Papers by Jan Michalko
ALIGN, 2024
The research project Men in politics as agents of gender equitable change examined how men politi... more The research project Men in politics as agents of gender equitable change examined how men politicians understand and describe their support for gender equality, the factors that shape their decisions and practices, and what women politicians, activists, and university students think about them and their work. The objective was to capture conditions that have the potential to be reproduced across various country contexts to increase the presence of agents of gender equitable change and explore whether such efforts should be prioritised and funded.
This brief explores how governments with feminist foreign policy (FFP) along with those aspiring ... more This brief explores how governments with feminist foreign policy (FFP) along with those aspiring to have FFP, collectively referred to as FFP+, can more effectively resource feminist movements as critical actors driving forward gender equality and intersectional social justice agendas.
Key recommendations are drawn from the existing literature, together with new insights gathered from ODI’s closed-door convening series Where next for feminist foreign policy? hosted online May–August 2023. This policy brief was developed out of the roundtable ‘Can foreign policy be a pathway to effectively fund feminist movements?’, building on participants’ expertise as well as both sceptical and hopeful views about the potential of FFP (see Annex for a partial list of attendees).
It also brings forward ideas based on an ODI policy brief, ‘How to partner with feminist movements for transformative change’ (Tant and Jiménez Thomas Rodriguez, 2022) and should be read alongside a FFP background note (Michalko, 2023) which outlines some of the key tensions and lessons learnt about FFP implementation.
ODI Briefing Note, 2023
Multiple compounding crises are now a defining feature of the global landscape, resulting in a gr... more Multiple compounding crises are now a defining feature of the global landscape, resulting in a growing economic and political maelstrom which is challenging equality, sustainable collective development and peace. FFP provides an alternative approach to international relations that can meaningfully respond to this polycrisis.
With a view to enhance the desired gender justice outcomes of the policies – and to build accountability for their commitments to feminist principles, this ODI briefing note provides guidance for states working on navigating and operationalising the ambition of FFP. When carefully designed – and implemented in good faith – FFPs promise to lead to the advancement of a non-violent, non-exploitative, and equality-driven foreign affairs. They can also help in the upholding of a universal human-rights-based international order.
ALIGN, 2023
‘Too young.’ ‘Too old.’ ’Too attractive.’ ‘Too unattractive.’ ‘Too emotional.’ ‘Too unreliable.’ ... more ‘Too young.’ ‘Too old.’ ’Too attractive.’ ‘Too unattractive.’ ‘Too emotional.’ ‘Too unreliable.’ ‘Untrustworthy.’ ‘Cursed.’ These are just some of the tropes used to discredit and disempower women across Nepal, Nigeria, Peru and Zimbabwe, which have been shared with ALIGN partners by women running for and holding positions at local, municipal and state level.
ALIGN partners have explored how norms shape women’s political participation, where the gender gap remains one of the most persistent and challenging inequality gaps to close. While women’s participation in local and subnational politics tends to be higher than at the national level, their parity is still, at best, a distant prospect
ODI, 2023
Almost half a century ago, the Stonewall uprising at a New York gay bar, a spontaneous act of res... more Almost half a century ago, the Stonewall uprising at a New York gay bar, a spontaneous act of resistance against police brutality, marked a turn in the fight for LGBTQI+ equality. This moment, in June 1969, sparked a movement, now celebrated yearly in a month-long commemoration known as Pride.
ODI Briefing, 2023
To counter the anti-gender movement, states with an existing or aspiring feminist foreign policy ... more To counter the anti-gender movement, states with an existing or aspiring feminist foreign policy can work together to coordinate action to defend and uphold gender justice. Policy action can be taken at three levels: domestically, bilaterally and globally within multilateral spaces. If FFP's core objective is upholding and advancing gender justice and equality, then tackling the causes and tactics of backlash must be a priority. FFP states are strategically well placed to tackle the complexity and international nature of anti-gender movements.
ODI, 2023
The Government of Ireland supports gender-transformative approaches through its foreign and devel... more The Government of Ireland supports gender-transformative approaches through its foreign and development policy as a route to advancing gender equality. Recognising the innovative work of its partners and missions, Irish Aid commissioned ODI to lead a collaborative research and learning project, bringing together civil society, governmental and international organisations, and mission staff from the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), Sierra Leone and Tanzania to identify how the Government of Ireland and other donors can enhance the use of gender-transformative approaches (GTAs). The key findings of this collaborative research and learning project are distilled in this policy brief. They include the good practices identified across five GTA strategies, and five systems-level 'enablers': practices and policies that donors can implement to enable the effective use of GTAs.
