Gender

Pain. Vomiting. Hours and days spent lying in the dark. Migraine is an extraordinarily common, disabling, and painful disorder that affects over 36 million Americans and costs the US economy at least $32 billion per year. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed, ignored, and delegitimized.

In Not Tonight, Joanna Kempner argues that this general dismissal of migraine can be traced back to the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, understand, and make policies for people in pain. Because the symptoms that accompany headache disorders—like head pain, visual auras, and sensitivity to sound—lack an objective marker of distress that can confirm their existence, doctors rely on the perceived moral character of their patients to gauge how serious their complaints are. Kempner shows how this problem plays out in the history of migraine, from nineteenth-century formulations of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectual men and hysterical women to the influential concept of “migraine personality” in the 1940s, in which women with migraine were described as uptight neurotics who withheld sex, to contemporary depictions of people with highly sensitive “migraine brains.” Not Tonight casts new light on how cultural beliefs about gender, pain, and the distinction between mind and body influence not only whose suffering we legitimate, but which remedies are marketed, how medicine is practiced, and how knowledge about disease is produced.

Gender Focal Points (GFPs) were established within all sectoral ministries in Kenya as one of the main institutional mechanisms of ensuring the integration of gender perspectives into all policy formulation and sector-based development planning and programming (GoK, 2000, 2008). This study was conducted with a view to evaluate the impact of these gender focal points on the integration of gender issues and concerns within sectoral ministries in Kenya. The three specific objectives of the study were to identify gaps and challenges hindering effective integration of gender issues and concerns within the sectoral ministries, to recommend relevant interventions to address the gaps and challenges hindering the GFPs from effective integration of gender issues and concerns, and thereafter to evaluate the GFPs in order to determine their impact on integration of gender issues and concerns within the sectoral ministries. The study sites were 11 sectoral ministries identified through cluster sampling procedure. To collect data, the study conducted an extensive review and content analysis of secondary literature from the sectoral ministries annual reports on the status of gender mainstreaming and the status of the implementation of the affirmative action policy on 30% representation of women in public service and thereafter administered a questionnaire survey on 17 gender focal personnel randomly selected from the 11 sectoral ministries. In summary, the study findings deduced the following: - the major challenges hindering the GFPs from effective integration of gender issues and concerns include inadequate resources-human and capital (18%), inadequate prioritization of gender issues (14%), inadequate structural linkages (14%), and limited technical capacity (14%). The study also identified disproportionate gender representation of staff within the sectoral ministries and weak/lack of sufficient gender policy frameworks as the major gaps hindering effective integration of gender issues and concerns within sectoral development agenda. From the study findings, the major achievement realized by the GFPs is the increased awareness on gender issues among staff within the sectoral ministries. This had been partly facilitated by initiated sectoral programmes/activities that majorly focused on capacity building on gender issues and concerns. Lobbying for gender mainstreaming was identified as one of the major capacity building needs required for sectoral ministries staff to ensure greater impact of the integration of gender issues and concerns. When monitoring and evaluating the integration of gender issues and concerns within sectoral ministries, the number of trainings conducted on gender was one of the main indicators utilized by the GFPs to help determine the level of success of integration of gender issues and concerns. The study recommended for more advocacy, funding, and monitoring and evaluation as the key interventions needing prioritization to ensure a greater impact of the integration of gender issues and concerns. Finally, the study findings concluded that slightly over 50% of the GFPs believed that gender issues and concerns were successfully being mainstreamed within sectoral development agenda, but perceived the process of integration as slow.

Key words: Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, Gender Focal Points, Gender Issues and Concerns,

This book explores the first collection of fables in French literary history, written by the first French woman author. In this book, I ask the question of what it means to write French fables as a woman and contrast this move to the Latin fable tradition, composed exclusively by (male) theologians. I demonstrate the extent to which Marie de France’s fable collection represents a departure from Western fable writing and is indebted rather to Arabic literature and culture and particularly to the Arabic collection of Kalila wa Dimna

Presents and summarizes global evidence of the importance of closing the gender gap (using rate of closing gender gap in secondary schooling as a proxy) for attainment of growth (GDP rate and level)  and human development indicators (child mortality, child malnutrition, fertility TF reduction), using macro growth data over 30-year period, more than 100 countries.  Also shows relationship between gender gap closure and these indicators for Asia and Pacific countries

Hard-boiled detectives’ secretaries provided an important domesticating influence in post–World War II radio dramas, helping to downplay the hard-boiled detective’s transgressively violent, working-class origins and frame him as a universal father figure for everyday citizens. More importantly, they presented listeners with a model of femininity that allowed young women to seek exciting—but temporary—employment outside the home. This article examines how this ideal of femininity and temporary professionalism is modeled by two postwar radio office wives: Effie Perine of The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946–51) and Claire Brooks (Brooksie) of Let George Do It (1946–54). Both women are competent and valuable assistants, but their labors are regularly dismissed and devalued as feminine and therefore effortless. Effie and Brooksie may test established gender roles by engaging in a dangerous business that brings them into contact with criminals and femmes fatales, but at the end of the day, they really want to be wives and mothers, adding to a long history of popular representations of female labor as inherently domestic.

Kadınları güçlendirmek adına yapılan kalkınma projeleri ile ilgili tartışmalar 1950'ler sonrasında yaygınlaşan kalkınma pratiklerine kadar dayanmakta. Bu pratikler ilk önceleri kadınları yok sayıp sonrasında da en önemli gündem maddesi olarak kadınlar üzerine yoğunlaştı. Tüm bu politikalar kadın projelerini kalkınma çabalarının başarısı için vazgeçilmez olarak nitelendirmişse de kalkınma kadınların hayatlarında tam olarak iyileşme sağlamadı. Aksine kadınların yükü cinsiyet temelli olmayan programlar yüzünden iki kat arttı, erkekler ise bu projelerin eğitimden banka kredilerine, teknolojik gelişmelere kadar tüm olanaklarından faydalandı.
Yine de kalkınmada kadının rölünü inceleyen üç yaklaşın 1970‟lerden bu yana ön plana çıktı: “Kalkınmada Kadın”, “Kadın ve Kalkınma”, “Toplumsal Cinsiyet ve Kalkınma”. “Kalkınmada Kadın” projeleri kadınlara aile planlama, çocuk bakımı ve okuma-yazma gibi temel eğitimlerin verildiği gelir yaratmaya yönelik projelerdi. Bu üç yaklaşıma ek olarak kadının kalkınmasında beş kademeli bir yaklaşım daha geliştirildi: refah, eşitlik, yoksullukla mücadele, verimlilik ve güçlenme.
Bu alandaki sosyal, kültürel ve ekonomik dönüşümler oldukça üretken ama aynı zamanda da çok az incelenmiş bir niteliğe sahip. Bu çalışmanın amacı işte bu boşluğu kadının güçlenmesi sorununu kalkınma diskuru içinde kadın örgütleri ve onların hem kaynak hem de kadınların güçlenmesi için bir girişim olarak gördükleri kalkınmacı pratiklere katılımı çerçevesinden ele alarak doldurmaktır.