Gender Equality and Human Development: The Instrumental Rationale

human development, aid, trade, security

Spatiotemporal switching signals for cancer stem cell activation in pediatric origins of adulthood cancer: Towards a watch-and-wait lifetime strategy for cancer treatment.

Pediatric origin of cancer stem cell hypothesis holds great promise and potential in adult cancer treatment, however; the road to innovation is full of obstacles as there are plenty of questions left unanswered. First, the key question is to characterize the nature of such stem cells (concept). Second, the quantitative imaging of pediatric stem cells should be implemented (technology). Conceptually, pediatric stem cell origins of adult cancer are based on the notion that plasticity in early life developmental programming evolves local environments to cancer. Technologically, such imaging in children is lacking as all imaging is designed for adult patients. We postulate that the need for quantitative imaging to measure space-time changes of plasticity in early life developmental programming in children may trigger research and development of the imaging technology. Such quantitative imaging of pediatric origin of adulthood cancer will help develop a spatiotemporal monitoring system to determine cancer initiation and progression. Clinical validation of such speculative hypothesis-that cancer originates in a pediatric environment-will help implement a wait-and-watch strategy for cancer treatment

Women's Empowerment, Development Interventions and the Management of Information Flows

This article takes gender inequalities in the distribution of power as its point of departure. Given the widespread evidence of the extent to which women, particularly poor women, have been marginalised in processes by which development policies are designed and implemented, it suggests that explicit attention needs to be given to strengthening women's capacity for voice and action at different stages of the planning cycle. In particular, there are certain ‘critical moments’ in the life of any intervention when the ideas, values and knowledge of key decision?making actors have a profound impact on how the intervention plays out in practice. The article sets out to develop a theory of change that addresses the issue of women's empowerment. It applies this theory to the critical moments framework. Finally, it draws on case studies of interventions funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to illustrate key lessons for their transformative potential for women's empowerment

The Power of Relationships: Love and Solidarity in a Landless Women's Organisation in Rural Bangladesh

This article examines the significance of social relationships in women's lives and their relevance to processes of women's empowerment. In Bangladesh, traditional structures limit women's social interaction to their immediate family and maintain male responsibility over them. However, here we look at the example of Saptagram – a social mobilisation organisation particularly focused against gender injustice towards rural landless Bangladeshi women – and how by providing relationships beyond the private sphere it engendered bonds of friendship and loyalty amongst its beneficiaries. Difficulties with systems and its inability to recruit a new line of leadership led to its apparent failure at one point. Yet, despite this, by providing knowledge of rights, respect, courage to stand up for one's beliefs and a sense of wellbeing through working alongside people in the villages, it inspired an enduring solidarity amongst the women it served which led to its eventual resurrection

Gender equality, the MDGs and the SDGs: achievements, lessons and concerns

Following the formal announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals, Naila Kabeer reflects on lessons from the Millennium Development Goals through a feminist lens, which she argues were weakened by their very narrow interpretation of women’s empowerment. She writes that much more is needed to dismantle the more resilient structures of inequality, and while the SDGs offer some grounds for cautious optimism, there is a continued lack of emphasis on rights

Three faces of agency in feminist economics: capabilities, empowerment and citizenship

This chapter reviews three interrelated ways in which agency has been conceptualized in feminist economics. First, it draws on the concept of capabilities and considers its contribution to the analysis of livelihoods. Second, the chapter draws on conceptualizations of empowerment which link capabilities directly to questions of power. Finally, it turns to ideas about citizenship to consider agency as collective action and how it might be mobilized to promote women's rights and gender justice. Patriarchal constraints have made the possibility of collective action to challenge economic injustice more challenging for women relative to men. Furthermore, the nature of this challenge varies between different groups of women, depending on where they are positioned in the economy and the possibilities for collective action associated with their position. In some circumstances, progress on basic capabilities may enhance individual empowerment; in other circumstances, the willingness to take collective action might lead to improvements in basic capabilities

Women’s empowerment and economic development: a feminist critique of story telling practices in ‘Randomista' economics

The 2019 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to three scholars on the grounds that their pioneering use of randomized control trials (RCTs) was innovative methodologically and contributed to development policy and the emergence of a new development economics. Using a critical feminist lens, this article challenges that conclusion by interrogating the storytelling practices deployed by “randomista” economists through a critical reading of a widely cited essay by Esther Duflo, one of the 2019 Nobel recipients, on the relationship between women’s empowerment and economic development. The paper argues that the limitations of randomista economics have given rise to a particular way of thinking characterized by piecemeal analysis, ad hoc resort to theory, indifference to history and context, and methodological fundamentalism. It concludes that the randomista argument that broad-based economic development alone – without focused attention to women’s rights – will lead to gender equality has not been borne out by recent data