scholarly journals Social Norms Structuring Masculinities, Gender Roles, and Stereotypes: Iraqi men and boys’ common misconceptions about women and girls’ participation and empowerment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Dietrich ◽  
Zorica Skakun ◽  
Rohlat Khaleel ◽  
Tim Peute

The limited participation of Iraqi women in community decision-making in Kirkuk and Diyala is the result of various intertwined factors. This study explores emerging opportunities for social transformation in the context of sedimented layers of male privilege and the questioning of restrictive gender norms in the two governorates. With this report, Oxfam and its partners aim to dismantle barriers to women’s active participation, which is currently constrained by stereotypes and restrictive ideas about gender. Among the promising pathways for change are awareness-raising activities with male allies, alongside other longer-term efforts advancing transformative change in attitudes, practices, and behaviors.

Author(s):  
Natasha Thomas-Jackson

RAISE IT UP! Youth Arts and Awareness (RIU) is an organization that promotes youth engagement, expression, and empowerment through the use of performance and literary arts and social justice activism. We envision a world where youth are fully recognized, valued, and supported as artist-activists and emerging thought leaders, working to create a world that is just, intersectional, and inclusive. Two fundamental tenets shape RIU’s policies, practices, and pedagogy. The first is that creative self-expression and culture making are powerful tools for personal and social transformation. The second is that social justice is truly possible only if and when we are willing to have transparent and authentic conversations about the oppression children experience at the hands of the adults in their lives. We are committed to amplifying youth voices and leadership and building cross-generational solidarity among people of all ages, particularly those impacted by marginalization. Though RIU is focused on and driven by the youth, a large part of our work includes helping adult family members, educators, and community leaders understand the ways in which systemic oppression shapes our perceptions of and interactions with the young people in our homes, neighborhoods, institutions, and decision-making bodies.


Author(s):  
Madeline Baer

Chapter 2 presents the central research questions that drive the theoretical and empirical work of the book, outlines the “moments of social transformation” model used for analyzing human rights realization, and positions the book in relation to theoretical and contemporary policy debates. The chapter synthesizes the literatures on socioeconomic human rights fulfillment and the human right to water and sanitation. It introduces two key elements for implementing human rights: political will and state capacity, as well as some obstacles to rights realization, including lack of strong regulatory frameworks and accountability mechanisms. The chapter explores the tensions between markets and rights, finding that neoliberal approaches to water policy have a negative effect on rights fulfillment by weakening the state’s role, and it engages with critiques that the human rights frame is too narrow and vague to facilitate transformative change in the water sector.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustina Koduah ◽  
Reginald Sekyi-Brown ◽  
Joseph Kodjo Nsiah Nyoagbe ◽  
Daniel Amaning Danquah ◽  
Irene Kretchy

Abstract Background Licences to operate pharmacy premises are issued by statutory regulatory bodies. The Health Institutions and Facilities Act (Act 829) and Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act (Act 857) regulate pharmacy premises and the business of supplying restricted medicines by retail, respectively, and this could create a potential regulatory overlap for pharmacy practice in Ghana. We theorise that the potential overlap of regulation duties stems from how law-makers framed issues and narratives during the formulation of these Acts. Objective To describe the policy actors involved, framing of narratives and decision-making processes relating to pharmacy premises licensing policy formulation. Methods A qualitative study was conducted and data gathered through interviewing eight key informants and reviewing Hansards, reports, bills, memoranda and Acts 829 and 857. Data were analysed to map decision-making venues, processes, actors and narratives. Results The Ministry of Health drafted the bills in July 2010 with the consensus of internal stakeholders. These were interrogated by the Parliament Select Committee on Health (with legislative power) during separate periods, and decisions made in Parliament to alter propositions of pharmacy premises regulations. Parliamentarians framed pharmacies as health facilities and reassigned their regulation from the Pharmacy Council to a new agency. The Pharmacy Council and the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana could not participate in the decision-making processes in Parliament to oppose these alterations. The laws’ contents rested with parliamentarians as they made decisions in venues restricted to others. Legislative procedure limited participation, although non-legislative actors had some level of influence on the initial content. Conclusion Implementation of these laws would have implications for policy and practice and therefore understanding how the laws were framed and formulated is important for further reforms. We recommend additional research to investigate the impact of the implementation of these Acts on pharmacy practice and business in Ghana and the findings can serve as bargaining information for reforms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Kahente Horn-Miller

In the fall of 2016, the Kahnawà:ke Community Decision Making Process revised the Kahnawà:ke Law on Membership regarding adoption. It was decided that any non-Indigenous child adopted by a Kahnawà:ke family after 2003 would not be recognized as a Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawà:ke or an approved resident. Parents were committing an offense in adopting non-Indigenous children and would no longer be eligible to reside in Kahnawà:ke. This decision drew national and international attention, with some questioning the logic of targeting a practice so integral to many Indigenous legal orders. This article frames Rotinonhsiónni adoption, belonging, and identity formation beyond the confines of colonial thought. This might seem like a tall order given colonialism’s all-encompassing grasp on Indigenous minds and communities; indeed, we are all entangled in the colonial order. But there is a way to challenge this by moving beyond frameworks reliant on colonial control.


