The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements
Edited by Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt
Abstract
The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements: Knowledge, Power and Social Change sets out the contributions made by transnational feminist movements to global knowledge, policy and social change over the last five decades. The Handbook illustrates how feminist theory and praxis have contributed to international knowledge production and policy on women’s rights and gender equality, and to transnational social change processes.
The Handbook focuses on different levels of engagement of transnational feminist movements. Many chapters examine the intergovernmental policy level linked to advocacy around the UN, and in particular transnational feminist movements’ engagement with the UN conferences on women held from 1975 to 1995 (and the five-year reviews of the Beijing conference held since 2000) and the UN global conferences held in the 1990s (and the subsequent five-year reviews). The Handbook highlights the contributions of transnational feminisms to these processes working both inside and outside governmental institutions. Another level of transnational feminist networking and campaigns reflected in the Handbook takes place across global, regional and national borders (referred to as ‘glocal’), where diverse feminist perspectives and organizations work in tandem to achieve specific feminist goals. The Handbook covers solidarity and advocacy campaigns to end violence against women; support women in post-conflict situations; promote sexual and reproductive health and rights; stimulate gender-responsive budgeting; and recognize and support women’s contribution to communities’ sustainable livelihoods. The Handbook shows how transnational feminist movements have contributed to changing ways of thinking about health, care work, sustainable livelihoods, finance and trade, human rights, human security, violence, peace and conflict, citizenship, political participation, state-building and digital technologies. The Handbook further examines the process of movement building for women's rights and gender justice, illustrating how transnational feminist movements have contributed to the politics and culture of wider global movements, for example the human rights and Occupy movements, and alliances around climate justice.
The authors speak from a broad platform of individual and institutional locations in the global South and North. The chapters draw on the authors’ experiences of transnational feminist organizing around the world – in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia and the Pacific. They come from transnational feminist organizations and networks operating at all levels (local, national, regional, global and ‘glocal’ (the term ‘glocal’ recognizes that global forces are constructed and played out in localities linked through networks as people connect, communicate, organize, build alliances and mobilize for change). They work in civil society organizations and networks, multilateral and governmental agencies, academic and research institutions. Each chapter elaborates its own context and narrative, building on experiences that inform the knowledge being produced, and a complex array of feminist theories and practices.
The Handbook reflects feminist commitment to self-awareness and reflexivity in scholarship and in activism. The richness of the collection comes from the feminist methodology of grappling with how the personal (the ‘private’) is connected to the political (the ‘public’), (reflected in feminist slogans such as ‘the personal is political’ and ‘democracy in the country and in the home’), and how individual and collective experience, knowledge and action lead to changes in policy, institutions and peoples’ lives (‘sisterhood is global’ and ‘think globally, act locally’).
The Handbook is organized into ten sections covering the main themes that have emerged from transnational feminist movements: knowledge, theory and praxis; organizing for change; body politics, health and wellbeing; human rights and human security; economic and social justice; citizenship and state-building; peace movements, UNSR1325 and post-conflict state-building; militarism and religious fundamentalisms; feminist political ecology; and digital age transformations and future trajectories.
Section One Knowledge, Theory and Praxis sets out the theory and practice of transnational feminist movements as they have challenged the deep gender inequalities that mark neoliberal globalization.
Section Two: Organizing for change maps different experiences of transnational organizing and networking in order to provide a framework for the book within a dynamic understanding of knowledge production emerging out of the different praxis employed in feminist theory and action.
Section Three: Body politics, health and wellbeing explores the praxis of feminist and women's rights movements around body politics, women’s health, sexual and reproductive rights, and feminist perspectives new reproductive technologies.
Section Four: Human rights and human security brings a critical perspective to the achievement of women’s human rights and gender justice in areas including CEDAW implementation; gender, law and culture; gender-based violence; land rights; and sex and body trafficking.
Section Five: Economic and social justice examines transnational feminist contribution to economic policy agendas around the care economy, finance and trade and rural livelihoods.
Section Six: Citizenship and state-building analyses transnational feminist movements’ contribution to the debates on citizenship and state-building in different parts of the world.
Section Seven: Militarism and religious fundamentalism explores the complex interrelationship of gender and war, gender and religion, growing religious fundamentalisms and their impacts on women, and gendered perspectives on the ‘war on terror’.
Section Eight: Peace Movements, UNSCR 1325 and Post-Conflict State-building details the strategies employed by transnational feminist movements towards meaningful and sustainable peace.
Section Nine: Feminist political ecology highlights the importance of gendered knowledge in ecologically-based political struggles around environment, land, climate and rural women’s livelihoods
Section Ten: Digital age transformation and future trajectories looks at how transnational feminist movements particularly young women and girls have used information and communications technologies as sources of creative political opportunities.
The Handbook is designed as a timely contribution to the Post-2015 international development debates. The authors bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and insight to this crucial global agenda setting moment.
Keywords:
body politics,
citizenship,
digital age,
economic justice,
feminist political ecology,
feminist theory and praxis,
gender,
global,
glocal,
human rights,
knowledge,
militarism,
peace movements,
religious fundamentalisms,
social justice,
state-building,
transnational feminist movements
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date:
- Mar 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199943494
- Published online:
- May 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199943494.001.0001
Editors
Rawwida Baksh,
editor
Rawwida Baksh (Ph.D.) is an independent researcher, writer and policy adviser on gender equality, affiliated to the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Formerly Head of Gender, Commonwealth Secretariat, London, UK; and Program Leader on Women’s Rights and Citizenship, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.
Wendy Harcourt,
editor
Wendy Harcourt (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor of Critical Development and Feminist Studies, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands. Formerly Editor of Development and Director of Programmes, Society for International Development, Rome, Italy.