By student contributor Delaney Allan

Pennies for Peace

Pennies for Peace is a service-learning program that focuses on education. The organization provides essential tools to individuals who wish to initiate their own education projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The organization provides K-12 curriculum along with other learning tools to campaigners who then build learning initiates that focus on community-based education of children, particularly girls, in rural areas. Pennies for Peace guides individuals through the implementation process, helping to establish project timelines, manage philanthropic outreach, and incorporate cultural education into curriculum. Pennies for Peace hopes to achieve 5th grade level education for these children, while at the same time supporting students of developed countries to realize their potential as philanthropists.

By student contributor Delaney Allan

Women and Law in Southern Africa Research and Educational Trust

WLSA – Malawi is a non-governmental organization active in Malawa and Southern Africa. This group conducts research exploring gender issues, particularly in the area of legal rights and justice delivery. WLSA – Malawi empowers women through their research, as well as through education initiatives that teach women how to advocate for reform in the legal system. WLSA – Malawi advocates for societies in which women can easily take full advantage of their legal rights.

On April 9, S. Gregory spoke on “Kudumbashrees in Kerala, India: Women-Oriented Community Development”, co-sponsored by the Elliott School’s Culture in Global Affairs Seminar Series and its Global Gender Forum.

S. Gregory is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at Kannur University in Kerala as well as an India & Fulbright Scholar at the University of Chicago.

His talk ranged widely from the history of gender inequality in India to the local context of Kerala, a progressive state in south India. He discussed the innovative and successful program of kudumbashrees, women’s neighborhood groups as empowering poor and marginalized women.

Gregory is the chair of the anthropology department at Kannur University, the only university in Kerala state with an anthropology department. He has published many scholarly articles and a new book, Development, Livelihood and Empowerment: Toward a Sustainable Paradigm based on Micro-Level Reflections of Decentralisation and People’s Planning in Kerala. His research and writing focus on grassroots and sustainable development and provide locally informed insights about the reknowned Kerala Model of Development. He is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Chicago in spring 2012.

By student contributor Delaney Allan

Global Fund for Women

Global Fund for Women promotes women’s rights in over 200 countries. They provide grants to strengthen grassroots initiatives that focus on women’s issues such as health and education as well as economic security and leadership. Beyond grant making, Global Fund for Women invests in the establishment of sustainable networks and collective power in local communities that will continue to empower women. Their mission is to support women’s action and involvement in bringing about social change, justice, peace and equality worldwide.

The GGP is very proud that our associate director, Ariana Rabindranath, gave a presentation at the conference, on pathways women take to get into politics in Asia (see presentation). Ariana joined the GGP in December 2011.

The following description is from the UN Development Programme.

Representatives from 11 countries across Asia developed national plans to increase women’s role in politics during a two-day regional conference in Mongolia. They concluded the event by drafting strategies for their respective countries that include ways to reform their current electoral and political processes to enhance gender equality.

Ariana Rabindranath (left), Associate Director of the Global Gender Program, presenting at UNDP Mongolia conference on Pathways for Women into Politics

Organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Committee on Gender Equality of the Government of Mongolia, the conference, held in Ulaanbaatar April 3-4, drew on collective regional experiences to help the representatives devise their national plans. Participants explored ways of drafting gender quota laws, building skills of women to take part in elections, making parliaments more gender sensitive, and strengthening political party decision-making and recruitment processes for women. They also discussed the importance of seeking alliances with male politicians in order to increase gender balance in representative bodies.

“Without access to established networks of influence, limited resources, few role models and mentors, and in many cases limited family and community support, it is understandable that women’s participation in the political arena has remained woefully behind that of men,” said Ms. Sezin Sinanoglu, UNDP Resident Representative in Mongolia, in her opening statement. She commended Mongolia for its new election law which includes at least 20 percent quota for women candidates by political parties.

“But quotas alone will not get women elected nor ensure them a seat in Parliament. Political parties need to embrace women candidates and actively promote them,” said Rebeca Grynspan, UNDP Associate Administrator, in a video address to the conference.

Providing women with the right kind of training can also give them a boost when it comes to entering into the political sphere. Maria Paixao, Vice President of the National Parliament of Timor-Leste added that building women’s skills and improving their education are priorities, as are developing gender-sensitive policies and budgeting.

Eighty delegates from Cambodia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand and Timor-Leste participated in the regional event. Delegations included Members of Parliament, representatives from political parties, government ministries, civil society, media and UN agencies.

For more information about the conference, click here. Download the presentations. Click here to read the full press release on the event.

By student contributor Delaney Allan

SING

Founded by Annie Lennox, SING aims to support women and children suffering from HIV/AIDS while also preventing the spread of the virus in South Africa. The organization accomplishes this by providing financial support to grassroots projects in South Africa with similar aims, such as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and mother2mothers (m2m.) SING also works to increase global awareness of these issues, and by doing so, break the stigma surrounding the discussion of HIV/AIDS, particularly for women.

