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Changing Narratives of Sexuality


Taking the ‘body’ entry point into understanding the factors that can enhance women’s ability to exercise control over their own bodies in relation to sexuality, focusing in particular on religion, media and the intersection of global forces with the institutions that mediate women’s options and choices.

Projects which will be initiated under this theme include:

Cluster 1 : How Existing Norms Around Reproduction Construct the Capacity for Women to Exercise Control over their Bodies and Sexualities

Family Courts in Egypt: An Exit from Marriage on a Pathway to Empowerment?

Project Coordinator: Mulki Al Sharmani, SRC, Egypt

Project Description: This project seeks to understand the way in which women’s use of family courts and reforms in personal status laws strengthen women’s sexual and/or reproductive rights; what women’s actions tell us about the links between reproduction and sexuality; and how an understanding of such links could be used to further women’s empowerment.

Project Update:

Preliminary fieldwork on this project has been carried out in February/March 2007. The second stage of fieldwork began at the end of April 2007. A presentation of the study and its progress was given to policymakers in mid-April. The final workshop for dissemination and discussion of the findings was held on 5 February 2008. See the final paper and executive summary here. Also see Mulki's article on opendemocracy.net

Mulki attended the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meetings in Washington in November 2007 and presented a paper from her Family Courts project there - see her report at Team News. She will also be presenting a paper at a conference on Gender, Family Responsibility and Legal Change at the Sussex Law School from 10-12 July 2008 - see conference webpage.

Listen to Mulki talk about the project at: http://www.yada-yada.co.uk/podcasts/ids/mulki-al-sharmani-rpc.mp3 (4 mins)

Further Reading:

'Women's Words', Ms. Magazine by Aimee Dowl. This article gives details of the 2007 Citizenship Law and 2004 Family Law in Morocco which give women entitlement to a range of civil rights. The article shows how Fatima Sadiqi, a Moroccan- Berber professor at the University of Fes, supported the instigation of these laws through her work with language.
http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2007/language.asp

Celibacy in Patriarchal Society

Project Coordinator: Penny Johnson, Birzeit University, Palestine

Project Description: The sexual, reproductive, and citizenship rights of women who are single by choice or due to conditions that they did not choose will be investigated through the compilation of testimonies, case and life histories.

Feminisms and the Struggle for Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights: the Brazilian Experience

Project Coordinator: Silvia Lucia Ferreira, NEIM, Brazil

Project Description: By exploring the link between the denial of women’s reproductive rights and the denial of women’s sexual agency under patriarchy, this project will seek to elucidate the conditions under which feminist demands around abortion have been successful by drawing together experiences from across Latin America.

Project Update:

Silvia Lucia Ferreira, Cecilia Sardenberg and Gilberta Soares (Brazilian Campaign for Safe Abortion) are participating in the Global Conference on Abortion being convened by Marie Stopes International in London from 23-24 October 2007. The conference marks the 40th anniversary of the UK Abortion Act. Gilberta Soares will be presenting on a joint Pathways and Realising Rights RPCs organised panel on 'Experiences of Abortion Law Reform'. See News and Events for more details.

Further Reading:

See Cecilia Sardenberg's comments on the debate on abortion rights in Brazil.

Siyanda Update: Realising Rights to Safe and Legal Abortion, Issue No 59

Sexuality Policy Watch: Brazil's New Religious Landscape, Washington Castilhos (and other articles on the Pope's visit to Brazil)

Cecilia Sardenberg for openDemocracy: The Right to Abortion: Briefing from Brazil

Cluster 2 : Understanding the Influence of a Number of Forces Shaping Diverse Understandings of Women’s Bodies and Sexualities

Women and Religion

Project Coordinators: Firdous Azim, BRAC University

Project Description: This research looks at resurgent Islam and its influence on the formation of female identities and sexualities with an aim to see whether the new forms of Islam in fact open up new spaces thereby ‘permitting’ women greater sexual rights than has been popularly perceived, and what might be learnt by the secular women’s movement from women’s organising in these new spaces.

Project Update:

A workshop on the Women and Religion project was held at BRAC in early April. See South Asia Hub project news.

BRAC have a partnership with Simorgh in Lahore, Pakistan under the Women and Religion and Women and Media research projects. Neelam Hussain from Simorgh will conduct an action research entitled 'Changing Narratives of Empowerment: Trajectories of Desire and Mediation of Socio-Culture Spaces'. The study will examine discursive changes that are taking place in areas related to media and religion. They have submitted an inception report for the research which aims to understand the impact of media and the dars (women's religious group gatherings) on women's lives in and around Lahore. Neelam Hussain says:

"Media has created new appetites even as it enriches the soil in which fantasies breed. The dars on the other hand, offer austere fare as it demarcates the boundaries between the licit and the illicit. Yet both, in their different ways, offer an alternative world that is brighter and better than the one in which they live".

Listen to Samia Huq (Research Fellow, BRAC University) talk about the project at: http://www.yada-yada.co.uk/podcasts/ids/samia-huq-rpc.mp3 (4 mins)

Women and Media

Project Coordinators: Firdous Azim, BRAC University

Project Description: This project will enquire into whether and where possibilities of empowerment in terms of sexuality open up through the media, and map out entry points for changing representations of women and female sexuality in the media.

Sexuality and Empowerment: The Case of Anita Hogan

Project Coordinator: Charmaine Pereira, Initiative for Women's Studies Nigeria

Project Description: A recent incident in which nude pictures of a well-known Nigerian actress appeared in a ‘serious’ newspaper and the subsequent response provides insight into understandings of sexuality and its embeddedness in discourses on morality and freedom.  This project will explore this and the use of communications technology in the shifting of public/private boundaries and sexual commodification.

Project Update:

Listen to Charmaine talk about the project at: http://www.yada-yada.co.uk/podcasts/ids/charmaine-pereira-rpc.mp3 (4 mins)

Zone: A Study of Sex Workers' Radio Station in Bahia

Project Coordinator: Terezinha Goncalves, NEIM, Brazil

Project Description: This project will trace the emergence of a new radio station, run by and for sex workers, explore the strategies for organising and communicating used by sex worker activists in Bahia and ask how and whether the use of community radio by sex workers can be a tool for empowerment.

Exploring Positive Approaches to Sexuality

Project Coordinator: Susie Jolly, Global Hub

Project Description: This research project will look at a small number of cases of local, national or regional initiatives on sexual rights and women’s empowerment that have succeeded in creating spaces for challenging repressive social norms concerning female sexuality.  It will look at interactions with international influences, including religious and development institutions.

Further Reading:

See also the Sexuality and Development Programme pages of the IDS website

Project Update:

Listen to Susie Jolly talk about the project at: http://www.yada-yada.co.uk/podcasts/ids/susie-jolly-RPC.mp3  (4 mins)

The Global Hub 'Exploring Positive Approaches to Sexuality' project co-organised a workshop on 'Sexuality and the Development Industry' together with the IDS Sexuality and Development Programme at IDS from 3-5 April 2008. You can download papers and listen to presentations from the workshop at the IDS Website.