Global Women's Studies Research Cluster

Cluster Themes

The Gender, Empowerment and Globalisation Research Cluster does work in two thematic areas:

Gender, Land, Empowerment and Equality

Gender equality is critical for economic growth, and particularly rural development. However there is little academic research establishing the interrelationship between gender equality and economic growth nor a comprehensive index of gender equality that reflects its myriad dimensions. A key focus of research will be developing a more complex model of the interrelation between a wider set of institutional measures of gender equality such as age of marriage, women’s wealth or property ownership, and representation in parliaments with economic growth. Such a model will be useful to identify core policies and critical areas of investment to promote gender equality.

Ownership and control of assets, and particularly land, are critical to realizing sustainable livelihoods across the global North and South. However there is universal inequity in the distribution of assets between men and women hindering women’s ability to participate as producers, consumers and distributors within the rural economy. Beyond this truism there is little research establishing rigorously the extent of women’s asset ownership and the impacts of that ownership. How does asset ownership impact women’s role as producers? In countries such as Ireland, is there an increasing trend in women’s asset ownership with rural enterprise emerging as the new alternative to the disappearing family farm? Does it facilitate women’s participation and leadership in rural governance structures such as producer co-operatives, farmers’ societies, and marketing boards? What is the meaning of asset ownership for women – power to choose, economic security, entrepreneurial capital? What are the implications of these shifts for changing power dynamics between women and men?

Religion, Gender, Sexuality and Rights

Tensions between the claims of gender equality, broadly defined, and of religion are well-documented. Women’s movements have generally sought to resolve these tensions through an alignment with ’secularism’ within a progressive, liberal, and modernizing framework, wherein religion is viewed as a ’private’ matter. Increasingly, however, this narrative is in contention. Processes of globalization and immigration have fostered the re-emergence of religion as a significant social, cultural, and political force across public and private life in increasingly multicultural societies. This is evidenced, for example, in the recent preoccupation in the West with whether or not Muslim girls and women should be permitted to wear variations of the Muslim headscarf in (public) schools and/or workplaces. We also see clashes between, on the one side, those who believe that same-sex couples should have the same rights as opposite-sex couples and, on the other side, those who believe that this would offend deeply held, usually religiously grounded, ’values’. In tandem with these events, academic debate on the role of religion(s) vis-à-vis the state, the public sphere, and civil society, and whether or not we are entering a post-secular age, has proliferated. How these debates and related practices evolve has far-reaching implications for how religious diversity is accommodated in Ireland and societies around the world. Moreover, the revival of religion profoundly shapes how we understand and seek to realize gender equality, including in relation to sexual identities, across all domains – personal, family, economic, social, cultural, legal and political. Research carried out under this theme aims to deepen knowledge of these developments and to address the sociological, policy and human rights challenges that they present.

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