Feminist Perspectives on Rights-Based Development
Provisional Agenda
Monday 26th September
09.30 am Welcome & Opening Address: Rights in a Changing International Context:
Andrea Cornwall and Maxine Molyneux
10.00-11.00 Rights-Based Development: Current Status, Future Challenges
Chair: Rosalind Eyben
 Achieving substantive equality through a rights-based approach -- Carolyn Hannan,
Director, Division for the Advancement of Women, DESA, UN
 title TBC: Annemarie Sancar, the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation
(SDC)
11.00-11.30 Coffee/Tea
11.30-1.00 States, Legal Machineries and Women's Rights Struggles
Chair: Maxine Molyneux
 Constitutional Engineering: What Opportunities for the Enhancement of Gender Rights?
Georgina Waylen, Department of Politics, Sheffield University
 South Africa: Women's Rights, Citizenship and Ten Years of Democracy -- Mary Hames,
Director, Gender Equality Unit, Capetown
 The Reverse of Rights in Peru - Cecilia Blondet, Institute of Peruvian Studies, Peru
 State Response to Gender Violence in Brazil - Fiona McCaulay, Brazilian Studies, Oxford
University
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.30 INGO Perspectives on Operationalizing Rights
Chair: Ines Smyth, Oxfam (TBC)
 Putting Rights into Practice: Lessons from ActionAid International’s Work - Ramesh
Singh/ Everjoice Win, ActionAid International
 The Practitioner’s Struggle to Drive our Discourse: Lessons from CARE International’s
Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment -- Elisa Martinez, CARE
3.30-4.00 Tea/Coffee
4.00-5.00 Commentaries on emerging issues and discussion
Tuesday 27th September
9.00 Rights-Based Approaches in Question
Chair: Andrea Cornwall
 Is Rights-Based Development a Mixed Blessing? Some reflections from a subaltern feminist
and gender equality advocate in a development bureaucracy - Prudence Woodford-Berger,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden
 Is the rights focus the right focus? Considerations of the utility of the Rights Based Approach
for women’s movements in Nicaragua -- Sarah Bradshaw, Lecturer / Researcher,
Middlesex University.
 Citizenship, Rights: What Prospects for Gender Justice? - Monica Erwer, Padrigu,
Gothenberg University, Sweden
10.30-11.00 Coffee
11.00-1.00 Claiming and Framing Women’s Rights
Chair: TBC
 Femicide and the politics of 'justice' in Mexico - Adriana Ortiz-Ortega
 Legacies of Common Law: ‘Honour Killings’ in India (and Pakistan) - Shirin Rai, Warwick
University
 Accessing economic and social rights under neo-liberalism: gender and rights in Chile -Jasmine Gideon, Birkbeck College, University of London
 Piqueteiros and the Struggle for Women’s Economic Rights in Argentina - Graciela di
Marco
1.00-2.00 Lunch
2.00-3.30 The Cultural Politics of Rights and Equality
Chair: Prudence Woodford-Berger, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden
 Women, religion and development in Muslim communities: challenging donor discourse –
Cassandra Balchin, Women Living under Muslim Laws
 Human Rights, Islamic Politics and Women's Rights for Equality - Shahra Razavi,
UNRISD [paper tabled for discussion]
 Revisiting Equality as a right: the “age of marriage” debate in Nigeria – Nkoyo Toyo,
Gender and Development Action (GADA), Nigeria
 Hindu Women’s Property Rights in India: A Critical Appraisal - Reena Patel, University
of Warwick
3.30-4.00 Tea/Coffee
4.00-5.00 Closing Panel