Towards a More Gender-Inclusive Climate Change Policy

Climate change is a reality, and poses a serious long term threat to society and to the environment. Much has been written on the negative effects of climate change across the globe focusing on the greater vulnerability of least developed countries and developing countries. Numerous studies back up the argument that “countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change tend to be poorer with a wider gender gap. In contrast, countries that rank high in environmental performance and gender equality, are among the richest nations of the world” (Samy, 2011, p. 100). Women are often denied of their basic rights due to discriminatory social practices and gender blind policies. Impacts of climate change affect life and livelihood of women, and diverse work responsibilities of women augment their exposure to climate hazards. Due to less access or rights to financial and productive resources, information and services that may help them cope with impacts of stresses and shocks, are not present as a result of the gaps in policies, development agendas, thus leaving women in a greater vulnerable condition. Primarily, these are the reasons slowing the progress on achieving overall gender equality. The objective of this paper is to look at the Post 2015 Arrangements. These are numerous international frameworks and agreements ie SFDRR, SDG and the Paris Agreement, that will determine sustainable development for humanitarian response and climate politics as well as policies for the next fifteen years. They focus on development from a climate change and gender equality point of view, in particular how the policies are enabling ‘gender equality', taking common but differentiated responsibilities, and equity, justice and fairness as principles.

Structuring the “Expected”

This paper based on empirical research attempts to deal with the question of media imagination and the marginalization of women migrants in Indian Megapolis. Foregrounding on the emerging social fact regarding the urban settings catering to one-third of country's population as migrants of which more than two-thirds are women categorically from non-urban rural areas. Further, in the backdrop of the internet and the new media penetration of rural population by half of total usage in India by 2020, the functions of the mediated imageries of the sexes need to be re-examined within the rural-urban continuum for a better clarity of media-gender relationship. The popular media imageries many of which disseminate unrealistic, stereotypical, and restrictive perceptions resulting in portrayal of women in stereotypical ways contradicts the general perception of non-urban women-emancipation through consumption of media texts which is highly urban centric. Such contestation of media effects raises a need to investigate how women migrant to the urban setting consider, analyse, internalize and utilize such portrayal of themselves in the media thus reflecting the actual consumption pattern of media texts and gender roles fixations. This paper particularly looks at an unexplored area of new media consumption within the non-urban migrants to Indian metropolis. It is an attempt to locate affordable alternative communication technology to understand the renewed social interactions of women migrants via virtual social networks in urban centres and how it infers and shape their social identity formation.

Disaster, Vulnerability, and Violence Against Women

Studies of natural disasters have adequately focused on gendered aspect of disaster and women's vulnerability and offered suitable suggestions though only few of these have focused on the issue of the relation between disaster and violence against women. By undertaking meta-analysis of cross-cultural studies, this paper aims to provide an overview of connections between disaster, women's vulnerability and violence against women and to highlight the importance and the relevance of similar researches in Bangladesh. Natural threats are real and moderated by existing socio-economic arrangements and cultural norms in Bangladesh where gender relationships are unequal and violence prone. Therefore it is expected that the lessons of international experiences and insights will help to develop a gendered research framework to understand ‘how violence against women is increasing following disasters' in the context of Bangladesh. And finally, that would pave the way for policy options to form a better co-existence for both men and women which would be more equal, dignified and violence free.

More Than Body Parts

This paper questions the reduction of human experience and identity to anatomical determinism in which the category of ‘woman' or ‘man' becomes a universal concept. Through a review of literature on African gender, feminist and masculinity studies, it highlights how people are more than their body parts. It notes how identities are shaped by an intersectionality of various factors such as education, employment status, class, age, physical condition, nationality, citizenship, race and ethnicity. These factors can be spatial and temporal producing differing experiences of gendered lives. African scholars have built up a rich collection of work that repudiates the univerlisation of gender identities based on Western philosophical schools of thought. This work explores in detail current and historical debates in African gender studies.

