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Pathways Events

 

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Reflection Workshop with Popular Artistes: Representations of Women in Popular Culture


Popular musicians are powerful conveyors of ideas and in constituting popular culture. The lyrics of songs are repeated in everyday discourse and find their way into explanations on women's intrinsic "nature" and pronouncements on how gender relations should occur, often even justifying the unjust treatment of women. For example, Ghanaian highlife songs often portray women as scheming, greedy, and untrustworthy, but also as great mothers and faithful lovers.

Very little work has been done to examine gendered images in popular culture. One of the projects of the West Africa RPC hub explores the ways in which women are represented in different music genres, and by different artistes since the 1950s. We examine the main themes about women in the song lyrics, both explicit and implicit, focusing on narratives of women's bodies and their roles as workers, providers, caregivers, lovers. The project also seeks to encourage these popular artistes to be more reflective in their conceptions of women, to write alternative lyrics, and hence to seek new ways of representing women that challenge negative stereotypes and that women might find empowering. This we will do through two specific activities – an artistes' reflection workshop, and subsequently, a song competition in which songs will be judged for content (lyrics and their arrangement) as well as rhythm and melody.

The reflection workshop takes place on Wednesday 30 July 2008 in Accra, Ghana and will bring together:

The workshop format will include listening to music, reflecting on song texts, and conversations around possible alternative texts.  RPC members will share from some of our on-going textual analyses of song lyrics.

More soon!

Recent Events

 

Sexuality and the Development Industry

Pathways of Women's Empowerment jointly convened a workshop, together with the IDS Sexuality and Development Programme, on Sexuality and the Development Industry from 3-5 April 2008. Around 70 participants met to examine how sexuality is framed and influenced by international aid and the development industry and to look for more creative and constructive means of engagement.
See IDS Webpage, Siyanda Discussion Board and the IDS Sexuality and Development Programme webpage 		Sexuality Workshop


Introducing Empowering Conditional Cash Transfers to Egypt

Children in Ain el Sira

Photo/SRC

On 30th and 31st January 2008, the Social Research Center (SRC) in Cairo hosted a workshop aimed at gathering insights and experiences for the design and implementation of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot in Egypt. Both local and foreign experts (from Latin America and the UK) discussed current CCT programmes and how they could be adapted to suit the Egyptian social, political and economic landscape.

The two year pilot programme, which receives funding from the Pathways RPC under the Empowering Work/Everyday Lives theme, will be based in Ain el-Sira and will be organised by SRC under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity. The aim is to eradicate intergenerational poverty whilst using an innovative approach to empowerment, particularly for women. At the end of two years, the Ministry will evaluate the programme with the potential of upscaling it nationally.

At the meeting Dr Maxine Molyneux from the University of London listed attributes of successful CCT programmes including: inter-ministerial collaboration, adequate budgeting, continuity and regular evaluations by independent assessors, amongst others. She went on to stress that it is not solely cash transfers that empower women but access to the labour market. Dr Marcelo Medeiros provided data on how reducing barriers to women's access to the labour market in Latin America has resulted in poverty reduction of between 25-40%. Dr Nesrine Boghdady provided details of possible programmes to establish links between families and employment including micro-credit loans and facilitating family projects, but it was noted that training for beneficiaries should not just be limited to economic. An emphasis on fostering teamwork skills and non-violent, healthy intra-familial and community relationships is regarded as a crucial and innovative element of the programme.

An important aim of the Ain-el-Sira project will be the improvement of existing services rather than establishing new service providers. Dr Barbara Ibrahim explained the role of the Gerhart Center within the Ain-el-Sira team as a mobilising force working to include business and the private sector. Dr Naila Kabeer from IDS presented on the necessity of fostering an understanding of citizenship and rights as a component to beneficiary empowerment.

After the meeting, on 3rd February, participants from the workshop met with Dr Ali el-Sayed Ali el-Moselhi, the Minister of Social Solidarity and his advisers to discuss the pilot.

See Full Workshop Report (pdf 42 KB)


Ghana Workshops


The Pathways Programme held two workshops at the West Africa Hub in Ghana on 'Empowering Work Research Theme' and 'Life Histories' from the 6th to 11th December 2007. The Empowering Work meeting was convened by Naila Kabeer and the aim was to update researchers on work theme projects and to build on the converging agenda around this.

The Life History Workshop held from 9th to 11th December was facilitated by Ann Whitehead from the University of Sussex and provided Pathways researchers with a chance to share their experience of life history and to develop its use as a methodology within the Pathways programme.

Brazil CMC March

Photo/Andrea Cornwall

Reclaiming Feminisms: Gender and Neo-liberalism


Pathways joined with Birkbeck College, London to co-host this conference. Around 40 academics and activists attended the conference at the Institute of Development Studies, from 9-10 July 2007 to reflect upon the relationship between feminisms and neo-liberalism, in the context of international development.

See conference page for more details