The Human Rights Enterprise and Women’s Rights Organizing

The highly-contested discourse of human rights figures prominently in the pronouncements of the United Nations, nation-states, and civil society entities. As a result, the human rights label may be applied to activist networks that do not necessarily characterize themselves as human rights networks. Yet, the principles of these networks clearly align with rights-based human dignity claims. How does human rights terminology impact analyses of activist organizations? How might organizations respond to this labeling? Furthermore, what are the methodological lessons to be learned from this process? In this article, I examine one case that highlights my application of a human rights label to an organization committed to securing gender equality for Nepali women. By underscoring the relevance of Armaline and Glasberg’s (2009) human rights enterprise, I account for human rights activism beyond the human rights discourse that prevails in the global North. The simultaneous divergence on the level of discourse and convergence on the level of goals illustrates how the human rights enterprise can be a powerful framework for the social scientific analysis of human right

Rules vs. Rights? Social Control, Dignity, and the Right to Housing in the Shelter System

Sometimes the mechanisms that are in place to protect human rights lead to human rights violations. Drawing on data from ten months of fieldwork at a homeless shelter’s women’s program in a New England city. The authors trace the compromise of human dignity that accompanies one shelter’s effort to help clients fulfill their human right to housing

Rules vs. Rights? Social Control, Dignity, and the Right to Housing in the Shelter System

Sometimes the mechanisms that are in place to protect human rights lead to human rights violations. Drawing on data from ten months of fieldwork at a homeless shelter’s women’s program in a New England city. The authors trace the compromise of human dignity that accompanies one shelter’s effort to help clients fulfill their human right to housing

The Human Rights Enterprise and Women’s Rights Organizing

The highly-contested discourse of human rights figures prominently in the pronouncements of the United Nations, nation-states, and civil society entities. As a result, the human rights label may be applied to activist networks that do not necessarily characterize themselves as human rights networks. Yet, the principles of these networks clearly align with rights-based human dignity claims. How does human rights terminology impact analyses of activist organizations? How might organizations respond to this labeling? Furthermore, what are the methodological lessons to be learned from this process? In this article, I examine one case that highlights my application of a human rights label to an organization committed to securing gender equality for Nepali women. By underscoring the relevance of Armaline and Glasberg’s (2009) human rights enterprise, I account for human rights activism beyond the human rights discourse that prevails in the global North. The simultaneous divergence on the level of discourse and convergence on the level of goals illustrates how the human rights enterprise can be a powerful framework for the social scientific analysis of human right

An Assessment of the Social Impact of Feminist Network Organizing: A Qualitative Study of the First Nepali Women\u27s Global Network (NWGN) Conference

In this study, the author examines the efforts of one transnational feminist network, the Nepali Women’s Global Network (NWGN) to organize through a conference addressing gender inequality matters that shape the experiences of Nepali women on a global and national level and the variant experiences of conference participants based on their social locations. Recognizing the complexity of individual social change on a personal level as well as process-based institutional social change challenging social norms, the author posits the following two research questions 1) Can conferences organized by feminist networks initiate social change? and 2) How can feminist networks best promote grassroots level social actions? This research contributes to the gender and intersectionality literature in addition to the literature on organizing among diasporic populations. Interviews with fifteen Nepali women who attended the first NWGN Conference held in 2008, nine interviews with participants who attended the 2009 Association of the Nepalis in the Americas (ANA) Convention and a review of NWGN’s influence in lobbying for gender equality in the forthcoming Constitution of Nepal inform this analysis. This research suggests that transnational feminist networks’ strategies for implementing social changes should mirror the thematic concerns and social needs of network audiences to avoid perpetuating marginalized statuses based on the intersections of participants’ education, movement ideology, and social capital. This project also reveals the need for the broad communication of network ideas both outside of the participant base and within the network for the expansion of opportunities for outreach

Breaking the Glass Ceiling? Gender and Leadership in Higher Education

Gender, work, and organizations scholarship that focuses on women in relationship to leadership roles focuses on gendered experiences including sexual harassment (Chamberlain, Tope, Crowley, and Hodson 2008; McLaughlin, Uggen, and Blackstone 2012; Zippel 2006), glass ceilings (Williams 1992; 1995), mentoring and collegial work relationships (Britton 2000; Chalmers 2001; DeHart-Davis 2009; Kantola 2008; Lorber 1994; Martin 2003; Ridgeway 1997; Wallace 2014) and the work and family balance (Acker 1990; 1992; Cha 2013; Damaske 2011; Gerson 2010; Hochschild 1997; Kelly, Ammons, Chermack and Moen 2010; Macdonald 2010; Williams 2010). While gender research shows that women face exceptional disadvantages in the workplace, it does not specifically focus on redefining leadership roles so as to uncover a degendered vision of leadership. In this dissertation, inspired by feminist degendering movement literature (Lorber 2000; 2005), I consider the possibility of a degendered leadership that does not pose gendered limitations. My research questions are: 1) What role does gender play in the narratives of women and men leaders? 2) How might leaders’ gendering of leadership reproduce gender stereotypes? 3) What strategies might leaders and institutions of higher education use to degender leadership? and 4) What might degendered leadership look like? Through 34 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women and men serving as deans, provosts, and presidents at colleges and universities throughout the United States, I examine degendered definitions of leadership that are rooted in expectations of the prototypical academic leader. Respondents indicated that effective academic leadership is evident through a leader’s prestige through credentials and publications, active engagement with institutional stakeholders (including students, faculty, staff members, alumni, the board of trustees, the community, and corporate and governmental partners) and ability to lead strategic institutional initiatives that are in line with the institutional culture. While past scholarship has emphasized the negative effects associated with gendering leadership and an individual’s behavioral capacity to lead, there is a need for more scholarship that focuses on degendering leadership through labeling and discourse. Through the narratives of my respondents, I fill this gap in the literature