Democracy And The Rise Of Women S Movements In Sub Saharan Africa

Despite a late and fitful start, democracy in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe has recently shown promising growth. Kathleen M. Fallon discusses the role of women and women's advocacy groups in furthering the democratic transformation of formerly autocratic states. Using Ghana as a case study, Fallon examines the specific processes women are using to bring about political change. She assesses information gathered from interviews and surveys conducted in Ghana and assays the existing literature to provide a focused look at how women have become involved in the democratization of sub-Saharan nations. The narrative traces the history of democratic institutions in the region—from the imposition of male-dominated mechanisms by western states to latter-day reforms that reflect the active resurgence of women’s political power within many African cultures—to show how women have made significant recent political gains in Ghana and other emerging democracies. Fallon attributes these advances to a combination of forces, including the decline of the authoritarian state and its attendant state-run women's organizations, newly formed constitutions, and newfound access to good-governance funding. She draws the study into the larger debate over gendered networks and democratic reform by exploring how gender roles affect and are affected by the state in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. In demonstrating how women’s activism is evolving with and shaping democratization across the region, Democracy and the Rise of Women’s Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa reveals how women’s social movements are challenging the barriers created by colonization and dictatorships in Africa and beyond.

Women burst onto the political scene in Africa after the 1990s, claiming more than one third of the parliamentary seats in countries like Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi. Women in Rwanda hold the highest percentage of legislative seats in the world. Women's movements lobbied for constitutional reforms and new legislation to expand women's rights. This book examines the convergence of factors behind these dramatic developments, including the emergence of autonomous women's movements, changes in international and regional norms regarding women's rights and representation, the availability of new resources to advance women's status, and the end of civil conflict. The book focuses on the cases of Cameroon, Uganda, and Mozambique, situating these countries in the broader African context. The authors provide a fascinating analysis of the way in which women are transforming the political landscape in Africa, by bringing to bear their unique perspectives as scholars who have also been parliamentarians, transnational activists, and leaders in these movements.

Despite a late and fitful start, democracy in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe has recently shown promising growth. Kathleen M. Fallon discusses the role of women and women's advocacy groups in furthering the democratic transformation of formerly autocratic states. Using Ghana as a case study, Fallon examines the specific processes women are using to bring about political change. She assesses information gathered from interviews and surveys conducted in Ghana and assays the existing literature to provide a focused look at how women have become involved in the democratization of sub-Saharan nations. The narrative traces the history of democratic institutions in the region—from the imposition of male-dominated mechanisms by western states to latter-day reforms that reflect the active resurgence of women’s political power within many African cultures—to show how women have made significant recent political gains in Ghana and other emerging democracies. Fallon attributes these advances to a combination of forces, including the decline of the authoritarian state and its attendant state-run women's organizations, newly formed constitutions, and newfound access to good-governance funding. She draws the study into the larger debate over gendered networks and democratic reform by exploring how gender roles affect and are affected by the state in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. In demonstrating how women’s activism is evolving with and shaping democratization across the region, Democracy and the Rise of Women’s Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa reveals how women’s social movements are challenging the barriers created by colonization and dictatorships in Africa and beyond.

This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and a bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on individual African women in history, politics, religion, and the arts; on important events, organizations, and publications.

Over the course of thirty-seven chapters, including an editorial introduction, this handbook provides a comprehensive examination of scholarly research and knowledge on a variety of aspects of women's collective activism in the United States, tracing both continuities and critical changes over time. Women have played pivotal and far-reaching roles in bringing about significant societal change, and women activists come from an array of different demographics, backgrounds and perspectives, including those that are radical, liberal, and conservative. The chapters in the handbook consider women's activism in the interest of women themselves as well as actions done on behalf of other social groups. The volume is organized into five sections. The first looks at U.S. Women's Social Activism over time, from the women's suffrage movement to the ERA, radical feminism, third-wave feminism, intersectional feminism and global feminism. Part two looks at issues that mobilize women, including workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, health, gender identity and sexuality, violence against women, welfare and employment, globalization, immigration and anti-feminist and pro-life causes. Part three looks at strategies, including movement emergence and resource mobilization, consciousness raising, and traditional and social media. Part four explores targets and tactics, including legislative forums, electoral politics, legal activism, the marketplace, the military, and religious and educational institutions. Finally, part five looks at women's participation within other movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, labor unions, LGBTQ movement, Latino activism, conservative groups, and the white supremacist movement.

The second edition of this classic text covers contemporary democracy movements including the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Occupy, and new nations as well as old issues from the Balkans to Africa, from Latin America to Ukraine. The author has traveled widely around the world to take the pulse of transition and to profile journeys toward democracy and journeys away from democracy, too. At the same time, the book addresses important challenges that have emerged in even well-established democracies. These show up in declining voting rates, diminished membership in political parties, and, in some countries including the United States, negative views of central democratic institutions (like the US Congress).

This volume brings together leading gender and politics scholars to assess how women’s political empowerment can best be conceptualized and measured on a global scale. It argues that women’s political empowerment is a fundamental process of transformation for benchmarking and understanding all political empowerment gains across the globe. Chapters improve our global understanding of women's political empowerment through cross-national comparisons, a synthesis of methodological approaches across varied levels of politics, and attention to the ways gender intersects with myriad factors in shaping women’s political empowerment. This book is an indispensable resource for scholars of politics and gender, as well as being relevant to a global scholarly and policy community.

Political sociology is the interdisciplinary study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. The field also examines how the political process is affected by major social trends as well as exploring how social policies are altered by various social forces. Political sociologists increasingly use a wide variety of relatively new quantitative and qualitative methodologies and incorporate theories and research from other social science cognate disciplines. The contributors focus on the current controversies and disagreements surrounding the use of different methodologies for the study of politics and society, and discussions of specific applications found in the widely scattered literature where substantive research in the field is published. This approach will solidly place the handbook in a market niche that is not occupied by the current volumes while also covering many of the same theoretical and historical developments that the other volumes cover. The purpose of this handbook is to summarize state-of-the-art theory, research, and methods used in the study of politics and society. This area of research encompasses a wide variety of perspectives and methods that span social science disciplines. The handbook is designed to reflect that diversity in content, method and focus. In addition, it will cover developments in the developed and underdeveloped worlds.