Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance: Transcending Universal Divisions

by Sarah Forti

Overview

Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance provides a critical analysis of how frameworks of gender equality play out in the field of international development assistance, at theoretical, international legislative and policy levels, donor and national policy levels and programme levels. If current dominant theoretical perspectives are not interrogated, the consequences could be that gender inequalities and injustices are inadequately addressed, or that opportunities are missed to impact on poverty reduction and on transformative gender changes. Through a renewed interpretation of gender equality in IDA, the book aims to show the way towards a more effective response to gender inequalities and injustices faced by women in developing countries.

Drawing on 20 years of experience working with IDA policies and programming across three continents, this book makes an important contribution to the active and dynamic field of critical feminism, as well as providing practical illustrations on how such critical thinking might contribute to gender transformational changes. Gender Justice and Human Rights in International Development Assistance will be important reading for scholars and upper level students working in the fields of gender equality, human rights, development assistance, foreign affairs, international law, and international relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138083868
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/19/2018
Series:	Routledge ISS Gender, Sexuality and Development Studies
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sarah Forti PhD is the founder and director of Critical Rights & Gender Consult based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has more than 20 years of experience in Development evaluations, program design and training in the field of human rights, non-discrimination, women’s human rights and SGBV (Sexual and Gender-based Violence) across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I

1. Breaking the waves

2. Wavering across the international normative architecture

Part II

3. Variations on the politics of gender equality

4. Universal nocturnes of injustices

Part III

5. Critical reframing of gender equality

Editorial Reviews

"Based on extensive experience of the development industry in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, lawyer Sarah Forti argues here for the use of a Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to gender work in the development field, offering students and practitioners in gender and international development a deeper understanding of gender equality." — Pauline Stoltz, Aalborg University, Denmark

"For those at the chalk face of international development assistance, Sarah Forti’s book will be indispensable. While it recognises and acknowledges the issues raised by cultural relativism it also seeks (successfully) to revivify the need for an acceptance of the universality of the inequality of women’s cultural and economic status, and the implications of this for useful gender development assistance." — Emeritus Professor Wade Mansell at Kent Law School, University of Kent, UK

"The author builds upon a wealth of experience in the field of international development assistance to highlight the universality of violations of women’s rights and rescue the concept of gender justice from discursive fragmentations stemming from cultural relativism and identity politics. An important book not only for development practitioners but for anyone interested in finding clear pathways through the maze of ideologies of gender equality and justice." —Patrick Thornberry, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Keele University, member of the (UN) Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and former Chairman of Minority Rights Group, the international human rights NGO

From the Publisher