Sexuality

Streams of Influence tells the story of how the Gender, Power and Sexuality programme that sought to bring about positive changes on gender equality imagined and then experienced the process of influencing. Along the way there were the positives in terms of actions and outcomes going to plan, there were also some unintended but nonetheless welcome effects, but there were also a few activities that didn’t work as well as hoped. Programme partners also experienced periods of doubt, struggle and confusion.

On the 29-30 May 2014 a group of feminist scholars, activists, and media and communications professionals met at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex to celebrate and interrogate learning from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Consortium (Pathways). This was an opportunity to look at the trajectory that the consortium had taken since its early days in 2005, consider how Pathways research could shape the Post-2015 development agenda, and strategise about future directions in work on women’s empowerment.

This report synthesises learning from these audits and is part of a larger project that focuses on understanding the links between sexuality, gender plurality and poverty with the aim of improving socioeconomic policy and programming to support people marginalised because of their sexuality. The project was instigated as a result of earlier research by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Sexuality and Development Programme and partners. This research indicated that sexuality is directly related to physical, social and economic wellbeing, political participation and socioeconomic inclusion and the realisation of human rights, particularly for the poor and most marginalised (Jolly 2006; Armas 2007; Jolly 2010). The sexuality and poverty audits which were conducted for this project purposely set out to interrogate sites of development policy that were not explicitly linked to sexuality.

The global economic crisis is showing the cracks in the surface of how patriarchy is lived in everyday lives; is now not the right time to refocus the discussion? Can we reclaim ‘patriarchy’ from the analysis of all men as patriarchs? How do we understand masculinities in a more political way? How do we address the ways that patriarchy is bad for men, whilst still recognising the battles for women’s rights? What are the implications of rights language for an understanding of patriarchy? If marriage as an institution is the foundation of patriarchy, why are gay and lesbian movements so into marriage now? What do you get if you undress patriarchy? What does it look like underneath? How can stories, film, art media help us to envision this? If the metaphor is that patriarchy is a prison, who are the prisoners and who are the prison wardens? How do elements of patriarchy replicate themselves in our feminist movements? Patriarchy may be seen as an old-fashioned term with little relevance to current work on gender, yet these kinds of questions motivated participants to get excited about the notion of ‘Undressing Patriarchy’ and inspired them to draft background papers and to travel across the world to take part in this conversation. This was an unlikely encounter of unusual suspects. They spent four days together in a hotel in Brighton, in September 2013, engaged in rather unconventional dialogues across perspectives from feminism, men and masculinities work, sexual rights and other social justice struggles. This publication captures some of the dilemmas, new thinking, the interactive process, analyses, future possibilities and challenges identified in these debates in Brighton.

This thematic review focuses on a range of health challenges faced in particular by women and girls living in low-income urban settlements in expanding cities in Kenya and South Africa. The review has been compiled as part of a larger body of work being conducted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and its partners on gender and international development and financed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The review was preceded by a literature search (using keywords to reflect the thematic focus) of key databases of published literature, as well as a search for grey literature and documents describing interventions aimed at addressing these health challenges. An online discussion hosted by IDS gave a further indication of current debates and assisted in the identification of interventions.

This is an annotated bibliography that has been put together by the IDS Sexuality and Development Programme. The IDS Sexuality and Development Programme is a reaction to the inadequate manner in which sexuality is approached by the development sector. Sexuality is not taken seriously: it is considered a frivolous, trivial issue that doesn’t relate to the more important aspects of development such as poverty. This is something that needs to change. This eclectic bibliography reflects global thinking on sexuality, bringing together texts on poverty, pleasure, gender, heteronormativity, rights, and a lot more! The ideas it contains will inspire you to think differently about sexuality and development whether you are an activist, academic, practitioner, policymaker, or something else entirely.