Contested Framings of Gender Equality: Action for Women’s Rights

• In Event: 405 - Regular Session. Transnational Social Movements

Abstract

Gender equality has been hailed as the key for development (e.g. Snyder 2006), bemoaned as an empty “buzzword and fuzzword” in international agencies (Cornwall 2007), and leveraged in feminist advocacy to compel global governance structures and national governments to uphold women’s rights. Despite its ubiquity, “gender equality” travels and carries with it vastly different prescriptions for addressing the inequalities that women face around the world. This paper explores how distinct framings of gender equality and empowerment translate into action for women’s rights. Drawing on a global pool of applications to the United Nations Fund for Gender Equality, the findings reveal how gender equality actors, including women’s movement organizations and governments, differently locate women and women’s rights in action for gender equality.

Author

• Kellea Shay Miller, University of Wisconsin - Madison