The Social Relations Approach, empowerment and women factory workers in Malaysia

This article discusses the empowerment of women factory workers in Malaysia through the lens of Kabeer’s Social Relations Approach. The approach offers an institutional analysis of how gender inequality is produced and calls for the overall terms of exchange and cooperation to be shifted in women’s favour. Its application shows that Malaysian women factory workers face significant challenges, due to the character of institutions, and women’s difficulties in adopting and internalising the notion of ‘empowerment’

Randomized Control Trials and Qualitative Evaluations of a Multifaceted Programme for Women in Extreme Poverty: Empirical Findings and Methodological Reflections

This paper sets out to synthesize key lessons from studies using alternative methodologies to impact assessment. Drawing on Sen’s capability approach as a conceptual framework, it analyses two pairs of impact assessments which were carried out in West Bengal and Sindh around the same time and within close proximity to each other. Each pair consisted of a randomized control trial and a qualitative assessment of attempts to pilot BRAC’s approach to transferring assets to women in extreme poverty. The paper reports on the findings of these studies, their strategies for establishing their claims about causality and the information base they drew on to establish these claims. It finds that not only did the RCTs fail to meet their own criteria for establishing causality, but they also provided very limited explanation for the patterns of outcomes observed. Such information formed the substance of the qualitative studies. The paper concludes that greater use of mixed methods could help to offset some of limitations of RCTs and to place their findings on much firmer ground

Women's empowerment: what works

With radical roots in the 1980s, women’s empowerment is now a mainstream development concern. Much of the narrative focuses on instrumental gains—what women can do for development rather than what development can do for women. Empowerment is treated as a destination reached through development’s equivalent of motorways: programmes rolled out over any terrain. But in the process, pathways women are travelling in their own individual or collective journeys of empowerment remain hidden. Revisiting foundational feminist work on empowerment, this article draws on findings from multi-country research programme, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, to explore what works to support these journeys

Melting of Al Induced by Laser Excitation of 2p Holes

Novel photon sources—such as XUV- or X-ray lasers—allow to selectively excite core excitations in materials. We study the response of a simple metal, Al, to the excitation of 2p holes using molecular dynamics simulations. During the lifetime of the holes, the interatomic interactions in the slab are changed; we calculate these using WIEN2k. We find that the melting dynamics after core-hole excitation is dominated by classical electron–phonon dynamics. The effects of the changed potential surface for excited Al atoms occur on the time scale of 100 fs, corresponding to the Debye time of the lattice

Girls’ and women’s education within Unesco and the World Bank, 1945–2000

By 2000, girls’ and women’s education was a priority for international development organisations. While studies have examined the impact of recent campaigns and programmes, there has been less exploration of ideas about girls’ and women’s education within development thought in the immediate post?colonial period, and the political mechanisms through which this came to be a global concern. Through a study of policy documents, this paper investigates how the education of girls and women came to be prioritised within the two principle UN agencies involved with education since 1945, the World Bank and Unesco. A shift in priorities is evident, from ensuring formal rights and improving the status of women, to expanding the productive capacities of women, fertility control and poverty reduction. While the ascendance of human capital theory provided a space for a new perception of the role of women’s education in development, in other policy arenas women’s education was central to exploring more substantive, rights?based notions of gender equality. Ultimately, the goal of improving girls’ and women’s education fitted into diverse development agendas, paving the way for it to become a global development priority

The SDGs and the empowerment of Bangladeshi women

This chapter describes Bangladesh’s successes with advancing gender equality in the period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), locating their origins in elite commitment to including women in the development process, and in the partnerships and aid that built the state and NGO capacity to reach them. The chapter reflects on the lessons of Bangladesh’s innovative and unexpected advances in the light of the new challenges posed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), notably those of early marriage and the achievement of decent work. The chapter asks whether contemporary conditions suggest that the elite commitment and state capacity that drove progress on the MDGs are up to meeting the more contentious and complex goals of the SDGs

Breadwinners and Homemakers: Migration and Changing Conjugal Expectations in Rural Bangladesh

The literature on marriage norms and aspirations across societies largely sees the institution as static – a tool for the assertion of masculinities and subordination of women. The changing meanings of marriage and conjugality in the contemporary context of globalisation have received scant attention. Based on research in rural Bangladesh, this article questions the usefulness of notions of autonomy and dependence in understanding conjugal relations and expectations in a context of widespread migration for extended periods, especially to overseas destinations, where mutuality is crucial for social reproduction, though in clearly genderdemarcated domains

From working in the wheat field to managing wheat: women innovators in Nepal

This article presents research conducted in Nepal’s Terai plains in 2014-15 showing that women are innovating in wheat to the extent that wheat farming is experiencing a shift from feminization of agricultural labor towards women taking control over decision making. Processes accounting for this include male out-migration, non-governmental organizations working on promoting women’s equality that has developed women’s confidence, individual support from extension agents, and strong cooperation between women to foster each other’s “innovation journeys.