ALIGN - ODI, 2022
Fear of violence was a key feature in the recent 2022 Kenyan elections. While much of the media a... more Fear of violence was a key feature in the recent 2022 Kenyan elections. While much of the media attention focused on fears around large scale ‘ethnic violence’, instead violence against women materialised. This violence ranged from physical attacks on women, to sexualised attacks on social media aimed at discrediting female candidates’ dignity and reputation.
Many women in Kenya, however, refused to let fear stop them from challenging the gender norms at the heart of political spaces. The number of women elected has significantly increased since 2017 with Kenya now having 29 female Members of Parliament which is above the ‘reserved women’s seats’ threshold of 21, plus four additional women governors were elected bringing the total to seven. While these numbers do not meet the Kenyan constitutional rule of at least a third gender representation, they show a positive trajectory.
Role models such as Martha Karua, who was the first woman to run alongside a presidential candidate in recent times, and hundreds of women leaders throughout Kenya’s history, have encouraged women to run and to continue to shift norms around women’s leadership. But they do so at a cost. For more women to enter politics, the underlying misogynistic attitudes about women’s place and their expected roles in society, in other words, the underlying gender norms, need to fundamentally change.
The Politics of Representation Collective, 2019
Social Politics, 2020
This article analyzes the norms that are expected of womxn political elites as role models, to fu... more This article analyzes the norms that are expected of womxn political elites as role models, to further advance the research on the contributions of womxn in politics to womxn’s empowerment. Based on interviews and group discussions with womxn at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, it is argued that womxn in politics contribute to the students’ normative construction of their ideal self and hence to their empowerment. Consequently, it is suggested that development interventions focus on womxn in politics as fully embedded in wider normative structures while also exposing womxn to a diverse group of womxn in power.
Politikon, 2019
Class-based analysis has become one of the key academic approaches to examining political behavio... more Class-based analysis has become one of the key academic approaches to examining political behaviour in South Africa. As its usefulness in the context of high inequality is contested, this article seeks to contribute to the debates on its analytical potential based on interviews and group discussions with womxn1 studying at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing on Foucauldian theorising on power of norms and discourses, and theories of intersectionality, this paper shows that the expectations attached to middle classness and eliteness in South Africa contribute to the maintaining of the existing systems of power by seeking to discipline young educated womxn away from becoming political change-makers. The effectiveness of this class-based disciplinary power is in its embeddedness in other systems of domination, including gender, race and age. Thus, only within an intersectional critical framework, does the category offer a useful lens for understanding how power impacts South African politics.
Book Reviews by Jan Michalko
Journal of Modern African Studies, 2017
International Feminist Journal of Politics , 2017
Conference Presentations by Jan Michalko
Conference: Development Studies Association (DSA), Milton Keynes, UK, 2019
This paper contributes to the scholarship on the impacts of womxn’s inclusion in positions of pol... more This paper contributes to the scholarship on the impacts of womxn’s inclusion in positions of political power by analysing their role model effect on young womxn. Womxn’s political representation is argued to contribute to increasing gender equality, by enabling womxn to overcome their internalized patriarchal gender norms. However, much of the political science role model scholarship has been limited by the western conceptualisations of politics and power. Therefore, this study expands the analytical scope by reframing the role model question through the norms that female political elites represent to young womxn and their potential to offer normative social resources for their empowerment and ultimately contribute to the transformation of gender-based oppressions.
Based on interviews and group discussions with womxn at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, conducted in 2016-2017, this paper argues that womxn in politics contribute to the students’ construction of their ideal self, which is attached to the notion of a female political elite. The empowering resources for the students’ decisions about their education and future employment are therefore not the womxn in politics themselves, who often fail to meet the normative expectations, but the ideal that emerges from the observations and engagements with a variety of women both in and outside of politics. Consequently, interventions focused on womxn’s inclusion in politics ought to focus on increasing young women’s exposure of a diverse set of womxn.
