This pioneering collection explores the ways in which women's sexual desires are experienced by them and how this experience effects women's empowerment. It shows that an exploration of pleasure can have a hugely positive impact for women at the personal, social and political levels. Traditional gender and development discourses tend to engage with sexuality in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over emphasizing these negative aspects has subsumed women's sexualities under violence, danger and fear. The media,...