This issue of Window on the World looks at institutions around the world that are working on gender and empowerment beginning with a section listing the core partners of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment programme. The second section includes a selection of further institutions working on gender and empowerment issues, many of which are mentioned in this edition of the journal. A fuller list of over 80 women's organizations working on women's rights is available in the Window on the section of ‘Power, Movement, Change’ Development 51.2 World ( http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v52/n2/full/dev200916a.html ) as well as on the Gender section of the SID Forum Web page ( www.sidint.net )
Section one: Pathways of women's empowerment's core partners
Institute of Development Studies (IDS)
IDS is a recognized centre of excellence in research, teaching, training and development communication and a world leader in gender-related work. Its role in the project is to coordinate the activities of the programme and bring it to the heart of a wider community of partnerships including other research programmes working on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Future Health Systems and Citizenship and the Future State working on areas of rights-based approaches, health policy, governance, citizenship and accountability.
BRAC Development Institute (BDI), BRAC University
www.bracdevelopmentinstitute.org
BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University, conducts research, provides post-graduate academic training and advocates for policy changes. BDI seeks to question conventional knowledge and generate fresh ideas for addressing inequality, promoting social change and advancing a southern voice in the global development discourse. The Institute has several multi-country, multidisciplinary research programmes, organized under the following interlinked themes – economic transformation, environment and climate change, democracy and governance, women's empowerment, and history, culture and development. BDI convenes the South Asia hub of the Pathways programme, which includes partners in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CGSA)
CGSA at the University of Ghana is Ghana's leading research institute on women's rights and empowerment and part of extensive regional and international civil society and policy networks, including CODESRIA and ABANTU. Members have distinguished track records in the fields of African sexualities, violence against women, land rights, migration, masculinities, race and ethnicity, sex work, gender and economic reforms, and multidisciplinary expertise in gender, poverty and participatory analysis. As part of the RPC programme, CGSA is convening researchers from Sierra Leone and Nigeria and facilitating links elsewhere on the continent.
The Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Nucleus (NEIM) at the Federal University of Bahia
NEIM has led feminist research in North-East Brazil for 27 years, gaining a considerable role in continent-wide teaching, research, advocacy networks, and regional and national policy processes. NEIM's research covers women's work and rights, gender and democracy, women's health in globalized industries, sexualities and violence against women, and intersectionality with race, class and age. As part of the RPC programme, NEIM has facilitated linkages with researchers in Chile and Argentina and shared insights into innovative initiatives in the region, including in Bolivia and Nicaragua. NEIM also coordinate the Maria da Penha Observatory – which is a consortium of eight other feminist NGOs and research centres in Brazil and three national and regional feminist networks.
The Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo (SRC)
www.aucegypt.edu/researchatAUC/rc/src/Pages/default.aspx
SRC is one of the first multidisciplinary social research centres in the Arab world. SRC has a leading role in the fields of population, health and gender research and provides technical support for several Arab government and researchers. It has close links with centres in Palestine and Lebanon, and Arab women's networks in the region. The SRC is also a recognized regional centre of excellence for training.
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
UNIFEM has nearly 30 years of experience in linking global policy advocacy with practical strategies for change. Its position within the UN system and links to women's rights networks, the private sector and government expand the potential for RPC findings and processes to benefit from and influence diverse partners beyond those directly involved in this programme.
Section two: Civil society organizations, networks and research institutions working on gender and empowerment
African Gender Institute
In addition to teaching and research, the African Gender Institute runs several projects throughout the African continent. Some of the projects of the Institute include the publication of the only continental and Afro-centric bi-annual journal (the Feminist Africa journal) and the hosting of an online portal (GWS Africa), which is also helpful in their teaching activities. These and other ongoing projects have been instrumental in the establishment of vibrant networks and partnerships of like-minded scholars and activists throughout the continent and beyond.