An open access article in Health Policy published in 2011 reviews key documents in the development of Violence against Women (VAW) policies and laws worldwide and points to particularly disadvantaged groups of women that need more consideration:

“In this study, the full texts of the legislation from 83 of the 115 countries identified initially were collected. In the case of countries in which it was possible to access more than one law, the law most recently in force was chosen. When the laws and their respective legal reforms were available, all these documents were analyzed together. Through analysis of the laws and documentation on VAW, this study has been able to identify the need to raise the profile of vulnerable women in the legislation on VAW. Higher priority should be given to these groups of women in the international recommendations made in key documents in order to overcome VAW using an equity approach. The different barriers that vulnerable women must face in order to gain access to VAW services should lead policy makers to consider the special needs of these women.”

By staff contributor Cait O’Donnell

For more on the day’s events, please see full videos and photos.

On the 101st celebration of International Women’s Day, the Global Gender Program of the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs partnered with several organizations to put on an all-day event comprising two distinguished speakers (opening and closing the event) and two panels. This event was co-sponsored by GW’s Global Gender Forum, GW’s Culture in Global Affairs Seminar Series, GW’s Distinguished Women in International Affairs Series, GW’s Security Policy Forum, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute North America (SIPRI North America), the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

Barbara Miller, Director of the Elliott School’s Global Gender Program, opened the day’s events by remarking on the importance of International Women’s Day as a time to recognize both the specific needs and challenges that women and girls face around the world as well as their distinct capabilities and strengths. Continuing threads throughout the day included the need for more and better gender-specific data during peace and conflict, the importance of more complex and nuanced approaches to research on victimization and empowerment, and the importance of ensuring more research and policy attention to gender dimensions of war, post-conflict peacekeeping, and women’s empowerment and livelihoods.

Louise Olsson gave the opening talk on the subject of U.N. Peace operations with special reference to her research on Timor Leste. Olsson is a researcher at Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden, where she is also a project leader for UNSCR 1325. She organized her presentation around three issues: quality peace, security equality, and the effect of U.N. Peace Operations. She pointed out the connections between the first two concepts, saying that “…peace does not automatically mean equal security. Different groups can receive different degrees of protection by way of how operations and conflict resolution processes are designed.”

The first, crucial step, however, is defining peace. Is peace defined as the lack of war, of conflict and residual violence, of all forms of physical violence, or of all forms of physical and structural violence? Such negative definitions render peace as content-less. Olsson challenged us to include equality and social justice in the definition of peace. The case of Denmark, which ranks high on the Global Peace Index yet is also at war with Afghanistan, exhibits that devising a more complete definition of peace is laden with complexity.

Post-conflict peace-making is not always beneficial to women’s rights: women’s rights and equality can be compromised or sold out during peace agreements. People involved in peace operations often avoid gender issues because they are considered “too cultural.” Olsson insisted, however, that there are common, reoccurring gender issues from Namibia to Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »

By staff contributor Cait O’Donnell

For an audio recording of this event, click here.

Five years ago, this panel would not have happened. Even a year ago, Burma did not receive a lot of media attention. Now, in March-April 2012, Burma is in the news. One of its major political contenders is former prisoner, democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Global Gender Program and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies of George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs held a panel discussion on April 3 entitled, “Burma after the By-Elections: Taking Gender and Human Security into Account.” With recent news of landslide by-election victories for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, this discussion proved timely and relevant.

Panelists included: Christina Fink, Professor of Practice, the Elliott School of International Affairs, GW; Tom Malinowski, Washington Director, Human Rights Watch; Mark Taylor, Senior Coordinator, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, State Department; Wenchi Yu, Senior Advisor, the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, State Department. The panel was moderated by Deepa Ollapally, Associate Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, GW. Christina Fink organized the event.

Christina Fink opened the event by discussing the April 1 by-election results as well as campaign and voting irregularities. According to Fink, Aung San Suu Kyi’s campaign, as head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), was hampered in two major ways.

First, she was not allowed to use stadiums to campaign and thus had to hold rallies in places that were difficult to access.

Second, there was vote buying and intimidation by the ruling party, Union Solidarity and Development (USDP). Voting rolls were missing names of eligible voters, repeated names of eligible voters, and included names of dead people, children, and people who no longer lived there. In a number of polling booths, wax was placed over the National League for Democracy’s spot which needed to be peeled off in order to vote.  Read the rest of this entry »

The ratios of men to women on the boards of the largest listed companies in several European countries tell a story. Among the countries discussed in a recent article in the Economist, Norway leads with 40 percent women on boards, per the quota system introduced  a decade ago when women constituted only 9 percent of board memberships. Italy is at the bottom of the heap. Women presidents and chairs are very poorly represented, with 3.2 percent of the European Union total.

What difference does it make if the gender ratio is less dominated by men — and perhaps someday equal? The article notes that “plenty of research suggests that companies with lots of women in senior positions are more successful…”

Causal relationships still need to be firmly established. Moreover, the gender identification of an individual — whether as male, female, or LGBT — is likely less important than their views. Men can be feminists, too. And it is a scary thought that some women rising to the top are not feminists or in any way, “gender aware” and likely to promote women-friendly policies and practices in the workplace.

Gender ratios do indeed matter in terms of increasing the ratio of people on boards who are gender aware and who promote gender rights and gender justice. Having more women in prominent positions is also a strong signal for girls that they can be leaders, which will lead to a larger pool of young women willing and able to take on change-making positions.