Conference: International Conference for Doctoral Students and Young Researchers, University of Economics in Bratislava, 2019
This paper contributes to the existing critical feminist and womxnist scholarship on gender equal... more This paper contributes to the existing critical feminist and womxnist scholarship on gender equality and womxn’s empowerment in official development assistance (ODA) by undertaking an intersectional and decolonial analysis of the Mid-term Strategy for Slovak Development Cooperation for 2019 – 2023. It fills the gap in the existing literature in the region and highlights the strategy’s coloniality and the key role that patriarchy, racism and capitalism play in it for the construction of Slovak identity as a developed nation. This is demonstrated in the treatment of womxn in recipient countries as inherently disempowered victims without political agency, and the promotion of scholarships and the private sector abroad. Ultimately the strategy results in the depoliticization and undermining of womxn’s empowerment as a radical feminist approach to achieving gender equality because of its inability to support or enable systemic transformation. The paper thus ultimately shows the remaining pockets of patriarchal resistance within the ODA realm as Slovakia continues to avoid the shifts in gender equality norms in development.
Draft paper prepared for African Studies Association (ASA – UK) Bi-Annual Conference, 11-13 September 2018, Birmingham, UK, 2018
This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing academic endeavours of youth scholars to problemati... more This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing academic endeavours of youth scholars to problematize discourses and policies, which homogenize young people. Highlighting the effects of gender, class, race, sexuality and ability, intersectionality is a useful concept for analysing the unique experiences of young women and men. However, it will be argued that analysing people’s experiences and perceptions through the sole deployment of the aforementioned categories, even if taken in their intersection, may not sufficiently capture the complexities of lived realities. A rigid commitment to predominant categories can reduce analysis to the mere inclusion of the excluded and thus to finding the expected manifestations of power and inequality (Chadwick, 2017; McCall 2005). Instead, intersectional approaches should articulate new analytical frames (Winker and Degele, 2011), which are spatially and timely specific (Anthias, 2012), and which grasp the salient systems of power as they are experienced by the people. This is especially pertinent with regards to the youth, in order to recognize the value and importance of their own agency, language and positionalities and to minimize inter-generational impositions.
The reliance on pre-existing analytical frames is prevalent in South Africa, where race, class, gender and sexuality are omnipresent discursive tools of political populism and essentialized markers of difference. The South African youth, and university students in particular, have been assessed through these categorical lenses, most recently since 2015, when their mobilizing under the banner of Fallism brought young people to renewed political and academic limelight. The discourses have been focused on the poor Black African youth, portraying them as either violence prone and entitled, or socially aware and politically engaged in new, unconventional ways. However, as my own PhD research with female students at the University of Johannesburg shows, the uneven speeds of socio-economic and political transformations in post-Apartheid era have resulted in complex, changing youth identifications and positionalities, which render mainstream category-based analyses unsatisfactory.
Drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with students, which I conducted in 2016-2017 for my PhD research on female political elites and empowerment, I argue that alternative and more productive analytical frames can be found in the students’ self-portrayals. Seeing themselves and others through the prism of education for example, students from various backgrounds differentiate themselves from others, both intra-and inter-generationally. The notion of being and becoming educated reveals concurrent forms of disempowerment and agency and it interacts with other identities, societal discourses and norms, such as being deserving through hard work. These norms are gendered, racialized, classed-based and sexualized and create structures, which allow a permissible level of individual change, while maintaining the systems of power intact. Thus, this paper demonstrates the benefits of alternative frames for intersectional analysis to capture the diverse experiences, hopes and grievances of students from the so-called Born Free generation, which can further inform other scholarship and policies.
AEGIS Summer School, Cagliari, Italy, 2018
Providing affordable, high quality, relevant education for young people is one of the main pillar... more Providing affordable, high quality, relevant education for young people is one of the main pillars of youth development policies in South Africa. From the perspective of many university students, however, these political objectives have not been achieved by current political leaders, as is demonstrated by a wave of student protests and organizing known as Fallism. Youth-based activism has been hailed by some as an expression of generational desire for radical rupture from the status quo and from the older generations in power. This paper complicates these narratives through an intersectional analysis of young people, based on interviews with female students at the University of Johannesburg. Drawing on the students’ perceptions of various forms of political engagement prevalent in the South African public discourses in 2016-2017, this paper argues that understanding young South Africans’ politics as a call for radical disconnection is misleading. Moreover, this construal held by older generations and some students themselves, is counterproductive in the process of societal transformation. This paper identifies inter- and intra-generational continuities existing alongside ruptures as potential alliances to mobilize for a more effective transformation and development of the South African society.
