Gender, Faith, and Development (Working in Gender & Development) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853397261 ISBN 13: 9781853397264

Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Faith-based organizations have long been involved in charitable and development activities. However, the emerging openness to thinking about and engaging with religion in development raises some important questions. Does religious engagement in development policy and practice risk harming already fragile gender relations? What are the challenges and opportunities in negotiating the relationships between religion, gender, and development? Gender, Faith, and Development explores in different ways the relationships between religion, gender, and development. Subjects covered include attitudes towards sexual behaviour in areas with a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS; household disputes over the control of income; constraints on women's time; the difficulties of introducing Western models of gender equity to those in Muslim societies who see feminism as a threat; and changes in abortion legislation. This book is essential reading for academics and researchers in development, gender, political science, sociology, or religious studies, and of interest to development policy makers and practitioners, voluntary sector workers, and social movement activists.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Emma Tomalin is Senior Lecturer in the Department ofTheology and Religious Studies,University of Leeds, UK.

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Gender, Faith, and Development

By Emma Tomalin

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2011 Oxfam GB
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85339-726-4

Contents

1 Introduction Emma Tomalin, 1, 
2 The challenges of incorporating Muslim women's views into development policy: analysis of a Dutch action research project in Yemen Brenda Bartelink and Marjo Buitelaar, 13, 
3 Tackling HIV and AIDS with faith-based communities: learning from attitudes on gender relations and sexual rights within local evangelical churches in Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, and South Africa Mandy Marshall and Nigel Taylor, 25, 
4 The Thai bhikkhuni movement and women's empowerment Emma Tomalin, 37, 
5 Reflecting on gender equality in Muslim contexts in Oxfam GB Adrienne Hopkins and Kirit Patel, 51, 
6 Christianity, development, and women's liberation Bridget Walker, 65, 
7 Conflict and compliance: Christianity and the occult in horticultural exporting Catherine S. Dolan, 75, 
8 No time to worship the serpent deities: women, economic change, and religion in north-western Nepal Rebecca Saul, 85, 
9 A double-edged sword: challenging women's oppression within Muslim society in Northern Nigeria Fatima L. Adamu, 97, 
10 Islam and development: opportunities and constraints for Somali women Sadia Ahmed, 105, 
11 Abortion law reform in Latin America: lessons for advocacy Gillian Kane, 111, 
12 Conclusion: moving forward Emma Tomalin, 127, 
Annotated bibliography, 137, 
Index, 145, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Emma Tomalin

The relationships between religion, gender, and development, are complex and context-specific. The need for development donors and organizations to consider religion as a relevant factor is ever more important, since religion and religious practices are a feature of life for the vast majority of women, men, and children whom development organizations seek to support. Engaging with religion, and understanding its role and significance in women's and men's lives, is also useful when this leads development policymakers and practitioners to challenge the notion that 'development' can be reduced to the pursuit of economic prosperity alone, at the expense of other indicators of well-being. In addition, the gendered impact that development processes themselves can have on religious practices are significant, yet are typically overlooked in assessments and evaluations carried out by development actors.

The aim of this volume is to give an overview of published research in the field of religion, gender and development, to help those who are interested in promoting gender equality and women's rights in development understand this important topic.

Religion has, until recently, been largely ignored in development research, policy, and practice, due to the secular leanings of mainstream social science and development agendas (Selinger 2004: 526). One reason for this is an underlying assumption on the part of many secular development organizations that religion will disappear as societies modernize. Another is the belief that religion is a problem for development, supporting views about the world, and ways of living, that run counter to progressive and egalitarian development goals. Faith-based organizations (FBOs), such as Christian Aid, CAFOD, and Islamic Relief, have been an exception in an otherwise secular-oriented development environment. Over the past decade, this 'negative' engagement of development with religion has receded to some degree, and religious issues are being given more consideration, including in relation to women's rights and gender equality (Bradley 2006; 2010). This includes an increased willingness to support, fund and learn from those FBOs that have the experience and resources to lead secular organizations through examples of best practice.

About this book

This book brings together articles from three issues of the journal Gender& Development, together with an Introduction, Conclusion and Annotated bibliography. In March 1999, Gender & Development published a thematic issue focusing on Religion and Spirituality: one of the first collections of articles to focus specifically on the complex links between religion, gender and development. A second issue, on the theme 'Working with faith-based communities', was published in November 2006.

The 1999 G&D volume captured a prior moment in the debate about religion, gender, and development, before the explosion of religion onto the global stage. The emphasis in it was very much on the reasons for the absence of religion in research, policy and practice about gender and development, and authors in the issue argued that there was a need for researchers, policymakers and practitioners to begin to consider and address religion and religious institutions in their work on gender and women's rights.

The second Gender & Development issue, published in 2006, focused on working with faith-based organizations, and reflected the beginnings of a shift in attitude towards religion within governments and donors in the West. During the 2000s, in particular, interest in religion grew quickly within development organizations, and we saw an increase of funding from international donors to faith-based organizations, together with a desire to seek partnerships with faith leaders in pursuit of development goals (UNFPA 2004, 2010). Yet despite this new awareness and interest in religion and its relationship to gender equality and development, research into the impact of religion on women's lives and rights has been thin on the ground. The editorial to the 2006 volume noted: 'there is little scholarship or capturing of practice that considers the interaction between development practice and faith-based communities from the feminist perspective' (Greany 2006: 341). This research is needed to inform the kinds of work to be done with faith-based organizations. Today, this still remains an under-researched area.

In this Introduction, I will first present a short discussion introducing the field in more detail, with the aim of contextualizing the chosen chapters. Then I will guide the reader through the chapters, drawing out their main themes, and pointing towards more recent debates and controversies.

Ten chapters follow the Introduction. Readers will notice that four of the chapters focus on Islam (Adamu; Ahmed; Hopkins and Patel; Bartelink and Buitelaar), four on Christianity (Walker; Marshall and Taylor; Kane; Dolan), two deal with Buddhism (Tomalin; Saul) and one of the aforementioned also covers aspects of 'traditional religion' in Africa (Dolan).

In terms of research and writing on gender, religion and development, most attention has been paid to Islam. This can be seen in the context of the rise since '9/11' of global concern over fundamentalist and extreme versions of Islam, and the specific implications of this for women's empowerment and development in different contexts. Several of the chapters in this volume explore this obsession with Islam by the West, which predates '9/11' but has intensified since. They argue that such an obsession results in a stereotyped depiction of Muslim women as particularly religious and as victims of a patriarchal and controlling Islamic faith (for example, Adamu; Bartelink and Buitelaar). While there is an absence of chapters in this volume that explore other faith traditions (including Hinduism and Sikhism), many of the themes that are covered in the selected chapters are relevant across faith traditions, and I will point readers...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853397261
• ISBN 13: 9781853397264
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 149
• Herausgeber: Tomalin Emma
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland