accountability for human rights violations, the protection of the rights of civilians in the Anti-terrorism Operation (ATO), as well as preventing and responding to gender-based violence has been repeatedly pointed out. Conference Eight, following to the previous conferences recommendations, provided a platform to discuss the above mentioned issues.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Human Rights, International Organization, Democracy, Media, Institutions, and Whistle Blowing
Political Geography:
Ukraine and Global Focus

192. Criminal Justice Practice and Violence Against Women

Author:
Kateryna Cherepakha, Alain Laferte, Kateryna Levchenko, Maryna Legenka, Mylene Socquet-Juglard, and Heather Huhtanen
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Razumkov Centre
Abstract:
The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) and La Strada-Ukraine (LSU) collaborated to assess the current practices of the Ukrainian criminal justice system in responding to violence against women and domestic violence. The specific purpose of this assessment was to explore the readiness of the criminal justice system to implement the principles and obligations associated with the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention), signed by Ukraine in 2011 and soon to be ratified. Intended to serve as a baseline for the development of policies and projects, this assessment is a key contribution to collective efforts to improve the criminal justice system response to violence against women and domestic violence.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Gender Issues, Women, Gender Based Violence, Criminal Justice, and Judiciary
Political Geography:
Ukraine and Global Focus

193. Female Brain Drain in Poland and Germany: New Perspectives for Research

Author:
Karolina Beaumont, Matthias Kullas, Matthias Dauner, Izabela Styczynska, and Paul Lirette
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
This report provides an analysis of the issues related to female brain drain between Poland and Germany in the years 1989-2015: female and male migration patterns during specific time periods, the challenges of female migration, the emigration of highly-skilled individuals in Poland and Germany, as well as the issues regarding brain drain from a gender perspective. Global female migration is a topic frequently studied in academic literature; however, the topic of female brain drain is one that has long been ignored by academic research. This gap in research on female brain drain is closely related to a significant lack of relevant quantitative data, and, consequently, has led to gaps in policymaking. The aim of this report is to gather all available information on female brain drain and its impact on labour markets, gender equality, female migration, and human capital, while noting the gaps in data and policymaking. A further objective of this report is to highlight the issues that are important for policymaking, as well as to propose adequate polic recommendations. The report aims to provide a current and comprehensive analysis of female brain drain in Poland and in Germany – two neighbouring countries, with complex histories of population migration – as well as an analysis of the economic and societal consequences of this phenomenon for both countries. The publication was prepared within the project “Brain drain/brain gain: Polish-German challenges and perspectives - Focus on the gender aspects of labour migration from 1989” with financial support from the Polish-German Foundation for Science and The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
Topic:
Demographics, Education, Gender Issues, Migration, Labor Issues, Brain Drain, Women, Inequality, and Social Policy
Political Geography:
Europe, Poland, Germany, and European Union

