Land is a powerful asset, but it also has a social function. Its economic and social aspects are central in advancing gender equality. Legal control of land as well as legal and social recognition of women’s uses of and rights to land, can also have catalytic effects of empowerment, increasing women’s influence and status in their homes and communities. During past decades changes in the Chinese land tenure rights and practices have brought important incentives for rural developments including farmer income and living standards. However, rural women’s land rights are still not adequately implemented. Despite modernization, China is administratively and socially very hierarchical. Foucault's idea of power provides a better starting point for looking at the use of power at the grassroots level than the hierarchical conception of power. Although the Communist Party has significant hierarchical power, at the village level, there are several parties involved in the exercise of power with different motives and perceptions. Regarding to methodology, many researchers have utilized government and other official material to explain certain phenomenon. This research is mainly based on interviews because they can provide an insight that might otherwise be invisible in official documents. This research uses an intersectional approach to qualitative content analysis. It allows the exploration of numerous intersection themes simultaneously. For example, according to this research, age, marital status, location, and gender play an important role in women’s equality situation.

Team

This was an education workshop bringing women from all the SADC countries together to innovate food products from indigenous foods. Some of the food innovations were then piloted further and scaled.

Team

Professor Kati Lindroos, UEF; Professor David Katerere Tshwane University of Technology

This study explores inequalities in access to housing. In the light of the premise "Leave no one behind", the case study on occupations and struggle against evictions in social housing estates of Lisbon metropolitan area (LMA) draws the attention to the groups of population that are excluded from access to housing. In particular, gendered and racialised aspects of housing exclusions are examined. In addition, the role of civil society in contesting housing exclusion is analysed.

Team

Saila-Maria Saaristo

This project aims at rethinking ways of reading and writing change in African gender history. Looking at oral historical narratives and the transgenerational communication of historical knowledge among the Yaawo-speaking people in northern Mozambique, it brings the study of gender in African deeper pasts in dialogue with a cultural analysis of the contemporary historical moment. My starting argument is that our understanding of the contemporary historical moment in African gender history is strongly framed by the gender and development models of the social sciences which emphasize women’s struggle for gender equality in relation to men. This understanding influences the way in which we approach the past and write our research narratives. Through this history writing, women’s historical experiences become fixed within teleological narratives of ‘liberation’ (/‘oppression’). The past is distanced from the present along a linear path, and what is termed the ‘precolonial past’ is isolated as a separate unit of study. In my research, I seek to challenge this temporal model and explore new ways to read and write gendered histories that more fully capture the multiplicity of the gendered temporalities that constitute African existence. Overall, my study has a two-fold objective: Firstly, on the basis of the Yaawo oral historical narratives, it aims to contribute to our understanding of female political and spiritual power in Africa’s precolonial past and the historical processes of change in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. Secondly, I will study how these deeper histories also echo and are reworked in the present and thus constitute the contemporary historical experience in interaction with, for instance, more recent socialist ideas of women’s emancipation and the current development discourse on gender equality. Overall, my research proposes to open new routes in the theoretical thinking as well as the methodologies of African gender history.

Team

Emerging technologies such as affordable smart phones with 4G access, broadband internet, and interactive interfaces employing gestures or speech, are revolutionizing the ways we access information, learn new skills and interact with the world around us. However, developing world communities - who stand to benefit from such technologies - were, until recently, largely neglected. Interactive technologies provide a means to address learning challenges such as functional illiteracy and information access barriers, and can improve learning and education, health and wellbeing, and agricultural practices.

Team

Markku Turunen, Jaakko Hakulinen, Mikko Ruohonen, Sumita Sharma, Pekka Kallioniemi, Juhani Linna

The article-based PhD thesis builds on five published articles. It explores how international human rights law regulates the prevention of honour-related violence (also called honour-based violence). The thesis analyses the obligation of the State to not only punish this form of violence but also to undertake other preventive measures. The legal discussion of honour-related violence has so far largely focused on criminalisation. This research brings to the fore the questions of whether States also should try to abolish the underlying causes of honour-related violence, above all strict gender roles and negative gender stereotypes that regard men as superior to women.

Team

The overall aim of the project is to improve productivity, livelihoods, nutrition and household wellbeing in Ghana and Uganda, while counteracting environmental degradation and mineral depletion caused by monocultures. The study will address both the individual farm level and the rural community level. Introducing the use of biofertilizers through a participatory process can highlight the potential of location-based resources, and empower the community more widely.

Team

Sumelius John (Project manager, Lindström Kristina (Principal investigator), Benjamin Ahiabor, John Baptist Tumuhairwe, Åsa Frostegård, Aserse Aregu (Participant), Vihinen Hilkka (Project manager), Sell Mila (Project manager), Sipiläinen Timo (Participant), Bäckman, Stefan, (Participant) Rosengren, Linda (Other)

Access to schooling and higher education are considered as primary means to empower marginalized groups and enhance sustainable development in the Global South. In Ecuador the intercultural bilingual education programme that affirmed the fundamental importance of integrating diverse local languages knowledges and pedagogical practices in education was established already in and later amended based on the community-centric ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive philosophy of sumakkawsay (buenvivir). However the programme is still only partially applied and thus education typically follows homogenized standards and fails to include specific cultural realities.

Team

Johanna Hohenthal

We are proposing a three component intervention including health education, a take-home reminder card and a shopping voucher aimed at reducing heavy lifting/carrying among pregnant women in Ghana.The purpose is to reduce the incidence of preterm Birth (less than 37 weeks) and low birthweight (less than 2500 g) which are currently high in the country. Access to funding to implement the intervention on a larger scale promises some solutions to the soaring numbers of adverse pregnancy outcomes in low and middle income countries.

Team

Professor Kimmo Räsänen, Dr. Jos Verbeek, Emma Kwegyir-Afful, Dr Lydia Aziato, Professor J.D. Seffah.

RespMat studies fetal and childhood physical, psychosocial and environmental determinants of a key non-communicable disease, obstructive airways disease, in 15-year-olds and their mothers in rural Bangladesh, a least-developed and fragile country.

Team

Eero Kajantie, Pieta Näsänen-Gilmore