The research is focusing on understanding the problems that are caused by the patriarchal set-up and which become stumbling blocks for the rights of women in the church and society. The research is done by application of the liberation theology from the reality of the experiences of the oppressed women. The research will: - Use the practical case studies as an experience of the victimized society in order to understand their pain and need. - Study the biblical passages that helps to understand more about how men and women are expected to relate to each other by God. - Study the African traditional understanding about how men and women should relate to each other. - Give guidelines on how men and women can be equal participants for the kingdom of God, without undermining the rights of women and the biblical message on the view of women. Liberation theology pioneered by James Cone will be used pastorally and therapeutically to help the women as victims of gender oppression both in the church and in the society. / Thesis (PhD (Practical Theology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The main aim of this Degree Project was to investigate the role of social media for women’s rights movements in Ethiopia, specifically for the #MeTooEthiopia movement, and whether utilising social media in their operations and mobilisations has enhanced the movements’ ability to raise awareness and challenge traditional gender norms. The research was investigated through the lens of digital activism and via the logic of connective action, by utilising in-depth semi-structured interviews with women’s rights activists in Ethiopia and overseas and undertaking a review of the #MeTooEthiopia movement social media platforms. Through the interviews, it was possible to identify numerous benefits and challenges relating to the country-specific cultural, social and economic context that women’s rights movements in Ethiopia have to operate in. For the #MeTooEthiopia movement specifically, operating an international movement within this context has been challenging, however due to its ability to diversify and adopt to both new and traditional communication technologies, the movement has been able to sustain its momentum and remain active in their attempt to raise awareness and challenge traditional gender norms. The findings also demonstrate that for contemporary women’s rights movements in Ethiopia, raising awareness and bringing along attitudinal change cannot be accomplished by only utilising new technologies. Rather, it is necessary to combine activism via social media with traditional forms of communication, including face-to-face meetings, to be able to have a reach across the wider society.

Cyberspace offers many opportunities but is also a very hostile place for women. Studies claim that women are disproportionally affected by certain cybercrimes and suffer frequent rights violations in cyberspace. The aim of cybersecurity policies is, among others, to protect citizens from different cyberthreats and the EU has a vital role in designing such policies. This involves portraying what issues are seen as cyberthreats and in extension, which issues are prioritized over others. Therefore, it is important to problematize what key EU bodies depict as cybersecurity threats and how they incorporate gender in their cybersecurity policy and strategy. This study uses post-structural feminist theory to analyze the EU cybersecurity discourse and its implications for women’s rights. This is because the theory emphasizes the deconstruction of discourse to showcase hidden gendered power dimensions. It is a qualitative case study that uses the framing method to identify the discursive construction of threats, priorities, and key issues, and McPhail’s feminist policy analysis framework to investigate how gender is incorporated in the discourse. The findings confirm previous research, which states that cybersecurity is mainly state-centric and securitized and gender is silenced in the overall discourse. Among the five distinct frames that I identified in the discourse on cybersecurity, none includes a gendered perspective. No official EU document adopts or argues for a gender-sensitive approach to cybersecurity. Gender is only mentioned with regard to empowering women in the STEM sector, although the European Parliament stresses the need to target cyberviolence against women. The study concludes that a gender-neutral approach to cybersecurity has negative implications for women’s rights, as cybercrimes and violates women endure are overlooked and deprioritized in comparison to a gendered approach. This is because it is more likely that political measures can be taken if the policies and actors acknowledge the gendered issues, which then have positive implications for the protection of women’s rights in cyberspace.

The Polish Law and Justice party has initiated domestic policies and regulations that challenge women’s rights. Poland is a member of the European Union where the gender inequality issues have never had such a high priority before and the union is currently operating under the Gender Mainstreaming strategy alongside with additional approaches. The two folded aim of this thesis is to create an understanding on how the Polish politicalauthorities can present backsliding tendencies of women’s rights by studying how thedomestic political institutions frame gender equality policies and Gender Mainstreaming followed by how the Polish political agents can legitimize the framings and implementations to the Polish society through the public discourse. A qualitative discourse analysis will be applied on materials from the EU, Polish politicalprograms and secondary sources such as news articles. The empirical findings suggest that the backsliding is part of a non-linear process where the Polish framing and implementation of policies on gender equality both converge and diverge from the EU. In the latest years, an incremental process of backsliding tendencies has appeared. As for the political discourse, the gender equality policies often end up in the background, overruled by pro-family policies. Also, the inadequate implementations and domestic framings is legitimized by the referencesto the foundational ideas of Polish society, where the EU challenges the traditional familywith “harmful gender ideologies”.

This study is based on the statistical finding that every tenth women in Sweden refrains to go outside alone in their own residential area when it is dark because they are afraid (BRÅ 2015:88) and strives to discuss this problem further. The purpose of this study is to argue that there is a need to address women’s fear of sexual violence as a human rights concern in Sweden. Women’s ability to enjoy their human rights is restricted by their fear and the normalization of women’s fear contributes to this problem. Furthermore, Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach and her theoretical understanding of emotions enable an understanding of how the concept of bodily integrity is affected by women’s fear. Women’s fear of sexual violence can be understood as a problem of social inequality that is affected by the underlying structures of gender inequality. Therefore, it is essential to identify the nature of the attitudes that tend to undermine women and result in violence against women. The fear of sexual violence is dependent on the occurrence of violence against women, which is a human rights violation. However, the fear of sexual violence is not a human rights violation yet it should be understood as a human rights concern.

