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Beyond Nairobi: Women's Politics and Policies in Africa Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2019
Extract
High hopes were raised at the Nairobi meeting to conclude the United Nations Decade for Women in 1985. At the official meetings, more than 2,000 delegates from governments around the world met to hammer out a consensus of more than three hundred resolutions in Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. Perhaps more importantly, the unofficial meetings (Forum '85) attracted approximately 14,000 women from existing and new organizations that emerged over the Decade, as compared to 8,000 in Copenhagen (Forum '80) and 6,000 in Mexico City, 1975.
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- FOCUS: Beyond Nairobi: Women’s Politics and Policies in Africa Revisited
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1989
References
Notes
1 Even with our “wide net,” West Africa remains comparatively underrepresented in this collection, which is drawn in part from talks and papers presented at roundtable discussions at the 1988 African Studies Association meeting in Chicago. These notes and others appended to several of the articles are also more copious than usual. Through them we suggest a small sample of the growing literature inspired by some of the themes reflected in this ISSUE.
2 On belated attention to women, politics, and the state, see Naomi Chazan, especially, and other contributors in Jane Parpart and Kathleen Staudt, editors, Women and the State in Africa, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989.
3 For more pessimistic accounts of Zimbabwe, see Susan Jacobs, “Zimbabwe: State, Class, and Gendered Models,” in Parpart and Staudt, Ibid; Seidman, Gay, “Women in Zimbabwe: Post-Independence Struggles,” Feminist Studies, v. 10, no. 3, Fall, 1984 pp. 419–440;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Christine Sylvester, “Simultaneous Revolutions: The Zimbabwean Case,” forthcoming in Journal of Southern African Studies. Sylvester also participated in a roundtable discussion on the theme of this ISSUE, at the 1988 African Studies Association Meeting in Chicago.
4 Sen, Gita and Grown, Caren for DAWN, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1987.Google Scholar
5 Nuket Kardam reports that 3.5 per cent of U.N. agency projects benefit women, representing .2 per cent of budget allocations in “Social Theory and Women in Development Policy.” Women and Politics, v. 7, no. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 67-82. DAWN cites an FAO report indicating that .05 per cent of all U.N. agricultural sector allocations were for rural women's programs. Kathleen Staudt reports that 4 per cent of U.S. AID's funding benefitted women, a tenth of agricultural projects contained strategies to reach women, and a fifth of AIDsupported international trainees were women. Women, Foreign Assistance and Advocacy Administration, New York, Praeger, 1985.
6 See, for example, Davison, Jean, editor, Agriculture, Women, and Land: The African Experience, Boulder, Westview, 1988 Google Scholar, and Dwyer, Daisy and Bruce, Judith, eds., A Home Divided: Women and Income in the Third World, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
7 Staudt, Kathleen and Jaquette, Jane, “Women's Programs, Bureaucratic Resistance and Feminist Organizations,” in Boneparth, Ellen and Stoper, Emily, eds., Women, Power and Policy, New York, Pergamon, 1988.Google Scholar
8 See selections on Cameroon, Malawi, the World Bank, and the FAO, among others, in Kathleen Staudt, The Bureaucratic Mire: Women's Programs in Comparative Perspective, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, forthcoming.
9 Ruth Nasimiyu participated in the “Beyond Nairobi” roundtables at the 1988 ASA meetings. Her research focuses on the “mixed blessings” of Maendeleo ya Wanawake's incorporation into party politics in Kenya.