Archive for Gender Matters – CSW54
Welcome to Gender Matters! This will be an on-going blog reflecting on the hot debates around women’s rights, gender equality, empowerment and other mantras in the development debates around gender. It will be a candid and wry reflection of why gender is crucial to development. Most of all it will chart with whom, why and where the debates are happening. It starts off with in situ reports of the 54th Commission of the Status of Women held in New York during first two weeks of March 2010. For more on the CSW take a look at the current SID Forum Resource page and Key issues
Some of these articles will appear also in the IPS blog Gender Masala and Terra Viva newsletter
-
The Missing Link: Migrant domestic workers in Europe (II)
It is no longer possible to separate out the domestic work agenda from the feminist European agenda according to Andrea Spehar in her speech to the WIDE Annual Conference on 'Migration in the context of globalisation: women's human rights at risk', held in Bucharest 3 to 5 June 2010. by Wendy Har...
-
Historic article for women’s rights in South Africa: When ‘traditional values’ are a stick to beat women
Source: Timeslive website SID Forum would like to draw attention of its followers to the courageous article by Pregs Govender, who wrote in her personal capacity this provocative and highly important article on women’s rights. She is deputy chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commissi...
-
Gender Matters – CSW54: Making the linkages
by Wendy Harcourt There is no doubt that there is a lot of knowledge gathered at the CSW. I have been scribbling non-stop, picking up new ideas and ways of thinking. The spectrum goes from issues around multilateralism and how institutions are not working for women’s rights, to in-depth ...
-
Gender Matters – CSW54: How do we bring about change?
Today I found myself sitting at the top of a very tall hotel looking over the skyline of Manhattan in one of the parallel of parallel sessions organized by UNIFEM. The topic remains financial crisis, the strategies, the forecasts, ways to grapple with systemic failure. Having painted too grim a p...
-
Gender matters – CSW54: Where did it all go wrong?
Sitting in the belly of the beast in a small meeting room in the UN around 25 women and a few men puzzled what would development look like if gender really mattered. At the launch of the SID journal vol 53 no 1 on new institutions for development, the participants were invited to take off their inst...
-
CSW54 – Gender Matters: Can the UN bring change?
Well, two predictions of mine are bearing out. First, the chaos of organizing such a large meeting has led to some people queuing for 5 to 8 hours to gain registration to the official CSW meeting. On the bright side such long waiting times did mean unplanned networking and a sense of solidarity amo...
-
Gender Matters – CSW 54: Dealing with the crisis not as victims but with solutions.
by Wendy Harcourt High on the list of the discussions in New York at the CSW54 is the impact of the financial crisis on women. How are women dealing with a systemic crisis? Stories such as those put out by GenderWire of IPS show that the multiple crises of food, climate and economic is hitt...
-
Gender Matters – CSW54: Coping with Bantánamo
by Wendy Harcourt There is a sense of trepidation for the women (and some men) heading to New York for the 54th Commission of the Status of Women. Already in cyberspace the atmosphere of the meeting is being created. Messages come thick and fast about meetings to attend. Meetings on sexual r...
-
Gender Matters – CSW54: A place for change?
by Wendy Harcourt When told about the Commission on the Status of Women some might think, so what? Surely this is just yet another big UN affair with little impact in the real world? So why, then, are thousands of women from around the world coming to New York during the first two weeks of...