The emergence and importance of human rights are rarely discussed without the discussion in some way also touching on the impact that various popular movements or social resistance have had on the manifestation of rights claims. This thesis focus in particular on the development in recent times in Afghanistan since the Taliban's takeover of power in August 2021. For the women and girls in Afghanistan the Taliban’s new power meant a return from 20 years of developed opportunities and recognized human rights, which can be directly derived to the rights and non-discrimination of women declared in the UN Women's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). This thesis will primarily deal with Amnesty International's report Death in Slow Motion: Women and girls under Taliban rule, which consists of a 100-page report, including testimonies, that describes the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban took gained power in August 2021. The analytical discussion of this thesis is based on a critical theoretical framework built on the concepts of performative practice, weapons of the weak, translation and ontological disturbance. The operationalization of the theoretical framework of this thesis is done with the help of a critical discourse analysis (CDA). The analytical discussion and conclusions of this thesis establish that Afghan women's and girls' current, every day or small-scale acts of resistance in order to assert their rights, demands for belonging, equality and freedom take varying forms and that these approaches move dynamically between the public and private spheres of society. In many ways, the resistance takes place beyond the Taliban's supervision and despite the risks that the acts of resistance entail, the actions of the Afghan women and girls contribute to manifesting and strengthening their rights claims and highlighting their capacity for agency and freedom of action. This thesis mainly highlights how these acts of resistance and agents can open up conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan to form communities and solidarity belonging within a social and political arena that has come to place them on the periphery.

Gender equality and women's rights have long been a prioritised topic for Swedish aid agencies. In this thesis the aim is through qualitative interviews with employees at the Swedish aid organisation Act Church of Sweden, to unravel some of the challenges met when working with this issue. The respondents all worked at the office in Uppsala or with the office in Uppsala, but tightly with partner organisations. Act Church of Sweden works together with partner organisations in every part of the world with different topics, gender equality being one of them. The results of the interviews showed a wide range of challenges related to a local level at the partner organisations, but also at a global level with patriarchal structures and gender backlash, as well as at the organisational level with administration, resources and funding. Unique were aso the faith-based challenges highlighted by the respondents. The results were discussed together with two theories; Intersectional Feminist Theory and Jack Donnelly’s Universality of Human Rights.

This paper seeks to understand how the communicative practices of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) that advocate for women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights in the Philippines evolve as they advance the interests of the subaltern. Through two case studies of CSOs working with women’s and LGBTIQ+ rights, respectively, it identifies and discusses the communicative practices, including new media and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), that were adopted as the CSOs managed their organisational priorities and finances and navigated the oppressed contexts of the subalterns that they represent. The findings from the two case studies affirm that communicative practices adopted by CSOs are determined by their organisational objectives, organisational structure, and finances. Moreover, new media and ICT, such as social media, have proven useful, affordable, and easily accessible tools for both CSOs to reach and engage with their respective audiences. With the formation of the CSOs informed by the struggles and experiences of the subalterns they represent, their actions and communicative practices put the subalterns at the centre. For the subalterns to speak, they require alternative spaces to be safe to air their concerns and strategise to engage the public sphere. This is a role that the CSOs, which act as subaltern counterpublics, play. This also helps prepare the CSOs to build alliances, opening spaces for dialogue and advocacy for social change. These all contribute to making the demands of the subaltern heard.

Ce mémoire de maitrise propose de faire une analyse féministe du concept de droit de la femme tel qu’il est conçu dans les théories des droits humains. Le paradigme libéral en théorie des droits humains sera critiqué parce qu’il contient des idéalisations inégalitaires. Cela mènera à aborder la question sous l’angle de droits humains spécifiques aux femmes. Cette investigation commencera par l’examen de la possibilité théorique de produire une théorie des droits de la femme plausible. L’importance de tenir compte des conditions non idéales du monde sera soulignée. Puis, une argumentation en faveur de droits socioéconomiques spécifiques sera faite. Enfin, cela mènera à une défense de l’approche des capabilités de Martha Nussbaum pour la protection des intérêts particuliers des femmes. / The purpose of this master thesis is to analyze the concept of women’s rights as human rights from a feminist perspective. The liberal paradigm of human rights theory will be criticised because it leads to idealizations that contribute to gender inequalities. We will address the issue by considering women’s rights as specific human rights. This inquiry will start with the possibility to produce a plausible theoretical account of women’s rights. In order to do this, non-ideal conditions will be emphasized. We will then defend social and economic rights as means to protect women’s interests. Lastly, we will favour Nussbaum’s capabilities approach as a theory able to protect the specific interests of women.

The success of three Louisiana feminists in the 1970s, Fran Bussie, Clarence Marie Collier, and Pat Evans stemmed from their professional expertise in labor rights, education, and politics, respectively. By joining and maintaining memberships in a variety of social, civic, and activists groups, these feminist leaders via the 1976 Louisiana Governor’s Conference on Women created a unique network that allowed for the formation of a new women’s platform. This conference advanced women’s rights, established a working platform for reform, and helped usher in second-wave feminism in Louisiana. Using conference booklets, archived video and audio interviews, and newspaper articles, this thesis argues that when women came together in their professional positions to advocate for women’s rights, the results were clearly positive.