Brian Linneker

Civil society responses to poverty reduction strategies in Nicaragua

This paper considers the recent experience of civil society organizations in Nicaragua within the Poverty Reduction Strategies Papers (PRSP) process. The focus of the paper is not the poverty reduction strategy itself but rather civil society responses to this initiative in Nicaragua. It highlights the problems beginning to emerge within this process in relation to the World Bank-IMF, the national government and organized civil society. Fundamental to the conceptualization and design of PRSP is the idea of ‘national ownership’ facilitated by wide consultation and participation of civil society in the formulation and evaluation of individual country strategies. This paper uses Nicaragua’s PRSP process to examine the extent to which organized civil society can really influence PRSP formulation. It highlights the differences that exist in how poverty is defined and discussed by the key actors and examines civil society’s response to government proposals and the strategies they have adopted to promote an ‘alternative’ people-centred development perspective.

Gender and poverty: what we know, don’t know, and need to know for Agenda 2030

Abstract Drawing on historical debates on gender, poverty, and the ‘feminisation of poverty’, this paper reflects on current evidence, methods and analysis of gendered poverty. It focuses on initiatives by UN Women, including the Progress of the World’s Women 2015–16. Our analysis of the data compiled by UN Women raises questions about what might account for the over-representation of women among the poor in official accounts of poverty, and how this is plausibly changing (or not) over time. The paper highlights that analysis of what is measured and how needs to be understood in relation to who is the focus of measurement. The lack of available data which is fit for purpose questions the extent to which gender poverty differences are ‘real’ or statistical. There is a continued reliance on comparing female with male headed households, and we argue the move by UN Women to adopt the notion of Female Only Households reflects available data driving conceptual understandings of women’s poverty, rather than conceptual advances driving the search for better data. Wider UN processes highlight that while sensitivity to differences among women and their subjectivities are paramount in understanding the multiple processes accounting for gender bias in poverty burdens, they are still accorded little priority. To monitor advances in Agenda 2030 will require more and better statistics. Our review suggests that we are still far from having a set of tools able to adequately measure and monitor gendered poverty.

Extractive industries as sites of supernormal profits and supernormal patriarchy

ABSTRACT This article considers how patriarchal power relations between men and women are produced and reproduced within extractive industries, and examines the idea that the ‘supernormal profits’ to be made there encourage the development of ‘supernormal patriarchy’. By looking at the sites where extraction takes place and relationships between men and women within these sites, we show the extreme and exaggerated gender roles and relations that are found here. We nuance this account by highlighting the need to recognise that patriarchal power is not felt equally by all women and men. Exploring the different roles women adopt in the extractives context we demonstrate the fluidity of women’s identities as workers, ‘whores’, and wives with a focus on transactional sex. The article demonstrates the importance of not seeing women merely as victims of patriarchal relations, or making assumptions about how these relations operate, or the form they take. Better understanding of the range of gender roles adopted in the extractives and the supernormal patriarchal relations that produce and reproduce these is needed by policymakers. This will enable them to promote gender equality and natural resource justice, as part of an agenda to redistribute wealth gains from natural resource extraction.