Synopses & Reviews
This pioneering collection explores the ways in which women's sexual desires are experienced by them and how this experience effects women's empowerment. It shows that an exploration of pleasure can have a hugely positive impact for women at the personal, social and political levels.
Traditional gender and development discourses tend to engage with sexuality in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over emphasizing these negative aspects has subsumed women's sexualities under violence, danger and fear. The media, the pharmaceutical market, pornography and the market more broadly on the other hand celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of (young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV negative) people are 'eligible' for sexual pleasure.
The book brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both south and north of the globe. It demonstrates both conceptually and through examples of mobilisation, programming and policy, how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.
Synopsis
This pioneering collection explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women's sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. It shows how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.
Synopsis
This pioneering collection explores the ways in which women's sexual desires are experienced by them and how this experience effects women's empowerment. It shows that an exploration of pleasure can have a hugely positive impact for women at the personal, social and political levels.
Traditional gender and development discourses tend to engage with sexuality in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over emphasizing these negative aspects has subsumed women's sexualities under violence, danger and fear. The media, the pharmaceutical market, pornography and the market more broadly on the other hand celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of (young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV negative) people are 'eligible' for sexual pleasure.
The book brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both south and north of the globe. It demonstrates both conceptually and through examples of mobilisation, programming and policy, how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.
About the Author
Andrea Cornwall is a political anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of democracy, citizen participation, participatory research, gender and sexuality. She has worked on topics ranging from understanding women's perspectives on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted infection in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, public engagement in UK regeneration programs, the quality of democratic deliberation in new democratic spaces in Brazil, the use and abuse of participatory appraisal in Kenya, domestic workers' rights activism in Brazil and sex workers' rights activism in India.
Susie Jolly is Convenor of the Sexuality and Development Programme at the Institute of Development Studies. The programme supports exchanges between sexual rights activists, and helps share their insights with people in the development industry. Susie's recent publications include Jolly, S. (2010) 'Why the development industry should get over its obsession with bad sex and start to think about pleasure' in Lind, A. and Bergeron, S. (eds), Development, Sexual Rights and Global Governance: Resisting Global Power, Routledge and Cornwall, A, Correa, S. and Jolly, S. (2008) Development with a Body: Sexuality, Human Rights and Development, London: Zed Books.
Kate Hawkins is convenor of the Sexuality and Development Programme at the Institute of Development Studies. Kate has extensive experience in research, writing, communications and advocacy on sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV at UK, European and international level. She has a particular focus on the sexual and reproductive rights of marginalised groups and the research to policy and practice process. Kate is currently communications and research officer for the Realising Sexual and Reproductive Rights Research Programme Consortium led by IDS.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure
Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and Kate Hawkins
1. Thinking with Pleasure: Danger, Sexuality and Agency
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf
2. Challenging the Pleasure versus Danger Binary: Reflections on Sexuality Workshops with Rural Women's Rights Activists in North India
Jaya Sharma
3. Sexual Pleasure as a Woman's Human Right: Experiences from a Human Rights Training Programme for Women in Turkey
Gulsah Seral Aksakal
4. Better Sex and More Equal Relationships: Couple Training in Nigeria
Dorothy Aken'Ova
5. Building a Movement for Sexual Rights and Pleasure
Xiaopei He
6. Enabling Disabled People to Have and Enjoy the Kind of Sexuality They Want
Lorna Couldrick and Alex Cowan
7. Desires Denied: Sexual Pleasure in the Context of HIV
Alice Welbourn
8. Sex is a Gift from God: Paralysis and Potential in Sex Education in Malawi
Anaïs Bertrand-Dansereau
9. Why We Need to Think about Sexuality and Sexual Well-Being: Addressing Sexual Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa
Chi-Chi Undie
10. Could Watching Porn Increase Our Expectations of (Safe) Pleasure? An Exploration of Some Promising Harm Reduction Practices
Anne Philpott and Krissy Ferris
11. Challenging Clitoraid
Petra Boynton
12. How Was It for You? Pleasure and Performance in Sex Work
Jo Doezema
13. Eroticism, Sensuality and 'Women's Secrets' Among the Baganda
Sylvia Tamale
14. Laughter, the Subversive Body Organ
Ana Francis Mor