Claiming Their Rights: How Women's Movements Mobilize for Policy Change

Women across the global South are increasingly claiming their rights. Indian women have successfully mobilized across the country demanding amendments to the laws on sexual assault since mid-1970s; while Indonesian women benefitted from the new democratic context after the fall of Suharto to build a large alliance of civil society organizations leading to the approval of the Domestic Violence Law, 2004. On another front, both Indonesian and Indian domestic workers are organizing in ever greater numbers to demand the recognition of their work and for it to be included in national labour laws. In India and in China, women have demanded and gained access to land and property since the 1950s.

So, how do these changes happen?

What are the conditions and the factors which allow women’s movements to successfully trigger policy change? How do women participate in the negotiation processes behind policy change? What are the mechanisms and the strategies used by women advocates to ensure that issues get on policy agendas? And why are certain issues left out of the policy agenda of movements and states, while others become priorities?

The external project coordinator Nitya Rao will explore these questions presenting the research findings from the UNRISD research project When and Why do States Respond to Women's Claims? Understanding Gender-Egalitarian Policy Change in Asia.

Speakers

Valeria Esquivel, Chair, UNRISD Research Coordinator

Nitya Rao, Key speaker, UNRISD External Project Coordinator; Professor, Gender and Development, University of East Anglia

Ismat Jahan, Discussant, CEDAW Committee member; Ambassador of Bangladesh to the European Union, Belgium and Luxembourg

Claire Hobden, Discussant, Technical Officer for Working Conditions of Domestic Work, ILO

Remote access to the seminar

We will be tweeting key messages live from the seminar and welcome your comments and questions, which, time permitting, we may be able to put directly to the speaker. Follow us on @UNRISD and use the hashtag #UNRISDseminar. 

This event will be video and audio recorded. If you would like to be notified when the video and the podcast are online, please send an email with “Audio/video notification: Women Mobilization for Policy Change” in the subject line to sandoval@unrisd.org



Photo: CGIAR Climate (CC BY 2.0 via Flickr)