Too often the formal education system serves merely to confirm gender stereotypes, and to school women for subordination. This collection of articles from development practitioners and feminist activists considers women' s access to land and their role in food production in developing counties. Articles in this collection assert that women's contribution to global agricultural production for food and for profit continues to be largely unacknowledged and undervalued, and that their ability to farm is constrained by lack of control of land, agricultural inputs, credit, and other essential resources. Thirty years after the first studies, women's role in farming remains underestimated and misunderstood by development planners and policy-makers. Contributors include Ann Whitehead, Shoba Arun, Cecilia Sardenberg, Ana Alice Costa, and lizete Passos.
Violence is both a human rights issue and an obstacle to women's participation in development.
Writers here focus on campaigning and advocacy work as well as work with women who have experienced violence, in countries including Russia, Guinea-Bissau, and India. The collection includes accounts of work with women who have been sexually assaulted and those who have undergone cultural practices such as female genital mutilation and early marriage. Buy this book from Blackwell's Order by mail or fax from Oxfam Gender, Religion, and Spirituality Religion and spirituality are central to women's and men's lives across the world, yet mainstream development policy and practice rarely takes account of this. This collection of articles explores the complex links between social and economic development and religious and spiritual belief and assess the cost to development of ignoring these links. Writers of many faiths, and none, explore the scope for promoting women's rights and needs offered by religious belief and practice, and analyse feminist responses to fundamentalist regimes which use religious doctrine to justify women's oppression.