Changing Narratives of Sexuality
Photo/Wendy Matamoros
How do narratives of sexuality change over time and between generations - and what does it take to bring about change in norms around sexuality that constrain women’s empowerment?
Work under this theme will explore:
- how can existing norms around sexuality that constrain women’s empowerment (including marriage normativity) be unsettled in ways that enable women to empower themselves - including engagement with the media, religion and with the representations and influences that shape people’s experience of sexuality, particularly amongst youth? And what potential exists for using this to build alliances for change?
- what does it take to turn private harms into matters for public concern, to make taken-for-granted violation and harassment of women something that is unacceptable? And how can norms that proscribe certain kinds of relationships and behaviour as unacceptable be transformed to permit greater recognition of sexual and reproductive rights?
- how can a more positive approach to sexuality help promote well-being and safer sex as well as empower women and marginalized groups?
Latest
Changing Narratives of Sexuality - Concept Paper
Charmaine Pereira, Pathways Working Paper 4
The focus of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment thematic group on Changing Narratives of Sexuality is simultaneously a focus on the multiple changes shaping women’s relations to sexuality and power, and on the ways in which women exercise their agency by taking up particular narratives of sexuality and using them to destabilise restrictive social and sexual norms. In a context marked by rapid social, economic and political change across the globe, tensions and contradictions arise in the construction of women’s bodies and sexualities. These constructions often form the basis for mainstream narratives of sexuality produced by institutions such as the media, the law, religion and the development industry; by cultural arenas such as popular music and soap operas, as well as for counter narratives produced by women themselves. This concept paper focuses on the politics of sexuality in terms of heterosexuality and its normative character, as well as the significance of gender in sexuality. To this end, the concepts of heterosexuality, sexuality and gender are foregrounded, as are the relations among them. This is followed through in terms of connections to norms that reinforce compulsory heterosexuality and male supremacy, and the implications for the workings of power and privilege. Narratives of sexuality serve both to affirm and also to challenge these norms. This paper suggests that the analysis of stories affords an opening up of the question of what social role stories can be said to play: stories may perform conservative functions by maintaining dominant orders or alternatively, might be used to transform lives and cultures. It explores how a narrative approach to the study of sexuality can allow us to explore cultural patterns of representations and action in different dimensions of the social, and the contribution of this to women’s empowerment.
Download Draft Working Paper 4 (pdf file 164 KB)
3-5 April 2008 - Sexuality and the Development Industry Workshop, IDS
Photo/Andil Gosine
How do development interventions impact on people's sexualities? And how can development agencies move towards more constructive engagement with sexuality? These were the topic of discussion at this joint Pathways RPC and IDS Sexuality and Development Programme organised workshop for more than 70 participants from a range of activist groups, NGOs, universities, government bodies and donor organisations worldwide. Highlights are now featured on the IDS web site, with recordings of some discussions and interviews, together with links to the agenda and abstracts of some of the papers presented.
Links:
Report from the Sexuality and the Development Industry Workshop
IDS Sexuality and Development Programme webpage
Workshop Discussion hosted on Siyanda
7-9 April 2008 - Changing Narratives of Sexuality Theme Meeting, IDS
Following the workshop from 3-5 April, the Changing Narratives of Sexuality Theme Group within the Pathways RPC used the opportunity to get together for an update on the projects being carried out under this theme and to analyse findings and to prepare an overall framework for the research outputs. We also used this opportunity to interview some of the researchers on their work (interviews by Charlie Sever):
Mulki Al-Sharmani, Research Faculty at the Social Research Center, American University Cairo talking about her Family Courts in Egypt project (4 mins). In 2000 a new law which regulates how personal status cases are dealt with was brought in in Egypt. Mulki's project looks at how this is working in practice.
Samia Huq, Research Fellow at BRAC University talks about BRAC's project on religion and media (4 mins). What effect has the recent resurgence of Islamism had on women in Bangladesh?
Susie Jolly, Convenor, Sexuality and Development Programme at IDS talks about her work on the Global Hub of the Pathways RPC (4 mins). Earlier this year she interviewed sexual rights activists in Beijing and the donors who fund them.
Charmaine Pereira, IWSN and Changing Narratives of Sexuality Theme Convenor talks about her case study of Anita Hogan (4 mins). Nude pictures published in the press of Anita Hogan, a famous actress in Nigeria, caused a great deal of controversy and consternation. Charmaine asks why should it be perceived that women have a greater moral responsibility in matters of sexuality than men?
Cecilia Sardenberg, NEIM and Hub Convenor of Pathways Latin America (4 mins) talks about issues of cosmetic surgery. Why should women in Brazil feel pressure to fit the dominant model of femininity?
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