I have 20 years of experience in Gender and Development. I am a Senior Fellow based at IDS, University of Sussex, and lead the gender and politics work. I also convene IDS' flagship MA in Gender and Development. I take a political economy lens and work on feminist movements, women's empowerment, gender based violence, policy processes, mainly with partners in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. I have worked as a consultant for UNDO, FAO, SDC, The MacArthur Foundation, OXFAM among others.
SummaryMotivationPaid work is key for women's empowerment, but many women work in precarious ... more SummaryMotivationPaid work is key for women's empowerment, but many women work in precarious employment where they experience workplace sexual harassment. Articles in this special section explore how social norms and job informality influence women's perceptions about—and their voice and agency to counter—workplace sexual harassment.PurposeThis introductory article highlights the academic and policy contribution of the special section by establishing how the articles collectively explore the relationship between social norms, job informality, and women's agency with respect to workplace sexual harassment, and the kinds of policies that may strengthen women's agency.Methods and approachResearch in two countries explored how gender norms and informality in work arrangements influence young women's voice and agency in response to sexual harassment at work. This article introduces four articles based on the research findings and presents the themes that are explored ...
The paper takes Bangladesh as a case study and investigates how informal institutions, particular... more The paper takes Bangladesh as a case study and investigates how informal institutions, particularly the personal relationships and networks, advance or block the way pro women policy coalitions promote gender equity concerns. Through investigating informal institutions, the paper draws attention to some uncomfortable realities, and challenges how promotion of gender equity is understood in mainstream gender and development literature where much emphasis on getting the formal rules and procedures ‘right’. It illustrates how the subversion of the formal rules may work to advance women’s rights in policy spaces but may not facilitate change during implementation. It also raises uncomfortable questions about whether ‘going with the grain’ furthers women’s rights in the long run and the difficulties that may arise for women’s rights actors from being embedded within such informal practices. In recent years, Bangladesh has made significant strides in advancing women’s rights and improving women’s conditions. The adoption of various gender equity policies and legal reforms is an important part of this change. How and why were the political actors motivated to promote such changes in a country where gender equity concerns have very little currency in mainstream politics and formal policy making institutions perceive women’s needs in ‘welfarist’ terms? The paper explores this question using empirical evidence collected on the successful legal reform on violence against women in 2010 and processes of implementation after enactment.
SummaryMotivationPaid work is key for women's empowerment, but many women work in precarious ... more SummaryMotivationPaid work is key for women's empowerment, but many women work in precarious employment where they experience workplace sexual harassment. Articles in this special section explore how social norms and job informality influence women's perceptions about—and their voice and agency to counter—workplace sexual harassment.PurposeThis introductory article highlights the academic and policy contribution of the special section by establishing how the articles collectively explore the relationship between social norms, job informality, and women's agency with respect to workplace sexual harassment, and the kinds of policies that may strengthen women's agency.Methods and approachResearch in two countries explored how gender norms and informality in work arrangements influence young women's voice and agency in response to sexual harassment at work. This article introduces four articles based on the research findings and presents the themes that are explored ...
The paper takes Bangladesh as a case study and investigates how informal institutions, particular... more The paper takes Bangladesh as a case study and investigates how informal institutions, particularly the personal relationships and networks, advance or block the way pro women policy coalitions promote gender equity concerns. Through investigating informal institutions, the paper draws attention to some uncomfortable realities, and challenges how promotion of gender equity is understood in mainstream gender and development literature where much emphasis on getting the formal rules and procedures ‘right’. It illustrates how the subversion of the formal rules may work to advance women’s rights in policy spaces but may not facilitate change during implementation. It also raises uncomfortable questions about whether ‘going with the grain’ furthers women’s rights in the long run and the difficulties that may arise for women’s rights actors from being embedded within such informal practices. In recent years, Bangladesh has made significant strides in advancing women’s rights and improving women’s conditions. The adoption of various gender equity policies and legal reforms is an important part of this change. How and why were the political actors motivated to promote such changes in a country where gender equity concerns have very little currency in mainstream politics and formal policy making institutions perceive women’s needs in ‘welfarist’ terms? The paper explores this question using empirical evidence collected on the successful legal reform on violence against women in 2010 and processes of implementation after enactment.
This collection begins with the premise that while there is more and more literature on gender an... more This collection begins with the premise that while there is more and more literature on gender and politics and feminist activism in the Global South there is little as yet which effectively links voice, feminist activism and transitional contexts. As editors we believe that addressing this gap will help us interrogate our assumptions about the relationships we envisage between voice and agency, constituency building, and renegotiation of citizenship/rights. There is a pressing need to unpack our assumptions about these relationships for the following reasons. First, voice which is a 'metaphor for powerful speech and is associated with acts and arguments that influence public decision making' (Goetz and Nyamu Musembi, 2007: 4) is identified as a key pathway [for women] to achieve greater citizenship, rights and empowerment in both liberal discourse and development policy literature. This is because the ability to exercise and organize voice by a group [women] is mostly associated with political acts such as public engagement, collective action and influence on public decisions by that group [women]. Though feminists writings on women/gender in formal politics have conceptually and empirically questioned this linear assumption made about 'voice-to-representation of gender equity concerns-to-accountability to women/for gender equity' (Htun); this has been the prescription used by international policy makers, states and even by women's /feminist organizations for strengthening women's voice within the policy circles and the state machinery. In this volume, we depart from this focus on women's public and political engagement in formal institutions and move towards an analysis of feminist activism for building and sustaining constituencies through raising, negotiating, legitimizing feminist voice under transitional contexts and their impact on women's citizenship.
Uploads
Papers by Sohela Nazneen
In recent years, Bangladesh has made significant strides in advancing women’s rights and improving women’s conditions. The adoption of various gender equity policies and legal reforms is an important part of this change. How and why were the political actors motivated to promote such changes in a country where gender equity concerns have very little currency in mainstream politics and formal policy making institutions perceive women’s needs in ‘welfarist’ terms? The paper explores this question using empirical evidence collected on the successful legal reform on violence against women in 2010 and processes of implementation after enactment.
In recent years, Bangladesh has made significant strides in advancing women’s rights and improving women’s conditions. The adoption of various gender equity policies and legal reforms is an important part of this change. How and why were the political actors motivated to promote such changes in a country where gender equity concerns have very little currency in mainstream politics and formal policy making institutions perceive women’s needs in ‘welfarist’ terms? The paper explores this question using empirical evidence collected on the successful legal reform on violence against women in 2010 and processes of implementation after enactment.