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Papers by Jan Michalko
Key recommendations are drawn from the existing literature, together with new insights gathered from ODI’s closed-door convening series Where next for feminist foreign policy? hosted online May–August 2023. This policy brief was developed out of the roundtable ‘Can foreign policy be a pathway to effectively fund feminist movements?’, building on participants’ expertise as well as both sceptical and hopeful views about the potential of FFP (see Annex for a partial list of attendees).
It also brings forward ideas based on an ODI policy brief, ‘How to partner with feminist movements for transformative change’ (Tant and Jiménez Thomas Rodriguez, 2022) and should be read alongside a FFP background note (Michalko, 2023) which outlines some of the key tensions and lessons learnt about FFP implementation.
With a view to enhance the desired gender justice outcomes of the policies – and to build accountability for their commitments to feminist principles, this ODI briefing note provides guidance for states working on navigating and operationalising the ambition of FFP. When carefully designed – and implemented in good faith – FFPs promise to lead to the advancement of a non-violent, non-exploitative, and equality-driven foreign affairs. They can also help in the upholding of a universal human-rights-based international order.
ALIGN partners have explored how norms shape women’s political participation, where the gender gap remains one of the most persistent and challenging inequality gaps to close. While women’s participation in local and subnational politics tends to be higher than at the national level, their parity is still, at best, a distant prospect
Many women in Kenya, however, refused to let fear stop them from challenging the gender norms at the heart of political spaces. The number of women elected has significantly increased since 2017 with Kenya now having 29 female Members of Parliament which is above the ‘reserved women’s seats’ threshold of 21, plus four additional women governors were elected bringing the total to seven. While these numbers do not meet the Kenyan constitutional rule of at least a third gender representation, they show a positive trajectory.
Role models such as Martha Karua, who was the first woman to run alongside a presidential candidate in recent times, and hundreds of women leaders throughout Kenya’s history, have encouraged women to run and to continue to shift norms around women’s leadership. But they do so at a cost. For more women to enter politics, the underlying misogynistic attitudes about women’s place and their expected roles in society, in other words, the underlying gender norms, need to fundamentally change.
Book Reviews by Jan Michalko
Conference Presentations by Jan Michalko
Based on interviews and group discussions with womxn at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, conducted in 2016-2017, this paper argues that womxn in politics contribute to the students’ construction of their ideal self, which is attached to the notion of a female political elite. The empowering resources for the students’ decisions about their education and future employment are therefore not the womxn in politics themselves, who often fail to meet the normative expectations, but the ideal that emerges from the observations and engagements with a variety of women both in and outside of politics. Consequently, interventions focused on womxn’s inclusion in politics ought to focus on increasing young women’s exposure of a diverse set of womxn.
The reliance on pre-existing analytical frames is prevalent in South Africa, where race, class, gender and sexuality are omnipresent discursive tools of political populism and essentialized markers of difference. The South African youth, and university students in particular, have been assessed through these categorical lenses, most recently since 2015, when their mobilizing under the banner of Fallism brought young people to renewed political and academic limelight. The discourses have been focused on the poor Black African youth, portraying them as either violence prone and entitled, or socially aware and politically engaged in new, unconventional ways. However, as my own PhD research with female students at the University of Johannesburg shows, the uneven speeds of socio-economic and political transformations in post-Apartheid era have resulted in complex, changing youth identifications and positionalities, which render mainstream category-based analyses unsatisfactory.
Drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with students, which I conducted in 2016-2017 for my PhD research on female political elites and empowerment, I argue that alternative and more productive analytical frames can be found in the students’ self-portrayals. Seeing themselves and others through the prism of education for example, students from various backgrounds differentiate themselves from others, both intra-and inter-generationally. The notion of being and becoming educated reveals concurrent forms of disempowerment and agency and it interacts with other identities, societal discourses and norms, such as being deserving through hard work. These norms are gendered, racialized, classed-based and sexualized and create structures, which allow a permissible level of individual change, while maintaining the systems of power intact. Thus, this paper demonstrates the benefits of alternative frames for intersectional analysis to capture the diverse experiences, hopes and grievances of students from the so-called Born Free generation, which can further inform other scholarship and policies.
