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 assesses the cost to development of ignoring these links. Writers of many faiths, and of none, explore the scope for promoting women's rights and needs offered by religious belief and practice, and analyze feminist responses to fundamentalist regimes which use religious doctrine to justify women's...

Young girls are kept at home to care for dependants and miss out on education, while others face sexual exploitation. Elderly women's health needs are ignored when their reproductive years end, and many face the economic and social marginalization which accompanies widowhood.
This collection from development practitioners and feminist activists considers how age interacts with gender identity to create particular forms of economic and social marginalization, as well as different kinds of opportunity, for women and men in different contexts throughout the world.
Contributors include...

Over the past 50 years, billions of dollars and working days have been expended on the -development- of countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific. The alleviation of poverty is the primary concern of many -- though not all -- organizations working in the development sector. Some, notably the international financial institutions, have focused primarily on promoting economic growth at the macro-level, in the belief that increases in wealth at the national level will eventually -trickle down- to alleviate poverty throughout entire populations. In this view, grassroots poverty...

This collection of articles explores how marriage is linked to gender inequalities, women's human rights, and development policy. It examines the economic, social, cultural, and health impacts of women's marital status and the implications for development initiatives.

A range of issues are covered including:
* early marriage in Eastern Nigeria and the health consequences for young mothers
* marriage and male-female relations among poor urban African-Americans
* trends and effects of early marriage in the South
* negotiating violence and non-violence in...

Women are active players in reconciliation and post-conflict reconstruction processes. Moreover, sustainable peace depends on equal representation of all citizens in peacetime decisionmaking.

This collection of articles explores conflict prevention through development projects in places where resources are scarce, and age-old agreements between groups come under strain. Other activities take place to arrest existing conflicts, by forming alliances across warring forces - the authors argue that women play a significant but underestimated role in this type of work. Most of their...

The progress of the world's governments towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be reviewed in 2005. This timely collection of articles provides feminist perspectives on the MDGs and critically evaluates their potential impact on gender equality and women's empowerment. Authors differ in the degree of engagement with the MDGs they advocate, but many point to the urgent need to explore the linkages between the Goals and other international women's rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and...

This collection of articles critically assesses the degree to which gender inequality has been addressed in the work of development organizations. Contributors scrutinize the efforts of governments and NGOs, at the national and international levels, in order to assess the difference that gender mainstreaming has made to advancing women's interests in development. In addition, they consider the progress that development organizations have made in ensuring women's fullest participation at all levels of their own organizations.

Contributions to this volume include case studies from...

The current global economic crisis is expected to lead to millions more people being pushed into extreme poverty. The effects are profoundly different for women and men, and the existing gender inequalities and power imbalances mean that additional problems are falling disproportionately on those who are already structurally disempowered and marginalized.

The economic crisis is the latest element in a complex web of shocks and longer-term traumas affecting women, men and their families in developing countries. These include food and fuel shocks, changing climatic conditions, and...