Universalized categories, dissonant realities: gendering postconflict reconstruction in Nepal

Ramnarain, Smita

doi:10.1080/0966369x.2014.958062

Cited by 15 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…While women's work participation is viewed as a precursor to improving their bargaining position, these findings reveal that socio-economic contexts, households' background circumstances and employment characteristics often mediate these outcomes. Feminist scholars have argued that gender intersects with other vectors, such as social context, caste and class (Valentine 2007;Ramnarain 2015; Rod o-de-Z arate and Baylina 2018). These findings show that the most marginalised (poor, low caste women) experience the intersectional effects migration, gender relations and food insecurity most intensely.…”

Section: Women's Work Participation and Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered livelihoods: migrating men, left-behind women and household food security in India

Choithani

2019

Gender, Place & Culture

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This paper assesses the food security implications of the out-migration of men for rural households headed by women. Recent transformations in the socioeconomic landscape of the Global South involve an increasing number of rural households shifting towards urban-nonfarm, migrationbased livelihoods. In many rural societies, social and cultural norms restricting women's mobility means migration is usually undertaken by men, leading to a phenomenon of leftbehind women. The absence of men requires women to assume the role of household heads. This often triggers fundamental changes in intrahousehold gender power relations. However, little is known about the effects of these changes on household food security outcomes. Drawing on primary field research in western Bihar in India, this article attempts to highlight interconnections between migration, women left behind and household food security and, in doing so, makes two key contributions. First, with a focus on gender social roles, the paper shows that the two oftcited impacts of migration of men-'improved autonomy' and 'increased responsibility' for left-behind women-provide conceptual pathways to understand migration-genderfood security linkages. Second, it provides evidence on how changes in women's roles under conditions of such migration intersect with household food security. The findings indicate a gender-based disadvantage in food security outcomes faced by household headed by women, offsetting even the potentially positive influence of improved female autonomy. The paper argues for the need to address socioeconomic mechanisms underpinning gender-based vulnerabilities to food security.

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Section: Women's Work Participation and Food Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered livelihoods: migrating men, left-behind women and household food security in India

Choithani

2019

Gender, Place & Culture

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“…The reality of such contexts forces girls and women without male protection or sponsorship to employ various strategies to negotiate their social space to evade social censure and the risk of being denied the material benefits that accrue from these networks. At times, this means allowing oneself to be abused or exploited, and taking on roles in which women must demonstrate subservience to men to attain wider social harmony at the expense of their own rights and well‐being (Kandiyoti, ; Coulter, ; Ramnarain, ).…”

Section: Female Survivors Of Wartime Sexual Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Women survivors and their children born of wartime sexual violence in northern Uganda

2017

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“…While the actual content of these "alternative livelihood and vocational skill opportunities" is not made clear in this particular document, past attempts by donors, NGOs and government agencies to limit rural-urban migration have focused on promoting rural self-employment in micro-enterprises, and in the case of women, providing them with training in activities such as artisanal soap-making, hairdressing and dressmaking, and microcredit to support self-employment. By and large, these activities remain gendered and decoupled from actual employment outcomes, and thus far have had limited impacts, if any, on poverty reduction or women's empowerment [31,32]. This notion that internal migration is a development "problem" helps to explain the variety of policies that have been put in place by municipal governments in many developing countries to limit internal migration, and to actively discourage rural-urban migration in particular, for example, through forced slum-clearance and mass evictions from squatter-settlements in cities like Accra, Dhaka and Harare; "closed city" policies in Jakarta that require migrants to present proof of employment and housing, and regulations in cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America that restrict the types of informal economic activities that provide income to many rural-urban migrants [1,22].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Rural–Urban Migration and Women’s Empowerment in the Era of the SDGs: Lessons from Ghana

Pickbourn

2018

Sustainability

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Women who migrate within national borders in Africa have been largely ignored in contemporary conversations about migration. This is partly due to the fact that internal migration, and in particular, rural-urban migration, has been viewed in a negative light in development theory and praxis. This leads to the perception that women who migrate within national borders are worse-off than they would have been otherwise and to a policy stance that seeks to discourage their migration. Drawing on field research in Ghana, I argue that while rural-urban migration gives women access to an independent source of income, the emancipatory potential of migration for women is limited by the official stance towards rural-urban migration and informality. Nevertheless, the decision by women to migrate represents an attempt to improve their life outcomes as well as those of their families, in the face of severely constrained options for doing so. Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5)-promoting gender equality and women's empowerment-requires a different approach to women's internal migration. Rather than seeking to constrain women's mobility, policy and program interventions should be geared towards expanding women's freedom to choose whether or not to migrate-by expanding the options available to women who stay at home as well as improving migration outcomes for those who migrate.

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Universalized categories, dissonant realities: gendering postconflict reconstruction in Nepal

Cited by 15 publications

References 20 publications

Gendered livelihoods: migrating men, left-behind women and household food security in India

Gendered livelihoods: migrating men, left-behind women and household food security in India

Women survivors and their children born of wartime sexual violence in northern Uganda

Rethinking Rural–Urban Migration and Women’s Empowerment in the Era of the SDGs: Lessons from Ghana

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