Association of African Women for Research & Development (AAWORD)
www.afdevinfo.com/htmlreports/org/org_61353.html
AAWORD is a pan-African non-governmental organization based in Dakar, Senegal. AAWORD undertakes and supports research and training and advocacy with the aim of promoting the economic, political and social rights of African women. Created in 1977 by a small group of African women, the Association has grown in importance and now covers almost all the countries of the continent with 16 national chapters, 14 in Africa, one in Europe and one for African women living in the Americas. Its membership is multidisciplinary, including researchers, trainers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, experts in natural sciences, as well as advocacy specialists in economics, education, political science and communication.
Citizenship, Study, Research, Information and Action (CEPIA)
www.cepia.org.br/en/default.asp
CEPIA is a non-governmental, non-profit organization, dedicated to developing projects that promote human and citizenship rights, especially among groups historically excluded from exercising their full citizenship in Brazil. Working from a gender perspective and within a human rights framework, CEPIA focuses on issues of health, sexual and reproductive rights, violence and access to justice, poverty and employment. CEPIA organizes seminars, meetings and conferences with feminists, social movements, members of the judiciary, legislators, health professionals, labour unions, NGOs, opinion makers and civil servants responsible for public policies, so as to broaden the debate on issues related to its agenda.
Collective for Social Science Research
The Collective for Social Science Research was established in 2001 with a small core staff of innovative researchers in the social sciences who have extensive experience in conducting multidisciplinary research both in Pakistan and internationally. Their research areas include economics, education, development policy, gender studies, health, labour, migration, poverty and urban governance. The Collective collaborates with a number of local and international academic organizations, the government of Pakistan and international development organizations to conduct this research. Its objective is to produce high quality academic research in the social sciences and to foster informed debate on social, political and economic issues and policies.
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)
DAWN is a network of feminist scholars, researchers and activists from the economic South working for economic and gender justice and sustainable and democratic development. It provides a forum for feminist research, analyses and advocacy on global issues (economic, social and political) affecting the livelihoods, living standards, rights and development prospects of women, especially poor and marginalized women, in regions of the South. Through research, analyses, advocacy and, more recently, training, DAWN seeks to support women's mobilization within civil society to challenge inequitable social, economic and political relations at global, regional and national levels, and to advance feminist alternatives.
Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE)
FAWE is a pan-African non-governmental organization working in 32 African countries to empower girls and women through gender-responsive education. FAWE believes that through education of women and girls, livelihoods are improved for entire communities, and civic education and liberties are enhanced. Educated girls become educated women who have the knowledge, skills and opportunity to play a role in governance and democratic processes and to influence the future of their societies.
G-CAP Feminist Task Force
The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (G-CAP) Feminist Task Force is the task force of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty that focuses on women's rights and gender justice as a central issue of poverty eradication.
G-CAP is a growing alliance that brings together trade unions, International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs), women's and youth movements, community and faith groups and others to call for action from world leaders in the global North and South to meet their promises to end poverty and inequality. G-CAP's main aim is to achieve policy and practice changes that will improve the lives of people living in poverty. It also organizes global mass mobilizations that express solidarity between the global North and South, allow tens of millions of ordinary people to make their voices heard and bring pressure to bear on world leaders.
Gender Links (GL)
GL is a Southern African NGO founded in 2001. It is committed to a region in which women and men are able to realize their full potential and participate equally in all aspects of public and private life. With its headquarters in Johannesburg and satellite offices in Mauritius and Botswana, GL locates its mission within the broader framework of strengthening democracy in the region through ensuring the equal and effective participation of all citizens, especially women, whose views and voices have been systematically marginalized.
Institute of Women's Studies, Birzeit University
www.birzeit.edu/institutes/wom_std/
Established in 1994, the Institute of Women's Studies at Birzeit is the only one of its kind in Palestine and only one of two such programmes in the entire Arab world. Through the years the Institute has been able to develop its programmes, material and human resources to attain an esteemed position among academics and policymakers in Palestine and the Arab world. The expertise within the Institute contributes and advances gender studies, policy analysis and formulation in Palestine and the region, as well as at the global level. The Institute conducts its own research as well as facilitates other individuals’ and institutions’ research on Palestinian women and gender relations in Palestinian society.
