Capabilities Gender Equality

Provides unique reflections on the capability approach and its relevance to new human development policies and political liberalism.

This book reframes gender and education issues from a feminist and capabilities perspective through a multi-generational study of women as teachers. It explores how different understandings of gender, equality and education generate a variety of approaches with which to pursue gender equality in education. Through employing the capabilities approach in a critical and innovative way to question justice, agency and well-being and also to evaluate valued functionings and capabilities, freedoms and lack of opportunities in women’s lives in Turkey it highlights the need for constructing a gender-just society. The book takes a closer look at these women’s memories, in order to understand how gender roles were created, negotiated and contested, and how the transition to modern ways of socialising and existing was shaped and women’s emancipation was guided by women teachers as social actors, rather than as passive onlookers or oppressed individuals. It provides important insights and critical evidence to be used in the planning and implementation of education and social/gender policies.

Martha Nussbaum proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international.

Youth, Gender and the Capabilities Approach to Development investigates to what extent young people have access to fair opportunities, the factors influencing their aspirations, and how able they are to pursue these aspirations and to carry out their life plans. The book positions itself in the intersection between capabilities, youth and gender, in recognition of the fact that without gender equality, capabilities cannot be universal and development strategies are likely to fail to achieve their full objectives. Within the framework of the human development and capabilities approach, Youth, Gender and the Capabilities Approach to Development focuses on examples in the areas of education, political spaces, and social practices that confront inequality and injustice head on, by seeking to advance young people’s capabilities and their agency to make valuable life plans. The book focuses how youth policies and issues can be approached globally from a capabilities-friendly perspective; arguing for the promotion of freedoms and opportunities both in educational and political spheres, with the aim of developing a more just world. With a range of studies from multiple and diverse national contexts, including Russia, Spain, South Africa, Tanzania, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Colombia, India and Argentina, this important multidisciplinary collection will be of interest to researchers within youth studies, gender studies and development studies, as well as to policy makers and NGOs.

In this volume, leading scholars present new and original essays to address controversies raised regarding the focus, structure and justification of the capabilities approach to equality.

For pathways to be truly sustainable and advance gender equality and the rights and capabilities of women and girls, those whose lives and well-being are at stake must be involved in leading the way. Gender Equality and Sustainable Development calls for policies, investments and initiatives in sustainable development that recognize women’s knowledge, agency and decision-making as fundamental. Four key sets of issues - work and industrial production; population and reproduction; food and agriculture, and water, sanitation and energy provide focal lenses through which these challenges are considered. Perspectives from new feminist political ecology and economy are integrated, alongside issues of rights, relations and power. The book untangles the complex interactions between different dimensions of gender relations and of sustainability, and explores how policy and activism can build synergies between them. Finally, this book demonstrates how plural pathways are possible; underpinned by different narratives about gender and sustainability, and how the choices between these are ultimately political. This timely book will be of great interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policy makers working on gender, sustainable development, development studies and ecological economics.