Women's Issues Today

This book explores how activists around the world have organized to fight for their economic and social rights and well-being, to end violence against women and militarism, to promote sexual and reproductive rights, and to protect bodily integrity in the face of the new biotechnologies.  Seeing the body as a fluid site of power and political contestation where specific cultural, social and economic realities and struggles are played out, Harcourt looks at body politics from the intimate and personal within self, family and community to the public at national and global levels and discourses.Using narrative, interview, analysis and theory to bring out the importance of different facets of body politics, this accessible book translates feminist and development discourse into vitally relevant material for all those interested in human rights and social justice. 

Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium connects the inequalities between and among women and men with the world politics of global governance, security, political economy, and ecology. Through historical, theoretical, and empirical analysis, the authors alert us to gendered divisions of power, violence, labor and resources, as well as the power of gender as a meta-lens that keeps gender, race, class, sexual, and national divisions in place, despite some re-positionings of some women and men on the world political stage. In this completely new edition, which reflects significant advances in feminist international relations and transnational feminist scholarship, the authors apply intersectional analysis to global governance, militarization, global economic restructuring, and environmental degradation. They explore how crises of representation, insecurity, and sustainability have widened and deepened—particularly in the post-9/11 period—while at the same time global gender policymaking (quotas, gender mainstreaming, and the advancing of women’s human rights) has increased. The authors focus on this apparent contradiction—the higher level of attention to gender and women’s human rights in a time of fierce militarization, savage economic inequality, and ecological crisis—but also address how the power of gender, as a meta-lens that orders world politics, can be deconstructed to rethink identities, ideologies, structures, and policies that rest upon gendered processes of imperialism, neoliberalism, racialization, and sexualization. The book emphasizes how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust global governance, global security, and global political economy, but at the same time sees promise in coalitional struggles to re-radicalize feminist world political demands to change the downward conditions of women, men, children, and the planet. Thus, the authors also examine the challenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and practice through renewed politics of representation and redistribution.

This interdisciplinary collection from the Human Rights Quarterly brings together in a single volume nineteen of the most compelling articles written on women's human rights issues. For the past twenty-five years, Human Rights Quarterly has been a leading publisher of important work in human rights research, exploring the fundamental nature of human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By providing decision makers with insight into complex human rights issues, the journal helps to define national and international human rights policy.This special issue focuses specifically on the challenges that women face and the efforts by individuals and organizations alike to ensure the protection of women under international law. The articles are organized into five sections that discuss the history and evolution of women's human rights, religion, violence, economic rights, and reproductive rights. The essays address such topics as the rights of Middle Eastern women, rape camps in the former Yugoslavia, and abortion law in Ireland.

This book explores how activists around the world have organized to fight for their economic and social rights and well-being, to end violence against women and militarism, to promote sexual and reproductive rights, and to protect bodily integrity in the face of the new biotechnologies.  Seeing the body as a fluid site of power and political contestation where specific cultural, social and economic realities and struggles are played out, Harcourt looks at body politics from the intimate and personal within self, family and community to the public at national and global levels and discourses.Using narrative, interview, analysis and theory to bring out the importance of different facets of body politics, this accessible book translates feminist and development discourse into vitally relevant material for all those interested in human rights and social justice. 

Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium connects the inequalities between and among women and men with the world politics of global governance, security, political economy, and ecology. Through historical, theoretical, and empirical analysis, the authors alert us to gendered divisions of power, violence, labor and resources, as well as the power of gender as a meta-lens that keeps gender, race, class, sexual, and national divisions in place, despite some re-positionings of some women and men on the world political stage. In this completely new edition, which reflects significant advances in feminist international relations and transnational feminist scholarship, the authors apply intersectional analysis to global governance, militarization, global economic restructuring, and environmental degradation. They explore how crises of representation, insecurity, and sustainability have widened and deepened—particularly in the post-9/11 period—while at the same time global gender policymaking (quotas, gender mainstreaming, and the advancing of women’s human rights) has increased. The authors focus on this apparent contradiction—the higher level of attention to gender and women’s human rights in a time of fierce militarization, savage economic inequality, and ecological crisis—but also address how the power of gender, as a meta-lens that orders world politics, can be deconstructed to rethink identities, ideologies, structures, and policies that rest upon gendered processes of imperialism, neoliberalism, racialization, and sexualization. The book emphasizes how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust global governance, global security, and global political economy, but at the same time sees promise in coalitional struggles to re-radicalize feminist world political demands to change the downward conditions of women, men, children, and the planet. Thus, the authors also examine the challenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and practice through renewed politics of representation and redistribution.

This interdisciplinary collection from the Human Rights Quarterly brings together in a single volume nineteen of the most compelling articles written on women's human rights issues. For the past twenty-five years, Human Rights Quarterly has been a leading publisher of important work in human rights research, exploring the fundamental nature of human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By providing decision makers with insight into complex human rights issues, the journal helps to define national and international human rights policy.This special issue focuses specifically on the challenges that women face and the efforts by individuals and organizations alike to ensure the protection of women under international law. The articles are organized into five sections that discuss the history and evolution of women's human rights, religion, violence, economic rights, and reproductive rights. The essays address such topics as the rights of Middle Eastern women, rape camps in the former Yugoslavia, and abortion law in Ireland.