Reinventing Social Contracts: the Promise of Human Rights

Global citizens' struggles today stress the building of effective links between development agencies in the voluntary sector, environmental organizations, and the women's movement. DAWN - Development Action for Women Network - which has long brought together many leading Third World women thinkers and activists, has been vigorously contributing to developing such linkages between the different approaches to and struggles for economic justice and gender justice. In this volume, DAWN sets out the analyzes they have developed during two decades of research, thinking and political work. In the context of a powerful analytic framework that takes account of the changing circumstances and issues confronting women at the beginning of the 21st century, DAWN argues from a feminist perspective for reinventing social contracts to fulfill the promise of human rights.This is intended to provide a holistic and radical understanding of the synergies, tensions and contradictions between social movements and global, regional and local processes on the one hand, and feminist perspectives and goals on the other. The specific issues addressed include: a feminist analysis and critique of current approaches to global governance; the diversity of issues confronting feminists at the level of the nation state in all its diversity; religious fundamentalism which, despite its variety of religious expressions, has at its heart an agenda aiming at control over women; the struggle for livelihoods and for control over women's bodies and lives; and, the practical issues raised by alliances, coalition-building attempts and gender politics within movements for social change.

Table of Contents:
1. Towards a Feminist Social Contract 2. Global Governance3. The State4. Fundamentalisms5. Social Movements6. Lives and Livelihoods

About the Author :
Sonia Correa presently coordinates the Gender Initiative at the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis as well as sexual and reproductive rights for DAWN, the southern-based, feminist network of scholars and activists committed to working for economic and gender justice, and democracy. She is a founder and board member of SOS Corpo, a feminist organization located in Recife, Brazil, that promotes women's sexual and reproductive rights. Sonia is also on the board of the Brazilian Interdisciplinary Association for HIV/AIDS. As a leading activist for women's rights worldwide, she participated in follow-up analyses of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development for the Ford Foundation and the United Nations Population Fund in Brazil. In addition, she is a member of the Brazilian National Commission on Population and Development, the government body formally responsible for implementation of the conference Programme of Action. She is the author of Population and Reproductive Rights: Feminist Perspectives on the South. Gita Sen is DAWN's research coordinator on the Political Economy of Globalisation, and a professor of public policy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore. She has been for many years a feminist analyst, activist and advocate on globalisation, and on sexual and reproductive health and rights. Well known as the author of many publications on these subjects and on gender and development more generally, she has also been a key advocate in global and regional arenas linked to both the International Conference on Population and Development and the Fourth World Conference on Women. She is on many national and international committees and is co-coordinator of the knowledge network on Women and Gender Equity for the WHO's Independent Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. One of the her best known books is the first DAWN book, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions: Third World Women's Perspectives.