The study of gendered social relations - how women and men are situated historically, structurally and discursively within development frameworks, institutions, policies an movements, and with what outcomes – has been a critically important intervention to the study of development. From early concerns about how to ensure that the benefits of modernisation accrued to women as well as men in the Third World, to current debates about gendered division of labour, institutions and distribution of resources, gender and development has emerged as a strong field of enquiry addressing indicators of gender inequality that pose enormous challenges to development processes at both theoretical and empirical levels. Scholars at Warwick are working on these important issues of gender and development, through research and teaching and through developing vibrant and multidisciplinary networks across countries and regions.

Current Research Projects

Reconceptualising Gender: Transnational Perspectives

Photograph by Sama Alshaibi http://www.samaalshaibi.com/

Centre for the Study of Women and Gender

This project, funded by a British Academy International Partnerships three-year grant, builds new links between the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Warwick and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Bringing together scholars of gender from different disciplines and focusing on different regions of the world, this project will explore the shifting conceptualisations of gender in different geographical spaces as well as amongst different social groups within the same geographical spaces.

Gendered Knowledges: A radical exploration of interdisciplinarity

Institute of Advanced Teachinmg and Learning

The Gendered Knowledges project was organised loosely around four themes. These themes were intended to be somewhat broad fields of inquiry that, by their nature, have relevance for many different disciplines:bodies, experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, power, queer.

Bodies of Value

Sociology

The purpose of project is to develop a network of scholars in different departments at the University of Warwick and elsewhere who have been exploring the value of human bodies, whether whole or in parts—as property; as the carriers or targets of labour; as differentiated recipients of state disbursements; as carriers of stigma and status. There will be three day symposia, each seeking to explore the value of bodies, whether whole or in parts, asking questions like: How do bodies acquire and lose value? How are disaggregated bodies valued? How does the contemporary valuation, revaluation and devaluation of bodies articulate with our current neo-liberal historic moment?

Jewish Mothers and Jewish Babies

Centre for the History of Medicine

This Wellcome Trust funded project Wellcome is a comparative study of childbearing and childrearing amongst Jewish women in England and Israel c. 1948-1990.

Aims and research questions: How do religious groups interact with maternity services in modern, developed states? What is the relationship between ethnicity, religious identity, community structure and the national context on women’s experiences of childbearing and childrearing? Through a comparative study of Jewish women’s experiences of maternity and childcare in England and Israel during the second half of the twentieth century, this project interrogates existing historical interpretations which view the approbation of medical technologies that intervene in maternity and reproduction as a facet of modernity and secularization. While there is a substantial body of research on childbirth, maternity and childcare, this study will move beyond traditional narratives of a US/European and indeed Christian perspective to offer new insights into the relationship between individual and collective experiences of maternity and childcare across geographic boundaries. Employing a comparison of England and Israel, the project will shed light on the behaviour of religious and ethnic minority groups in Western countries, and navigate the relationship between religion, society and medicine in the Middle East. Motherhood is an area where a number of discourses and practices meet. The experience of motherhood therefore reveals change not only in women’s lives, but also gender relations, culture and society, family and community patterns, health and welfare, and the relationship between the family and the state.

Unravelling Equality: a human rights and equality impact assessment on the spending cuts on women in Coventry

Centre for Human Rights in Practice

In May 2011, CHRP and CWV produced a report which considers the potential impact of the budget cuts on women in Coventry in relation to employment; housing; education and training; violence against women; health social care and other support services; legal advice services; and women's voluntary organisations.

 

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Women in War and at War

Recent Developments

18th – 19th September 2014 / University of Warwick

Women’s roles in war are complex and varied and are not limited to that of victims. During the Arab Spring, women took to the streets protesting against oppressive regimes in North Africa and the Middle East. We are also witnessing a significant rise in female political activism during conflict: many women increasingly find Internet, blogs and social media a useful tool to fight oppression, advocate change but also to report from war zones. Many women actively participate in combat, in regular armed forces but also as guerillas and, freedom fighters. They are also compelled to fight as girl child soldiers.

Sexual violence against women remains an alarming and disturbing feature of modern armed conflicts. This is despite the fact that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) prohibits rape and other forms of sexual violence in war and despite the major advances in International Criminal Law (ICL) in the punishment of gender crimes. Over the past two years, some further steps and initiatives have been taken at national and international level to address this problem. For instance, in June 2013 the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 2106 on sexual violence in conflict, calling (once again) for the prevention of sexual violence during conflicts. In April 2012, the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague, launched the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, which resulted in adopting a G8 Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict and endorsing the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, which has been signed by 70% of UN Member States.

What impact have these measures had? Will they make a real difference? Have they had any impact on the way that armed conflict is conducted? How much can the law actually achieve? What do recent conflicts tell us about the contemporary representations of women in and at war?

This conference builds on the 2012 Women in War and at War conference held at Aberystwyth University and is designed to focus in particular on recent developments in relation to women and war.

We invite proposals for papers in the following or related areas:

- Women and the conflict in Syria

- Women, the Arab Spring and the aftermath

- International Humanitarian Law: effectiveness and challenges

- International Criminal Law and the prosecution of gender-related crimes

- Representations of women in and at war

- Women, war and the media

- Women in post-conflict settings

- Gender and conflict.

Abstracts of max. 250 words should be submitted by 15 February 2014 to womeninatwar at gmail dot com.

Authors of selected abstracts will be informed by mid-March 2014.

The conference is jointly organised by the University of Warwick, Aberystwyth University and The Open University