194. Gender and Urban Sanitation Inequalities in Everyday Lives

Author:
Susan Esme Chaplin
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Even though sanitation was established as a separate human right by the United Nations General Assembly in January 2016, there has an been overall failure to reduce by half the proportion of the global population without access to basic sanitation (Millennium Development Goal 7, Target C). The Sustainable Development Goals have targets of gender equality, and the sustainable and universal provision of sanitation. Hopefully this will mean increased attention being given to the interests and well-being of poor women and girls living in slums and informal settlements who still lack access to adequate sanitation. The sanitation needs of women and girls are different from those of men and boys because of the former’s requirements of personal safety, dignity and menstrual hygiene; there is also the issue of the disproportionate burden of unpaid labour in managing household sanitary needs. These inequalities in urban sanitation access have a great impact on the health, well-being and socio-economic status of women and girls. These inequalities continue to exist despite efforts to make the needs of poor urban women and girls an integral part of sanitation policies and project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Despite the emphasis of low-income countries on gender inequalities and sanitation in their development goals, programmes and projects, there is still only a limited number of qualitative and quantitative evidence-based research articles available focusing on gender and sanitation continue to be available. This number further decreases when it comes to gender and urban sanitation in the Global South. The grey literature is more numerous, particularly that commissioned by international development agencies and non-government organisations. Missing from much of this evidence-based and grey literature are studies on the broader social, economic and environmental impacts on poor women and girls of daily life without access to adequate and safe sanitation. This means that there is very little evidence-based literature which examines how these inequalities in sanitation access affect the lives of poor women and girls who have to queue each morning to use public toilets, or decide which open defecation (OD) sites are the least dangerous to use. Also missing are studies on the socio-economic, health and well-being impacts on and coping strategies of women working in the informal sector, poor women and girls with a disability, elderly women, adolescent girls and homeless women or those living on the pavements, who all lack access to adequate and safe sanitation facilities. These sanitation inequalities are exemplified by the time poor women and girls have to spend each morning queueing to use the toilet or getting up earlier to go with other women to OD sites. The necessity for such actions furthers gender inequalities because it puts at risk the time women have available for paid employment and other household responsibilities. Truelove (2011, p. 148) has argued that this ‘curtailment of opportunities (from income to education) due to water and sanitation activities reinforces a further level of physical insecurity and emotional violence, as some women become locked in a feedback cycle that brings them into distinct spaces and networks in order to access water and sanitation’. Women and girls living in slums often report instances of gender-based violence, shame and loss of dignity when walking along badly lit narrow paths to poorly designed and maintained community toilets or places of OD (Bapat & Agarwal 2003, Lennon 2011, McFarlane 2015, SHARE 2015 and Amnesty International 2010a). Phadke, Khan & Ranade (2011, p. 85), in a study of women and risk in Mumbai, have suggested that ‘[what] the lack of public toilets says is that women are less equal citizens than men and don’t deserve the same consideration’ in the design of urban spaces and the provision of urban infrastructures such as sanitation facilities. These gender inequalities continue to exist despite the use of the concept of ‘gender mainstreaming’ in water and sanitation projects since the mid-1990s, which was designed to make the needs of women and girls an integral part of sanitation policies and project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Instead, gender has become a term that is widely used in project documents and organisational policy documents ‘but is little theorised and ill-defined in most projects and supporting policy documents’ (O‘Reilly 2010, p. 49). Gender, according to the Water and Sanitation Program (2010, p. 9): is a concept that refers to socially constructed roles, behaviour, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate and ascribes to men and women. These distinct roles and the relations between them may give rise to gender inequalities where one group is systematically favoured and holds advantages over another. Inequality in the position of men and women can and has worked against societies.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Water, Urbanization, Women, Inequality, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

195. Infrastructure, Gender and Violence: Women and Slum Sanitation Inequalities in Delhi

Author:
Susan Esme Chaplin and Reetika Kalita
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
In Delhi, as in many other Indian cities, millions of men, women and children who live in slums and informal settlements haveto daily confront the lack of adequate sanitation facilities. These sanitation inequalities have a greater impact on the health and socioeconomic status of women and girls because of their greater social vulnerability to sexual violence; there is also the role played by biology in their need for privacy, safety and cleanliness. Men and boys, on the other hand, tend to use public urinals and open defecation (OD) sites generally more frequently, because their need for privacy during these sanitation activities is not such a cause for concern. In addition, women and girls are forced every day to risk using precarious spaces for their sanitation activities that may expose them to gender-based violence and harassment and not satisfy their biological and socio-cultural needs. These urban sanitation inequalities also negatively impact the time women have available for paid employment as well as their daily domestic responsibilities, as they have to spend each morning queuing for toilets or getting up earlier to go with other women to OD sites. For adolescent girls this can often mean being late for school, which threatens their education and future life choices. India failed to meet Millennium Development Goal No. 7 (adopted by the United Nations in 2000) relating to halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation. In terms of toilet usage across India, the Census 2011 found that 81 percent of urban households had a private toilet or latrine. But when it came to slum households, only 66 percent had a toilet, meaning that 34 percent had to either use a community or public toilet or resort to OD (Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation & National Buildings Organisations 2013, p. 60). In reality, there are an estimated 41 million urban dwellers still practising OD because of a lack of access to improved sanitation (WaterAid 2016). OD is a compulsion, not a choice, and creates particular risks and imposes a variety of harms upon women and children that men and boys do not suffer. Who or what is responsible for such socioeconomic consequences of the lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure in Indian cities which perpetuate gender inequalities? How do harms like gender-based violence impact the everyday lives of women and girls living in slums in particular? This project report examines these issues using the notion of infrastructural violence and then examines the harms and suffering caused by a lack of sanitation infrastructure in two long-established localities in Delhi: Mangolpuri and Kusumpur Pahari. Mangolpuri is a resettlement colony in the northwest region of Delhi with an estimated population of more than 350,000. It is interspersed with eight JJCs clusters of varying sizes. Kusumpur Pahari is located in the heart of south Delhi, near Jawaharlal Nehru University, and now has five blocks of JJCs and an estimated population of nearly 50,000.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, Health, Children, Women, Income Inequality, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