Key recommendations are drawn from the existing literature, together with new insights gathered from ODI’s closed-door convening series Where next for feminist foreign policy? hosted online May–August 2023. This policy brief was developed out of the roundtable ‘Can foreign policy be a pathway to effectively fund feminist movements?’, building on participants’ expertise as well as both sceptical and hopeful views about the potential of FFP (see Annex for a partial list of attendees).
It also brings forward ideas based on an ODI policy brief, ‘How to partner with feminist movements for transformative change’ (Tant and Jiménez Thomas Rodriguez, 2022) and should be read alongside a FFP background note (Michalko, 2023) which outlines some of the key tensions and lessons learnt about FFP implementation.
With a view to enhance the desired gender justice outcomes of the policies – and to build accountability for their commitments to feminist principles, this ODI briefing note provides guidance for states working on navigating and operationalising the ambition of FFP. When carefully designed – and implemented in good faith – FFPs promise to lead to the advancement of a non-violent, non-exploitative, and equality-driven foreign affairs. They can also help in the upholding of a universal human-rights-based international order.
ALIGN partners have explored how norms shape women’s political participation, where the gender gap remains one of the most persistent and challenging inequality gaps to close. While women’s participation in local and subnational politics tends to be higher than at the national level, their parity is still, at best, a distant prospect
Many women in Kenya, however, refused to let fear stop them from challenging the gender norms at the heart of political spaces. The number of women elected has significantly increased since 2017 with Kenya now having 29 female Members of Parliament which is above the ‘reserved women’s seats’ threshold of 21, plus four additional women governors were elected bringing the total to seven. While these numbers do not meet the Kenyan constitutional rule of at least a third gender representation, they show a positive trajectory.
Role models such as Martha Karua, who was the first woman to run alongside a presidential candidate in recent times, and hundreds of women leaders throughout Kenya’s history, have encouraged women to run and to continue to shift norms around women’s leadership. But they do so at a cost. For more women to enter politics, the underlying misogynistic attitudes about women’s place and their expected roles in society, in other words, the underlying gender norms, need to fundamentally change.
Based on interviews and group discussions with womxn at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, conducted in 2016-2017, this paper argues that womxn in politics contribute to the students’ construction of their ideal self, which is attached to the notion of a female political elite. The empowering resources for the students’ decisions about their education and future employment are therefore not the womxn in politics themselves, who often fail to meet the normative expectations, but the ideal that emerges from the observations and engagements with a variety of women both in and outside of politics. Consequently, interventions focused on womxn’s inclusion in politics ought to focus on increasing young women’s exposure of a diverse set of womxn.
The reliance on pre-existing analytical frames is prevalent in South Africa, where race, class, gender and sexuality are omnipresent discursive tools of political populism and essentialized markers of difference. The South African youth, and university students in particular, have been assessed through these categorical lenses, most recently since 2015, when their mobilizing under the banner of Fallism brought young people to renewed political and academic limelight. The discourses have been focused on the poor Black African youth, portraying them as either violence prone and entitled, or socially aware and politically engaged in new, unconventional ways. However, as my own PhD research with female students at the University of Johannesburg shows, the uneven speeds of socio-economic and political transformations in post-Apartheid era have resulted in complex, changing youth identifications and positionalities, which render mainstream category-based analyses unsatisfactory.
Drawing on focus group discussions and interviews with students, which I conducted in 2016-2017 for my PhD research on female political elites and empowerment, I argue that alternative and more productive analytical frames can be found in the students’ self-portrayals. Seeing themselves and others through the prism of education for example, students from various backgrounds differentiate themselves from others, both intra-and inter-generationally. The notion of being and becoming educated reveals concurrent forms of disempowerment and agency and it interacts with other identities, societal discourses and norms, such as being deserving through hard work. These norms are gendered, racialized, classed-based and sexualized and create structures, which allow a permissible level of individual change, while maintaining the systems of power intact. Thus, this paper demonstrates the benefits of alternative frames for intersectional analysis to capture the diverse experiences, hopes and grievances of students from the so-called Born Free generation, which can further inform other scholarship and policies.