The International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights (INCRESE)
INCRESE is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded with the aim of reducing resistance to issues of reproductive and sexual health and rights in Nigeria, and to empower disadvantaged groups with information, skills and services in order for them to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Nirantar
Nirantar works towards empowering women through education by enabling access to information, promoting literacy and engendering education processes. It achieves this through direct field interventions, creating educational resources, research and advocacy, and training. Actively involved with the women's movement and other democratic rights movements, Nirantar brings concerns central to these movements into its educational work. Nirantar was set up in 1993, had offices in New Delhi and in three districts of Uttar Pradesh.
Paolo Longo Research Initiative (PLRI)
PLRI is a collaboration of scholars, policy analysts and sex workers, which aims to develop and consolidate ethical, interdisciplinary scholarship on sex work to improve the human rights, health and well-being of women, men and transgenders who sell sex. Established in 2008, the PLRI brings together institutions and people who are committed to human rights and social justice and who have made significant contributions to the study of public health, gender, sexuality, development economics, migration, ethics and human rights in the context of sex work.
The Pleasure Project
The Pleasure Project is an educational initiative that promotes safer sex that feels good. While most safer sex and HIV prevention programmes are negative and disease-focused, The Pleasure Project is different as it takes a positive, liberating and sexy approach to safer sex. It provides innovative training, consultancy, research and publications to sexual health trainers and counsellors, NGOs and others who want to take a more sex-positive approach to their work. The Pleasure Project is an initiative of Taking Action for Sexual Health.
The Population Council, Regional Office, Egypt
www.popcouncil.org/me/egypt.html
Since 1952, the Population Council has been the premier international organization conducting biomedical, public health and social science research on population issues.The Council has been instrumental in the design of health products, service-delivery programmes and public policies responsive to the needs of people living in the world's poorest countries. The widespread dissemination of its findings, and partnerships with nearly 200 governments, universities and non-governmental organizations, ensure that the Council researchers’ work can and does make a positive difference in people's lives.
Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE) – American University
www.american.edu/cas/economics/programs/gender.cfm
The Department of Economics at American University in Washington DC is the first US University to offer a Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE). The PGAE differs from other gender-related graduate programmes by presenting a gender-focused yet economics-based curriculum that emphasizes conceptual, modelling and empirical skills widely used in economic analysis. It also develops a gender perspective on economic analysis in contrast to the traditional approach of treating gender as one discrete sub-topic within another economics field such as labour or development, and enlarges the scope of analysis to be global and comparative by drawing on literature from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the post-socialist world and OECD countries.
Realizing Rights Research Programme Consortium
www.ids.ac.uk/go/idsproject/realising-rights-research-programme-consortium
Realizing Rights Research Programme Consortium brings together researchers from several disciplines to focus on populations in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia with the greatest access and entitlement problems in sexual and reproductive health (SRH): the very poor, young people, especially girls and young women, and other hard-to-reach groups such as migrants and those most vulnerable to stigma.
The Salamander Trust
Salamander aims to protect, promote and enhance the health and rights of people, particularly those marginalized by societies worldwide as a result of their gender, HIV status or SRH. Salamander seeks to promote SRH with HIV prevention, care and support, within a holistic, gender-based human rights framework.The activities of the trust aim to raise awareness of relevant issues through the development and dissemination of print and multimedia materials; develop and support related networks; represent the views of those marginalized on the basis of their gender and sexual health status and enable them to express their own views.
Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW)
SPW is a global forum composed of researchers and activists from a wide range of countries and regions of the world. Launched in 2002 as the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy, in 2006 the forum changed its name to Sexuality Policy Watch. Since its establishment, SPW has undertaken many projects: a global research study on trends in sexuality, policies and politics; political activism; building strategic partnerships with social actors working on sexual rights in key policy arenas; and publishing policy analyses and other materials to address issues of sexuality politics.
