WRC supports research projects and knowledge sharing activities that address one or more of the following five research areas:

 

 

This research area focuses on how institutions of governance should be organised to guarantee women’s rights and facilitate women’s full citizenship.  WRC initiatives funded under this entry point will contribute to building the accountability of states, political parties and social movements for the achievement of women’s rights. Research will examine state institutions, political processes, and state/society relations, paying attention to how they are sites of patriarchal power, male bias, and resistance, with a view to making policy recommendations.

 

Research will also address how different identities based on race, class, and sexuality, among others, shape women’s political choices and citizenship struggles, and influence the formation of constituencies for feminist change, thereby contributing answers to practical questions of how women can best organize to press for their rights.

 

More specifically, WRC-supported research here will lead to a better understanding of how the particular shape that states have taken in different countries due to their particular history and specific, local forms of social organisation, help or hinder the realisation of women’s rights.  Such research can investigate, amongst other questions, how states attempt to balance commitments of universal citizenship while recognising women’s differences within its political institutions. 

 

Another series of questions under this entry point involves investigating the operation of state “gender regimes” – meaning the whole range of laws that are in place, including international commitments, as well as how the government, its institutions of governance, and its bureaucracy are organised.  For instance, how is the implementation of international commitments monitored?  How are national gender policies and programs coordinated and monitored?  And how can public administration be reformed to promote gender equality?

 

 

This research area will focus on how, concretely, women can claim their rights or challenge States’ failure to provide gender equitable justice.  WRC supported research in this area will encourage analysis of the gendered implications, both positive and negative, of legal pluralism within specific contexts, and the conditions under which change is effected within both formal and traditional systems to achieve greater gender equality and equity. 

 

While feminist research and activism has grappled with the issue of law-making and legal reform, particularly in the areas of securing formal equal rights for women and addressing violence against women, WRC seeks to encourage a critical examination of the actual implementation of legal reforms (i.e., law in action).  Rather than assuming that all legal reforms are progressive, WRC encourages the examination of how legal interventions help, or hinder gender justice.  WRC supported projects will move beyond a formal, legalistic approach to an examination of the range of justice delivery institutions that engage in the regulation of women’s lives. 

 

WRC will support research on such issues as gender bias in the administration and performance of justice.  Gender bias in the legal system can be seen to operate at three levels:

 

Substantive level:  gender bias within the laws themselves

Structural level:  refers to the organisations, institutions and systems that interpret and enforce the law

Cultural level:  the beliefs and attitudes of those within the justice/legal system that privilege male perspectives and prerogatives

 

Research in this area would help illuminate women’s varied experiences in challenging power-holders – their legal empowerment – and promote a deeper understanding of reasons for the continued gaps between formal equality rights and substantive justice for women.

 

 

 

Sexual and reproductive rights remain a key area for gender equity and for women’s organising to claim their rights.  Research for development in this area must take into account the fact that societies tend to be heavily invested in the regulation and control of sexuality, and that sexuality and reproduction are areas where gender and moral norms tend to be at their strictest.  This is part of the reason why sexual and reproductive health and rights are a contentious political subject, and why work in this area must be informed by thorough contextual analyses that are cognizant of cultural and political specificity.

 

Under this research area WRC will prioritise work on cutting-edge and regionally important issues such as gender roles and power in sexual relations (particularly with regards to negotiating safe sex and the number and spacing of children); access to legal and safe abortion; policy regulation of reproductive technologies; and women’s rights in marriage, including in polygamous unions.  We will also support areas of work that intersect with other entry points, such as access to reproductive health services under the impact of macro-economic policies and trade agreements, and under decentralisation; and the rightlessness of female migrants in various sex industries, whether “trafficked” or willingly performing this work in the face of limited livelihood options.  Finally, where such research can be shown to have potential tangible impacts on the realisation of women’s rights, we will support research that investigates how the process of claiming sexual and reproductive rights can empower women to exercise their citizenship more fully. 

 

4)  Economic rights

 

Contemporary feminist scholarship has demonstrated that in order for women to be empowered to claim their rights, economic independence and security of livelihood have to be addressed in tandem with political and social empowerment and rights.  Women enter the labour market not as free agents ready to sell their labour but as bearers of their gender identity, which often marks them as dependent daughters, wives or mothers. 

 

Women’s employment is often concentrated in poorly paid or unskilled job “ghettos”, characterised by the absence of upward mobility and opportunity.  This is most commonly the result of gender bias, obstructive attitudes and legal and social systems, which use maternity laws and benefits to penalise women economically for childbirth and childcare responsibilities, and discourage or actively prevent men from sharing family responsibilities. 

How women’s labour is understood in state policy discourse and with what implications for women’s identity as workers is also important, as well as investigating the kind of labour reforms and policy changes that can truly enhance working women’s rights. 

 

In this area WRC encourages research on under explored areas including, gender analyses of various state mechanisms for social protection and rights and social security legislations; the investigation of how gender-related vulnerabilities are experienced in relation to the location in which workers find themselves in the labour market; and the identification and documentation of innovative approaches to providing social protection to informal workers, especially women, including extending the coverage of existing social protection schemes or developing new schemes. 

 

Particular attention will be paid to the case of women working in the informal sector.  The overrepresentation of women in informal employment demonstrates the connection between the economic status of women and their inferior social citizenship and lack of political voice.  WRC encourages research investigating the linkages between informal employment, poverty, gender and citizenship as such linkages are complex and not well understood.  

 

A final area of support to research within this entry point is the issue of persisting gender inequality in access to economic assets such as land, property and natural resources.  While globally there has been a push for women’s property and inheritance rights since the Second Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in 1980, following the CEDAW commitment to equal access to land and other property (Articles 14, 15 and 16), progress in this regard has been slow, particularly around women’s property and inheritance rights.

 

5)  Migration

 

Migration is a phenomenon of growing importance, which raises new challenges in the area of women’s rights, development and citizenship.  The need for an approach that addresses the gendered dimensions of migration is necessary as men, women and children are presented with different sets of opportunities, threats and barriers as they move through formal and informal migration channels.  Migration may provide new opportunities to improve the lives of women and challenge unequal gender, and other, relations.  However, it can also solidify gender inequality. 

 

The issue of migration relates strongly to issues of rights, citizenship and livelihoods.  A great majority of migrants are unskilled, and consequently over-represented in marginal, unregulated and poorly paid jobs where they suffer poor working conditions and have little or no workers’ rights.  Female voluntary migrants are often left harmed by national laws on emigration and immigration that include discriminatory provisions.  While migration in the context of conflict and its impact on women’s rights is an extremely important area for further research, it will not constitute part of WRC’s work as this is an area already aptly covered by the Peace Conflict and Development (PCD) program initiative. 

One area for support to research for WRC is ‘trafficking’, defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”[1]  WRC is interested in research adopting a rights-based approach to trafficking that pays attention to structural problems behind the phenomenon.  Important questions for research include the linkages between internal and international trafficking, as well as those between the countries of origin and destination.  Other gaps in knowledge include trafficking for forced labour (the emphasis has been on trafficking for sexual exploitation); research on the traffickers, clients and law enforcement agencies that are implicit in the phenomenon; and studies of stakeholders involved in combating trafficking such as service providers, law enforcement agencies and NGOs.