Gender, Organization, and Change in Sudan

The position of women and role of gender in Sudan has been researched from anthropological, sociological and economic traditions. This study will review the position of Sudanese women within the formal employment sector, setting this within the specific political, economic and social context of the country. In addition, it will examine women in political and voluntary settings, as these are also important decision making arenas. There has been little published material previously on this topic. The study draws on secondary data from unpublished studies and master's dissertations, and also grey material available in Sudan. In addition, semi-structured interviewing of a purposive sample of selected informants was used. The data were analysed thematically. The findings were that many behavioural patterns seen elsewhere were evident in Sudan, such as stereotyping and discrimination. However, educated Sudanese women sought equality within a man's world, unlike the equal but different gender roles found by Metcalfe (2007) in parts of the Middle East.

Gendered Organizational Culture

This study began with the question of what are the factors that lead to different outcomes of women in engineering employment in Bangladesh and Thailand. The primary data for answering this question were drawn from questionnaire surveys with 204 professional engineers, in-depth interviews with 80 professional women engineers, and discussions with employers in construction organizations in Bangladesh and Thailand. The findings identifies several barriers that not only deter women from entering into organizations, but also stopped the stream of women engineering graduates to flow into the engineering job market. The study has shed light on how organizational cultural practices as well as the influence of external factors within organizations affect women's entry and stay in construction organizations in Bangladesh and Thailand. The findings suggest that organizations should develop their own equal opportunity guidelines and policies to provide women with a suitable job and ensure that they remain employed.

Women-Friendly Working Environment in Bangladesh

Work is typically divided along gender lines with men being responsible for paid work and women for unpaid care work. There is a negative correlation between income and level of gender inequalities in unpaid care work. Income can give certain level of independence but reinforces new kinds of dependence and subordination of women in our society in Bangladesh. If women wish to begin their paid work, it means ideologically they want extra jobs and they have to willingly undertake this double burden of household and professional work. The study claims that there is a need of gender responsive rebalancing policies to ensure women friendly working environment to ensure actual empowerment of women in Bangladesh.

Migration, Muslim Women, and Social Reproduction of Gender Inequality

Does international migration have a role to reproduce unequal gender relation in a patriarchal society? How does it make such role? How does it further implicate people's religious as well as cultural practices? These are the questions have been addressed in this paper. It takes the case of Bangladesh, a South Asian Muslim-majority country with millions of international labour migrants to different Middle East and Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. This international migration makes very positive financial contributions to the migrants and their families at origins, mostly in rural villages. The paper makes it focus on social outcomes, especially on household level gender relations with such migration. Taking up the idea of ‘social remittances', it argues that these migrants, mostly men, experience with a range of ‘Islamic' norms and practices in destinations, and send back those to origins for religious obligations. These norms and practices largely include discouraging female household members, especially wives, to earn or go outside without purdah in line with the perceived ‘Islam'. The paper explains that such ‘social remittances' encourage the female household members to be ‘good' Muslim women along with the reproduction of gender inequality between women and men.

Engaging Men in Women's Economic Empowerment in Butiama District, Mara Region, Tanzania

The chapter addresses women's income poverty using men as active participants in empowering women economically. Butiama district was used as a study area, using 120 women and their husbands who were beneficiaries of the programme dealing with loan provision. As an outcome of the study, men had little participation in women's economic activities, hence, women's economic empowerment was at medium level. Unlike men, women's income was used for fulfilling basic needs of the family, therefore, had little impact on their economic empowerment. By conclusion, men as decision makers have high impact on women's economic empowerment. It is recommended that, awareness creation among men would enhance their participation in empowering women. Improvement of women's access to and control over production resources would improve their income. It is recommended that lobbying and advocacy approaches should be applied to enable women's control over the production resources.

Gender Violence in Academia

This is an exploratory research conducted in three universities of Delhi – University ‘X', University ‘Y' and University ‘Z'. The objective is to study the scope and incidence of various types of sexual violence behaviors experienced by women on campus: undergraduate women; postgraduate women; research scholars; and faculty. This chapter explores types, kind and nature of sexually harassing behaviors; sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, stalking, and intimate partner violence, experienced by women in campus; the occurrence of different type of behavior among women in age group of 18 to 65 years. Finding indicates 80 percent acknowledged sexual and psychologically offensive behavior. About 70 percent of total sample acknowledged that they were sexually assaulted. A very small percent 2 percent acknowledged of being attempted raped and 89 percent underwent stalking.