SPW has two secretariats, one based in Brazil at Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association (ABIA) and the other based at the Center for Gender, Sexuality and Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
Sexual Health and Disability Alliance (SHADA)
SHADA has started as a small group of individuals who are eager to improve the sex-positive work that the organization Outsiders does, provide more informed services, and attract helpline operators from other disability agencies in the UK, who offer advice on sex, sexuality and relationship and disability. It also aims to influence policies so that more disabled people can explore their sexuality and enjoy relationships.
Shirkat Gah
Shirkat Gah – Women's Resource Centre is a leading women's rights organization from Pakistan.
Meaning‘a place of participation’, Shirkat Gah (SG) was formed in 1975 as a collective to integrate awareness-raising initiatives with a development perspective. For more than 30 years SG has facilitated women's empowerment by increasing their access to information, resources, skills and decision making, and helped to bring about positive change to policies, laws and practices. Viewing rights and development as inherently linked, SG has a multidimensional approach, aiming to translate advocacy into actions, engaging with local issues, aligning with international themes and linking the grassroots to the global.
Simorgh
http://hurights.pbworks.com/Pakistan+Centers#SimorghWomensResourceandPublicationCentre
Simorgh is a non-government, non-profit, feminist/ activist organization that serves as a Women's Resource and Publication Centre. Simorgh's main focus is research and dissemination of information that will enable women and men to challenge the dominance of ideas that support social and economic divisions on the basis of gender, class, religion, race and nationality. Simorgh aims to redefine the culturally biased roles of men and women, and to promote not only equality between the genders, but to allow each individual to develop and find expression in his/her own right.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)
http://codesria.org/spip.php?lang=en
CODESRIA was established in 1973 in Dakar (Senegal) in order for African researchers in the social sciences to develop research skills and scientific tools to promote cohesion, welfare and progress in African societies. One of its core programmes is the Gender Programme, whose main dimensions are: research, training, policy dialogue, publications and knowledge dissemination. The main objectives of the Gender Programme are to consolidate the progress made in generating a gender-transformative social science through a systematic identification of new methodological concerns and instruments; to provide concrete opportunities to a new generation of young male and female scholars to take creative approaches to gender-related research; to consider systematically the various implications of gender research and gender analysis in Africa; and to better understand the interactions of gendered realities among different social levels.
Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP)
www.tgnp.org/0about.html
TGNP is a non-governmental organization working in the civil society sector since 1993. It is an activist organization focusing on the practical promotion and application of gender equality, equity and women's empowerment through policy advocacy and mainstreaming of gender and pro-poor perspectives both in Tanzania and other countries in the region.
Women in Development Europe (WIDE)
WIDE is a European feminist network of women's organizations, development NGOs, gender specialists and women's rights activists.
WIDE monitors and influences international economic and development policy and practice from a feminist perspective. WIDE's work is grounded on women's rights as the basis for the development of a more just and democratic world order and the search for alternative approaches to the economic mainstream. WIDE enables members and partners to articulate alternatives to the negative impacts of globalization, and makes feminist alternatives visible. Through the dissemination of its research and analysis, WIDE promotes gender equality and social justice.
The Women and Memory Forum (WMF)
WMF in Egypt is a research group, focusing on gender in Arab cultural history, which helps dismantle prevalent concepts about women's roles.WMF consists of a group of women researchers and development practitioners concerned about the negative representations and perceptions of Arab women in the cultural sphere. Dominant cultural ideas and images of Arab women constitute major stumbling blocks in the course of women's development and attainment of their rights. The long-term objective of its specialized research is to produce and make available alternative cultural information about Arab women, which can be used for raising awareness and empowering women.
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Gives annotated links to key women and gender organizations associated or allied with The Pathways of Empowerment project
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Morrissey, L. Institutions Working on Gender and Empowerment. Development 53, 286–292 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2010.12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2010.12