Reinventing Social Contracts : the Promise of Human Rights

Global citizens' struggles today stress the building of effective links between development agencies in the voluntary sector, environmental organizations, and the women's movement.

DAWN - Development Action for Women Network - which has long brought together many leading Third World women thinkers and activists, has been vigorously contributing to developing such linkages between the different approaches to and struggles for economic justice and gender justice.

In this volume, DAWN sets out the analyzes they have developed during two decades of research, thinking and political work.

In the context of a powerful analytic framework that takes account of the changing circumstances and issues confronting women at the beginning of the 21st century, DAWN argues from a feminist perspective for reinventing social contracts to fulfill the promise of human rights.This is intended to provide a holistic and radical understanding of the synergies, tensions and contradictions between social movements and global, regional and local processes on the one hand, and feminist perspectives and goals on the other. The specific issues addressed include: a feminist analysis and critique of current approaches to global governance; the diversity of issues confronting feminists at the level of the nation state in all its diversity; religious fundamentalism which, despite its variety of religious expressions, has at its heart an agenda aiming at control over women; the struggle for livelihoods and for control over women's bodies and lives; and, the practical issues raised by alliances, coalition-building attempts and gender politics within movements for social change.