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23 Jan 2011This special edition of “articles of note” groups together some reactionary ideas that are often considered radical nowadays. Clinton is proving that a feminist foreign policy is possible – and works, Guardian, by Madeleine Bunting. The author praises Hillary Clinton’s feminist foreign policy. For more on this theme see posts of 23 August 2009, 9 […]
Ekaterina Mitiaev, a consultant to the Hunger Project, has summarised my critique of cultural approaches to development in an article in the Wecoemp (women economic empowerment) review (p18-20). She is sympathetic towards my critique and critical of narrow conceptions of empowerment. For Mitiaev the notion of empowerment should be defined in broader terms: “The Hunger […]
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15 Jul 2010More examples of the unhealthy obsession in high-powered American circles with sexual abuse in the third world (for example, see posts of 9 January 2010 and 3 April 2010). Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, the most prominent cheer leader for such campaigns, with a strange column trying to enlist Stieg Larsson’s Swedish detective […]
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4 Jul 2010The establishment of a new United Nations (UN) organisation for women is bad for development and for women. It will mean an even further narrowing of development from striving for material equality towards what could be called therapeutic intervention in the third world. UN Women was established by a unanimous vote of the UN general […]
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6 May 2010I was puzzled to come across numerous articles, including a cover story in Time magazine, about the 50th anniversary of the contraceptive pill as I thought it had already happened several years ago. It turns out that 50 years ago this month America’s Food and Drug Administration did approve the pill. However, the 50th anniversary […]
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3 Apr 2010In Wednesday’s Times (London) the American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, repeated her call to put women at the heart of US foreign policy (see 9 January 2010 post). Superficially this may appear to represent the world’s most powerful country supporting the important cause of liberation. In reality it represents a pernicious redefinition of equality […]
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4 Mar 2010In 1990 Amartya Sen, who has since won the Nobel prize in economics, wrote an article in the New York Review of Books arguing there were 100m “missing” baby girls in the third world. From an examination of statistics that many baby girls in poorer countries died as a result of poorer medical care or […]
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9 Jan 2010Those interested in American development policy should read the recent speech (PDF) by Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, on the subject. Although the significance of various concepts has to be decoded she made six main points: * Development should be based on partnership not patronage. This seems to mean that poorer countries should strive […]
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23 Aug 2009Anyone who is interested in the redefinition of development should read today’s special issue of the New York Times magazine on “Why women’s rights are the cause of our time”. On a naïve reading such an initiative might appear welcome: the importance of development and women’s rights is being recognised. But a closer inspection shows […]
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23 Jun 2009Following on from yesterday’s post I notice Oxfam is boasting of its successful involvement in a campaign against domestic violence in Malawi. Duncan Green notes in his blog that: “In 2005, Oxfam’s Malawi programme along with its partners mounted a campaign to eliminate gender based violence which led to the passing of the Prevention of […]
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