Author(s):  
Amal Muner Mohamed Abo Jhashe

This study aimed to identify the ability of the educational leader to apply the principle of participation in decision-making and its impact on the achievement of the educational institution's objectives effectively from the point of view of teachers in the Zarqa Directorate (First) of Education and used the study method descriptive-analytical and the study tool (questionnaire) where it was distributed to a random sample of (110) teachers belonging to the Zarqa Directorate (First) of Education. The study found that the participation of educational leaders in decision-making received an average (2.84 out of 5) verbal (intermediate) ratings, and at the level of fields; Community decision-making average (2.90), teacher participation in decision-making for teachers themselves averaged (2.81) and finally teacher participation in decision-making on the teaching curriculum and teaching methods (2.72), all of which are estimated (2.84), and based on the results, the study recommended the need for teachers to participate in decision-making within educational institutions, which reflects positively on the work of the performance of the institution and improve the type of style possessed by the leader in the institution.


2021 ◽  
Vol 124 ◽  
pp. 02002
Author(s):  
Lynn Wee

In accordance with United Nations’ sustainable development goal in achieving gender equality and to empower all women and girls, this paper investigates gender equality and power in marital relationship. Using Resource Theory of Power as a conceptual framework, this paper examines the distribution of marital power among married couples. More specifically, this paper examines to what extent do married couples use money as a bargaining tool to negotiate for more control in two areas: (1) managing economic resources and (2) household decision making. Forty married couples from urban Sarawak were located and interviewed. Results indicate that apart from money, marital power is affected by more influential factors such as ideologies and religious teachings. Consequently, having more money does not necessarily mean having more control over the decision making as decision making in a marriage is often guided by prescribed gender roles in accordance to one’s ideologies, cultural and religious teachings. Hence, gender equality in the management of economic resources and decision making within a household can only occur when an increase in women’s resources is combined with changes in gender roles and ideologies.


2022 ◽  
pp. 272-289
Author(s):  
Wafa Subhi Al Tamimi

Women in Iraq are still acquiring equality and equity in various aspects of their personal and professional lives. Hence, it is essential to identify factors that influence their education, emphasizing equity as it fulfills lives with strength, success, and prosperity. This chapter presents key challenges that impede a prosperous educational climate that is fair among genders. The chapter presents cultural, economic, social barriers, and pushbacks against women's education in Iraq, the overall impact of education decline, among other factors that reduce equity for women. The author then presents various solutions and recommendations based on an analytical evaluation to achieve education access, equality, and equity for Iraqi women. The chapter calls to develop effective policies and programs that target the identified cultural, societal, and infrastructure obstacles to help improve women's education in Iraq and assure equality and equity.


Author(s):  
Jim Segers

This chapter looks at social transformation through the lens of ‘tough issues’. The perspective makes the vast challenges communities are faced with more practical, which in turns allows for progress in the right direction through small wins. Many citizen and community organisations with a background in environmental, peace and third world movements have roots in direct action. Over recent decades, they have been moving from opposing developments to proposing alternatives. We use the words of de Certeau (1984) to describe it as a shift from ‘résistance’ to ‘bricolage’. This shift has brought them closer to more institutionalised partners like government, business, civil society and research institutions. While this rapprochement has proven beneficial to each party involved – research methodologies such as Co-Creation prove that notions like horizontal decision-making, anti-authoritarianism and self-organisation are no longer the preoccupation of informal actors solely – the different stakeholders have not become interchangeable. The chapter argues for the role of a third actor in a social transformation process. This actor is not a stakeholder itself, but through a creative process (“prototyping” in the case of City Mine(d), arts creation in others) becomes tactically linked to the important stakeholders.


Author(s):  
Malose Langa ◽  
Steven Rebello ◽  
Linda Harms-Smith

Abstract This article reflects on the Marikana massacre of August 2012, subsequent violent strikes and responses by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a case study, and provides an analysis about whether these interventions bring transformative change or maintain the status quo in times of crisis. Events associated with Marikana are seen to be embedded in social structures of the time and part of deeper frictions and fractures of social transformation. The role that NGOs might play in this context must be interrogated as to their facilitation or hinderance of such social transformation. Interviews were conducted with representatives of NGOs intervening in Marikana that provided services of humanitarian assistance, and legal and psychosocial interventions and with mine workers and residents of Marikana about their experiences and views of these services. Findings from the study are illustrative of how NGOs were not primarily motivated to bring about lasting, transformative change but rather attempted to address immediate or short-term needs which, while important, did not account for underlying causes of the crises that they set out to address. Both ideological underpinnings of NGOs and structural conditions produced by state and capital impact on outcomes of interventions. Given these limitations, it is argued that there is a need for deep critical interrogation through praxis, for NGOs to intervene differently in times of crisis to bring ‘real’ change and transformation in the lives of those who are marginalized.


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