Sara Hlupekile Longwe

Last updated

Sara Hlupekile Longwe is a consultant on gender and development based in Lusaka, Zambia. She was the chairperson of FEMNET between 1997 and 2003. [1] She is the author of the Longwe Framework for Gender Analysis. Longwe describes herself as a radical feminist activist. [2]

Contents

Early struggles

When Longwe was a young secondary school teacher the government refused to grant her maternity leave. This violated the government's obligation under an International Labour Organization convention. Longwe formed a lobbying group that succeeded in forcing the government to introduce maternity leave for teachers in 1974. [3] In another run-in during her career as a teacher, she insisted on wearing trousers to school. The issue was escalated all the way to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education. [4] In 1984, Longwe was a founding member of the Zambia Association for Research and Development. This group played a role in ensuring that the Zambian government ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. [2]

Women's Empowerment Framework

Longwe developed the Women's Empowerment Framework, or Longwe Framework, published in 1990. [5] This Gender analysis framework helps planners understand the practical meaning of women's empowerment and equality, and then to evaluate whether a development initiative supports this empowerment. [6] The basic premise is that women's development can be viewed in terms of five levels of equality: welfare, access, "conscientization", participation and control. Empowerment is essential at each of these levels. Welfare addresses basic needs, and access addresses ability to use resources such as credit, land and education. "Conscientization" is a key element of the framework: recognition that discrimination creates gender-related problems and women may themselves contribute to this discrimination. With participation, women are equal to men in making decisions, and with control the balance of powers between the genders is equal. [7] [8]

Views and controversy

In 1992, Longwe successfully sued the Intercontinental Hotel when she was refused entry to a bar in the hotel because she was not accompanied by a male. She won the case in the High Court of Zambia on the basis that discrimination against her sex was against the constitution. [9] Longwe was chairperson of the African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) between 1997 and 2003. FEMNET, which was established in 1988, has the goal of assisting NGOs to contribute to women's development, equality and rights, and to provide an infrastructure for information and empowerment. [3]

In 1998 Longwe said that the school system contributes to women's subordination, so lack of schooling should not be seen as a cause for the low socioeconomic status of women. [10] Longwe has been outspoken in criticizing lack of progress in programs to reduce the marginalization of women since the 1985 World Conference on Women in Nairobi. She has said "Gender policies have a strange tendency to 'evaporate' within international development agencies". She talks of the "patriarchal cooking pot ... filled with patriarchal bias, implicit in the agency's values, ideology, development theory, organizational systems and procedures". [11] Her views on roadblocks have been criticized by workers in the Oxfam agency as being too extreme. [12]

Longwe was awarded the 2003 Africa Prize for Leadership. [2]

Related Research Articles

Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing different behaviors, aspirations, and needs equally, regardless of gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in Mauritius</span> Overview of the status of women in Mauritius

Women in Mauritius refers to the social demographic of women in Mauritius. Women's role in Mauritian society changed throughout the 20th century. Historically, Mauritian culture maintained patriarchal power structures, in domains inclusive of family and work life. Women's contribution in the workforce increased due to the creation of 'Export Processing Zone', by the Mauritian Government. This shift resulted in a surge in 'dual-earner' and working single-mother households.

Caroline Olivia Nonesi Moser is an academic specializing in social policy and urban social anthropology. She is primarily known for her field-based approach to research on the informal sector generally - but particularly aspects such as poverty, violence, asset vulnerability and strategies for accumulation in the urban setting. Gender analysis is central to her approach. She has looked at many countries, but the Americas have been her main interest. Countries studied closely include Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Jamaica.

The Harvard Analytical Framework, also called the Gender Roles Framework, is one of the earliest frameworks for understanding differences between men and women in their participation in the economy. Framework-based gender analysis has great importance in helping policy makers understand the economic case for allocating development resources to women as well as men.

Gender analysis is a type of socio-economic analysis that uncovers how gender relations affect a development problem. The aim may just be to show that gender relations will probably affect the solution, or to show how they will affect the solution and what could be done. Gender analysis frameworks provide a step-by-step methodology for conducting gender analysis.

Catherine A. Overholt is a health economist who has assisted many development agencies with gender issues, health economics, case writing and case method training. She is part of the team that developed the Gender Analysis Framework (1984) in cooperation with the Harvard Institute for International Development and the USAID Office of Women in Development.

Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender, class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to development views a country's development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation control, and high employment – all of which aim to improve the ‘economic wellbeing’ of a country and the subsequent quality of life for its people. In terms of economic development, quality of life is defined as access to necessary rights and resources including but not limited to quality education, medical facilities, affordable housing, clean environments, and low crime rate. Gender and development considers many of these same factors; however, gender and development emphasizes efforts towards understanding how multifaceted these issues are in the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Accounting for this need, gender and development implements ethnographic research, research that studies a specific culture or group of people by physically immersing the researcher into the environment and daily routine of those being studied, in order to comprehensively understand how development policy and practices affect the everyday life of targeted groups or areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moser Gender Planning Framework</span>

The Moser Gender Planning Framework is a tool for gender analysis in development planning. It was developed by Caroline Moser. The goal is to free women from subordination and allow them to achieve equality, equity, and empowerment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FEMNET</span> Womens development nongovernmental organization

FEMNET, also called the African Women's Development and Communication Network, is an organization established in 1984 to promote women's development in Africa. FEMNET helps non-government organizations share information and approaches on women's development, equality and other human rights.

Naila Kabeer is an Indian-born British Bangladeshi social economist, research fellow, writer and Professor at the London School of Economics. She was also president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2018 to 2019. She is on the editorial committee of journals such as Feminist Economist, Development and Change, Gender and Development, Third World Quarterly and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. She works primarily on poverty, gender and social policy issues. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection, focused on South and South East Asia.

Michael Kaufman is a Canadian author, educator, and theorist focused on engaging men and boys to promote gender equality, end violence against women, and end self-destructive ideals of manhood. He co-founded the White Ribbon Campaign in 1991, the largest network of men working to ending violence against women worldwide. Michael Kaufman also co-founded the Men for Women's Choice campaign with Gordon Cleveland in 1989. He is a senior fellow of Instituto Promundo, an NGO based in Rio de Janeiro and Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women's empowerment</span> Giving rights, freedom to make decisions and strengthening women to stand on their own

Women's empowerment may be defined in several ways, including accepting women's viewpoints, making an effort to seek them and raising the status of women through education, awareness, literacy, and training. Women's empowerment equips and allows women to make life-determining decisions through the different societal problems. They may have the opportunity to re-define gender roles or other such roles, which allow them more freedom to pursue desired goals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Srilatha Batliwala</span>

Srilatha Batliwala, a social activist, advocate of women's rights, scholar, and author of many books on empowerment of women is from Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. From the later part of the 1970s she has been engaged in linking "grassroots activism, advocacy, teaching, research, training," obtaining grants, and works of scholarly nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honorary male</span> Woman who is accorded the status of a man without disrupting the patriarchal status quo

An honorary male or honorary man is a woman who is accorded the status of a man without disrupting the patriarchal status quo.

Foreign aid for gender equality in Jordan includes programs funded by governments or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that aim to empower women, close gender based gaps in opportunity and experience, and promote equal access to education, economic empowerment, and political representation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ABANTU for Development</span>

ABANTU for Development is an international women's non-governmental organisation. It seeks to empower African women in the fields of politics and the economy on the local, national, regional and international levels. It pursues these goals by educating through workshops, research, publishing and consultations. ABANTU attracts international attention through its offices in London, where it was founded in 1991 by African women. Its other offices are in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Nigeria. ABANTU has a special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sustainable Development Goal 5</span> Global goal to achieve gender equality by 2030

Sustainable Development Goal 5 concerns gender equality and is fifth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by United Nations in 2015. The 17 SDGs recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Ruth E. Meena is a Tanzanian feminist activist and political scientist. She was a professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam.

Nebila Abdulmelik is an Ethiopian feminist activist and prominent women's rights activist. She was well known for spearheading the campaign #JusticeforLiz which was launched in order to seek justice for a 16 year old Kenyan girl called Liz who was brutally raped in 2013. Nebila has previously served as manager of media relations at FEMNET, an institution that advocates for women's growth in Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consolata Kabonesa</span> Ugandan gender activist

Consolata Kabonesa is an Ugandan gender activist with a specialised experience in the women and gender programming, gender training, project and research within the decentralized system. She is also an Assoc. Prof at the School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University.

References

  1. ↑ Sweetman 2000, p. 30.
  2. 1 2 3 Profile of an ICT Champion.
  3. 1 2 Sara Longwe 2003...
  4. ↑ Remarks by Sara Longwe.
  5. ↑ Sahay 1998, p. 39.
  6. ↑ March, Smyth & Mukhopadhyay 1999, pp. 92.
  7. ↑ Sahay 1998, pp. 39–40.
  8. ↑ Sweetman 1997, p. 29.
  9. ↑ Bradshaw & Ndegwa 2000, p. 280.
  10. ↑ Leach 2003, p. 56.
  11. ↑ Hertzog 2011, p. 21.
  12. ↑ Eade & Williams 1995, p. 172.

Sources

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.