196. FEMALE STEREOTYPES IN LEBANESE CONTEMPORARY SONGS: A CASE STUDY OF TEN SONGS

Author:
Roy Jreijiry
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternative Politics
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
Abstract:
Many studies have shown that popular music is a dynamic medium in the construction of personal and social identities. This study analyses the image of women in ten Lebanese songs produced between 2010 and 2014; each song ranked as big hits. Typical of contemporary popular songs, these songs do not accord to the woman the value of an equal partner of the man. While rarely mentioning the ideas of sharing, exchanging, or reciprocity, they circulate many stereotypes such as the threatened/beaten woman, the housewife won through presents and flattery, the woman under the care of a man, and the woman as an owned and sexual object.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Culture, Women, Feminism, and Music
Political Geography:
Middle East, Lebanon, and Beirut

197. RETHINKING, RETURNING, REFLECTING

Author:
V Spike Peterson
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternative Politics
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
Abstract:
After almost four decades of feminist International Relations (IR), I here rethink the journey this has entailed – for myself and others -- and contemplate where it has taken us. I first consider my own introduction to the discipline of IR and interpret activist commitments of the ‘first generation’ of participants. I then return to early developments and initial questions that fostered boundary-transgressing feminist contributions. Recalling three ‘imagined’ critical conversations – regarding empirical criteria, epistemological frames and normative/political strategies – I then reflect on the feminist journey of many into, within, and increasingly beyond the constraining boundaries of disciplinary IR.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Feminism, and Intersectionality
Political Geography:
Global South

198. QUEER FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: UNEASY ALLIANCES, PRODUCTIVE TENSIONS

Author:
Darcy Leigh
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Alternative Politics
Institution:
Department of International Relations, Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey
Abstract:
This article examines the ‘uneasy alliance’ between Feminist IR and Queer IR. The article focuses on three areas of tension and continuity between the fields: (1) sexuality, sexual deviance and gender variance; (2) the roles of liberalism in gendered, sexualized and racialized violence; and (3) binaries relating to sex, gender and sexuality. The article argues that it is around tensions between Queer and Feminist IR that a Queer Feminist IR can be productively articulated. In particular, a Queer Feminist IR should: centre women and femmes as well as sexuality and gender variance; disrupt of binaries and fixed identities without losing the political leverage that sometimes comes with them; and acknowledge entanglements with the institutions Feminist and Queer IR seek to transform while also resisting being neutralized by assimilation. Keywords: International Relations, Feminism, Queer, Gender, Sexuality.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Feminism, and Sexuality
Political Geography:
Global

199. Towards an inclusive peace: women and the gender approach in the Colombian peace process

Author:
Dag Nylander and Hilde Salvesen
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution
Abstract:
The peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrilla has provided a unique opportunity not only to reunite a society torn apart by conflict, but also to build a more just peace that responds to the needs and rights of both men and women. The establishment of the Sub-commission on Gender as part of the formal peace architecture has turned out to be an effective instrument for gender inclusion in the peace process. The peace agreement signed in September 2016 was by far the most inclusive peace agreement in history. When a narrow majority rejected it in a plebiscite the following October many feared that gender would be sacrificed to accommodate those who voted no. However, in the renegotiated peace agreement that was ratified by Congress and entered into force in December the gender focus is not weakened. Rather, the language is clarified and has become more precise. Experiences from Colombia offer valuable insights for other peace processes on opportunities for and challenges affecting inclusion.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Gender Issues, Women, and Peace
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

200. Migrants, Housewives, Warriors or Sex Slaves: AQ’s and the Islamic State’s Perspectives on Women

Author:
Andrea Sjøberg Aasgaard
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
Why do young Muslim women from the whole world join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, despite the fact that the group is notorious for conducting terrible sexual violations against women? Through comparing how al-Qaeda (AQ) and IS are positioning women in their ideological literature, this article sheds light on IS’ appeal to women. This is interesting, as AQ in a historical perspective only attracted a handful of European women to physically join the group. The comparison highlights that AQ and IS position women in different ways: as housewives, migrants, warriors and sex slaves. Both groups’ ideologies agree that a woman’s primarily role is to be a housewife and mother, and exclude in principle women from the battlefield. However, only IS is emphasizing that Muslim women have a right and duty to migrate to its territory. Through using ideological arguments in its literature, IS convinces its supporters that it is a religious duty to enslave women the group defines as idolaters. For this reason, IS’ brutality against non-Muslim women will not discourage its female supporters from joining the group.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Migration, Sex Trafficking, Islamic State, and Sexual Violence
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, and Syria