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including the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW), has resulted in greater recognition of women's
human rights and the violence perpetrated against women, especially
in situations of armed conflict. 'Rights-based approaches' have been
used as the basis for campaigning on women's reproductive and sexual
rights, and their rights to freedom from rape and other forms of
gender-based violence and conflict. Criticisms of rights-based approaches
include the fact that the focus tends to be on anti-discrimination
measures rather than on promoting gender equality and that achiev-
ing women's human rights is difficult to translate into practice at the
local level.
While the GAD approach tries to ensure that women's and men's
views and interests are integral to the design and implementation of
development interventions, commentators have argued that greater
attention needs to be focused on involving men in tackling gender
inequalities and deconstructing stereotypical representations of men
and masculinities. These arguments relate to wider global concerns
about a perceived 'crisis of masculinities' due to conventional male
patriarchal authority being undermined in a range of contexts.
Factors influencing this include the rapid increase in women's par-
ticipation in the labour market, male unemployment and the increas-
ingly informal, flexible and low paid nature of employment
opportunities globally (both dimensions are often termed the 'femini-
zation of labour'; see Chapter 3.2); growing numbers of households
headed by women; increasing gender-based violence against women
and girls; and trends towards lower educational attainment for boys
and young men.
Masculinities approaches acknowledge that development has often
failed to take account of men's roles and identities as gendered indi-
viduals, that not all men enjoy a patriarchal position of privilege, and
that specific groups of men may be particularly marginalized by 'devel-
opment'. This has led to greater efforts to 'engender' the development
process by analysing both men's and women's differential positions,
interests and participation (McIlwaine and Datta, 2003). However, a
renewed focus on men's rights has been met by apprehension from some
feminists who are concerned that a shift away from women's specific
needs and rights, while they still generally occupy a lower socio-economic
status than men in many societies, could lead to further exclusion of
women from the development process.
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