In recent decades, women's political empowerment has become a growing foreign policy and assistance priority. Every year, donor governments and multilateral organizations partner with hundreds of civil society groups to train women to run for office, support women legislators, campaign for gender quotas, and bolster women's networks in political parties and parliaments. The overarching aim is a simple one: to overcome women's persistent political exclusion in most parts of the world.
What ideas about gender, power, and political change undergird these aid programs? What have practitioners and advocates learned about their strengths and weaknesses, and how have they adapted their approaches over time? And how might aid actors improve their work in this domain going forward?
Drawing on extensive interviews with policymakers, practitioners, women's rights advocates, and politicians in Western donor countries and across Kenya, Morocco, Myanmar, and Nepal, Aiding Empowerment investigates how democracy aid actors seek to promote gender equality in politics. Saskia Brechenmacher and Katherine Mann argue that international aid for women's political empowerment has undergone a significant evolution over the last three decades, from initial efforts that aimed to integrate women into nascent democratic institutions to a focus on transforming the broader political ecosystem hindering women's equal political influence. However, this evolution is still unfolding, and changes in thinking have outstripped changes in actual aid practice. Overall, Brechenmacher and Mann explore the new challenges and recurring tensions that characterize the field, from the persistence of patriarchal gender norms and rising concerns about democratic erosion and backlash to aid modalities that are ill-suited to support grassroots feminist mobilization.
Today, gender equality is widely seen as a critical dimension of democracy. Over the past three decades, the United States and other donor governments have spent millions on aid programs that seek to advance women's equal political participation and leadership around the world. What do these assistance programs consist of, and how effective have they been? In Aiding Empowerment, Saskia Brechenmacher and Katherine Mann take a critical look at this growing field of international aid and policy action. Drawing on research in Kenya, Nepal, Morocco, and Myanmar, they examine the varied methods aid providers use to challenge patriarchal political structures and support local reformers, identify persisting challenges and promising innovations, and make practical recommendations for reform.
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