Research Project

Peace work, as one can imagine , is a complex task. Most of the time, more than two conflicting parties must be unified and the interests of various actors need […]

The main objective of this study was to generate baseline information for use in facilitating the promotion of human rights. The specific objectives included the following: to establish the level […]

Uganda women’s network is an advocacy and lobbying network of national women’s NGO’s and individuals, operating in Uganda.

This was conducted in two districts of Gulu and Luwero to measure citizen’s satisfaction with family planning services, using a citizen’s report card. A citizen’s report card is one type […]

A just society where there is gender equality & equity. To promote women’s empowerment, gender quality and equity through advocacy, networking and capacity building of both women and men.

The country we want to live in: Hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans offers a refreshing perspective on violence perpetrated against black lesbians. Based on a Roundtable seminar, held during the 2006 16 Days of Activism for no Violence against Women and Children, the text engages the heteronormative focus of the campaign, profiles aspects of the dynamic conversations, and builds strong arguments about violence against lesbians. It also profiles the voices of women who are central to the activism around hate crimes and homophobia. In capturing key aspects of the lively discussion of 2006, an update of subsequent events that have bearing on the original seminar is provided, concluding with recommendations that have relevance for research, policy and practice.

Globalization, consumerism, legislation and human rights issues impact on workplace demographics, changing the very nature thereof. It is of strategic importance to ensure that the benefits of diverse viewpoints and stakeholders are leveraged. However the underlying worldviews of economists, business leaders and consultants are often informed from a Western paradigm and solutions proposed and interventions facilitated are not integrated, integral, systemic or congruent with the containing environment or ecology.

In Inclusive Organizational Transformation, Dr Rica Viljoen acknowledges that diversity of thought presents both gifts and challenges to leadership in multi-national organizations. The existential question with which an individual is confronted impacts on his or her worldview. By continuously applying a specific worldview, certain gifts manifest. These are called Human Niches.

Here, Inclusivity is positioned as a radical transformational methodology with the purpose of unleashing the benefits of engagement and diversity of thought. The process of Inclusivity enables organizations to optimize the gifts of and contributions from a diverse workforce and unleash tacit knowledge.

Case studies from Ghana, South Africa, and one where the same strategy had to be implemented in Australia, Peru and Tanzania are included and insights gained from the dynamics observed are shared. A synthesis of inclusivity is presented in a model, meta-insights are derived and the prerequisites for Inclusivity on individual, group and organizational domain are illustrated.

Sweden is among the countries with the highest per cent of women university Vice Chancellors in Europe. In She Figures 2012
the average proportion of female Vice Chancellors in the 27 European Union countries is estimated to be 10 per cent. In Sweden the number is much higher: 43 per cent.Swedish higher education management has witnessed a demographic feminization during the last20 years. Which factors can explain that women have been so successful in gaining access to these senior management positions in Swedish academia? This paper discusses the demographic feminization, drawing on qualitative interviews with women in senior academic positions in Swedish higher education. The paper suggests that women’s position in higher education management can be analysed using the concept ”glass cliff”. This metaphor describes a phenomenon when women are more likely to be appointed to precarious leadership roles in situations of turbulence and problematic organizational circumstances. The findings illustrate that women have been allowed to enter into senior academic management at the same time as these positions decline in status, merit and prestige and become more time-consuming and harder to combine with a successful scholarly career.

Contemporary United States is awash in media images working in concert to create and sustain a static, heternormative view of the dyadic structure of gender in which only masculine and feminine identities achieve mainstream acknowledgement and, thus, intelligibility. In order to dismantle this rather limited model of the gendered body, theorists such as Judith Butler have endeavoured to reconsider the gender binary by examining the ways in which the gendered body has been and is currently manufactured by our mediated culture. While in the process of critiquing the socially constructed concept of gender, Butler often becomes mired in debates on the implication of reality within those social constructions as well as the source of “originalityÀ as an idea.

A catalogue of sexual violence has accompanied the armed conflict in Colombia. The peace talks must not brush it under the carpet. A group of 60 victims of the Colombian armed conflict last month spoke to representatives of the government and the guerrilla of the FARC, who have been engaged in peace talks in Havana, Cuba, since November 2012. It’s time to impress on both parties to the negotiations the need to address the plight of the Colombian women and girls who have been victims of sexual violence in the context of the conflict. A recent report,
Colombia: Women, Conflict-Related Violence and the Peace Process, published by Sisma Mujer , ABColombia and the NGO US Office on Colombia, documents the sexual violence to which women have been subjected in this context.