The new international division of labor and the imposition of structural adjustment on Third World countries has necessitated a reexamination of development policies and a reevaluation of the role of gender in their success or failure. Although women often bear the heaviest burden under structural adjustment, there is also considerable evidence of women being empowered through their responses to the challenges of economic restructuring. Based on case study material from Eastern Europe, the Islamic nations, Africa, China, and Latin America, this volume explores the significant contributions women make to the wealth and well-being of their families and nations. The contributors argue persuasively that women may hold the key to sustainable development, an increasingly critical issue at a time when policymakers are reconsidering the full costs and benefits of a growth-fixated development model. One of the first to embody the new “gender and development” paradigm, this book reports on research at the frontiers of knowledge and theory about the gendered outcomes of economic transformation, restructuring, and social change. By incorporating “voices from the South,” it makes a provocative addition to our understanding of the political economy of development and of the relationship between world ecology and the world economy.

Although women often bear the heaviest burden under structural adjustment in Third World countries, there is considerable evidence of women being empowered through their responses to the challenges of economic restructuring. Based on case study material from around the world, this volume explores the significant contributions women make to the wealth and well-being of their families and nations, arguing that women may hold the key to "sustainable" development. Embodying the new gender and development paradigm, the book reports on research at the frontiers of knowledge and theory about the gendered outcomes of economic transformation, restructuring, and social change."

The new international division of labor and the imposition of structural adjustment on Third World countries has necessitated a reexamination of development policies and a reevaluation of the role of gender in their success or failure. Although women often bear the heaviest burden under structural adjustment, there is also considerable evidence of women being empowered through their responses to the challenges of economic restructuring.Based on case study material from Eastern Europe, the Islamic nations, Africa, China, and Latin America, this volume explores the significant contributions women make to the wealth and well-being of their families and nations. The contributors argue persuasively that women may hold the key to sustainable development, an increasingly critical issue at a time when policymakers are reconsidering the full costs and benefits of a growth-fixated development model.One of the first to embody the new “gender and development” paradigm, this book reports on research at the frontiers of knowledge and theory about the gendered outcomes of economic transformation, restructuring, and social change. By incorporating “voices from the South,” it makes a provocative addition to our understanding of the political economy of development and of the relationship between world ecology and the world economy.

Through analysis of in-depth interviews with seventy-three Hispanic immigrants in Central Virginia, this book offers a rare in-depth look at the views and circumstances of immigrants in a new receiving area. It provides an examination of the new migration trend including an analysis of immigrants' living and working conditions, their family life, and their plans for the future.

Drawing from field research in Cameroon, Ghana, Vietnam, and the Amazon forests of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru, this book explores the relationship between gender and land, revealing the workings of global capital and of people's responses to it. A central theme is the people's resistance to global forces, frequently through an insistence on the uniqueness of their livelihoods. For instance, in the Amazon, the focus is on the social movements that have emerged in the context of struggles over land rights concerning the extraction of Brazil nuts and babacu kernels in an increasingly globalised market. In Vietnam, the process of 'de-collectivising' rights to land is examined with a view to understand how gender and other social differences are reworked in a market economy. The book addresses a gap in the literature on land tenure and gender in developing countries. It raises new questions about the process of globalisation, particularly about who the actors are (local people, the state, NGOs, multinational companies) and the shifting relations amongst them. The book also challenges the very concepts of gender, land and globalization.

With this book Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta offer an intimate glimpse into the microcosmic world of “hybrid landscapes.” Focusing on chars—the part-land, part-water, low-lying sandy masses that exist within the riverbeds in the floodplains of lower Bengal—the authors show how, both as real-life examples and as metaphors, chars straddle the conventional categories of land and water, and how people who live on them fluctuate between legitimacy and illegitimacy. The result, a study of human habitation in the nebulous space between land and water, charts a new way of thinking about land, people, and people's ways of life.

Gordon analyzes the interplay between capitalism, development and the status of African women. Drawing on the work of both African and Western researchers, she shows that capitalist development projects have mainly benefited a small stratum of African elites and proposes concrete strategies for making it more equitable for women.