Amnesty International and Women's Rights Feminist Strategies, Leadership Commitment and Internal Resistances Miriam Ganzfried

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ganzfried, Miriam <p>Miriam Ganzfried, Universität Zürich, Schweiz</p>, Author.

Contributor:

Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Funder.

Series:

Edition Politik

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Amnesty International.

Women's Rights.

Human Rights Organizations.

Networks.

Civil Society.

Politics.

Law.

Human Rights.

Gender Studies.

Social Movements.

Political Science.

Local Subjects:

Amnesty International.

Women's Rights.

Human Rights Organizations.

Networks.

Civil Society.

Politics.

Law.

Human Rights.

Gender Studies.

Social Movements.

Political Science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.) 516 MB 24 SW-Abbildungen

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Ganzfried, Amnesty International and Women's Rights Feminist Strategies, Leadership Commitment and Internal Resistances

Place of Publication:

Bielefeld transcript Verlag 2021

Language Note:

English

Biography/History:

Miriam Ganzfried (Dr. phil.), born in 1979, is a Political Scientist and works at the Center for Higher Education and Science Studies (CHESS) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She studied political science and gender studies at the Universities of Geneva and Zurich. During her dissertation, she worked at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Bern and at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Her research interests are change processes and resistances in organizations, equal opportunity policies and higher education management.

Summary:

Amnesty International's (AI) focus on civil and political rights has marked their work with a gender bias from the outset. In the first comprehensive look at AI's work on women's rights, Miriam Ganzfried illustrates the development of their activities regarding women's rights issues over twenty years. Through interviews with staff members and activists and unprecedented access to archive material from the Swiss and the German AI sections, she shows how women activists strategized to make AI increase its work on women's rights. Additionally, the book demonstrates that, despite the leadership's commitment to the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, internal resistance hampered the integration of women's rights into the organization's overall work.

»The book is a humbling reminder of how difficult it has been to arrive at an agreement that women's rights are human rights. It will no doubt serve as a key reference for tracking progress on the integration of women's rights within AI and in human rights discourse more broadly in the years to come.«

Contents:

Cover

Contents

List of figures

List of graphs

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose and delimitation

1.2 Significance

1.3 Theoretical paradigm

1.4 Structure of the study

2. Problem and research questions

2.1 A gender‐biased understanding of human rights

2.2 Contestation of the traditional understanding of human rights

2.3 Response of human rights NGOs

2.4 Research questions

3. Conceptualization

4. Focused literature review

4.1 Social constructivism in International Relations

4.2 The role of norm entrepreneurs in the emergence of international norms

4.3 Comparatively powerless actors' strategies for influencing norm dynamics

4.4 Norm diffusion and norm dynamics

4.5 The study's theoretical contribution

5. Data and method(s)

5.1 The origin and characteristics of Grounded Theory

5.2 Reasons for the use of grounded theory techniques

5.3 Case selection

5.4 Data corpora

5.4.1 Criteria for data collection and generation

5.4.2 Written archival documents

5.4.3 Interview data

5.5 Data analysis

6. AI's structure, decision‐making, and policy implementation

6.1 Brief overview of the development of AI's work in general

6.2 A gendered human rights NGO

6.3 Internal structure - the international level

6.4 Internal structure - the national levels

6.4.1 The Swiss section

6.4.2 The German section

6.5 Decision‐making and implementation

6.5.1 The international level - The IS as a powerfull central node

6.5.2 The national level - AI sections

7. The beginnings of AI's interest in VAW

7.1 The international level

7.1.1 Policy development 1989-2001

7.1.1.1 ICM decisions indirectly concerning AI's work on VAW

7.1.1.2 ICM decisions directly concerning AI's work on VAW.

7.1.2 Policy Implementation - AI's activities on VAW within the frame of the mandate

7.1.2.1 Women in the Front Line

7.1.2.2 Human Rights are Women's Rights

7.1.2.3 Take a Step to Stamp Out Torture

7.1.3 Feminist strategizing

7.1.4 AI's work on women's rights discussed

7.2 The national levels

7.2.1 The Swiss section

7.2.1.1 First collective and individual initiatives

7.2.1.2 A women's network emerges

7.2.1.3 Ignorance rather than opposition

7.2.2 The German section

7.2.2.1 Sektionsarbeitskreis Menschenrechtsverletzungen an Frauen

7.2.2.2 The MaF's successful attempts to influence decision‐making

7.2.2.3 Disinterest regarding women's rights

7.3 Intermediate conclusions

8. The challenges to make women's rights part of AI's DNA

8.1 The international level

8.1.1 Policy development 2002-2010

8.1.1.1 ICM Decisions indirectly concerning AI's work on VAW

8.1.1.2 Decisions directly concerning AI's work on VAW

8.1.2 Policy Implementation- Focus and content of the SVAW campaign

8.1.3 Pushing work on the issue of VAW from the top down

8.1.3.1 Policy development initiated by the IEC

8.1.3.2 Getting ready for the SVAW campaign

8.1.3.3 The SVAW campaign Machinery

8.1.4 Resistance against AI's work on VAW

8.1.4.1 Resistance against the SVAW campaign

8.1.4.2 Resistance against the adoption of a policy on abortion

8.2 The national levels

8.2.1 The Swiss section

8.2.1.1 Merging the international campaign strategy with the section's priorities

8.2.1.2 The continuing importance of the women's network

8.2.1.3 Women's rights - confined to a story by women acting for women

8.2.2 The German section

8.2.2.1 Look &amp

Act: Preventing Violence against Women

8.2.2.2 The MaF - a group of voluntary experts.

8.2.2.3 Highly controversial issues - domestic violence and abortion

8.2.3 Comparison between the Swiss and the German AI sections

8.3 Intermediate conclusions

9. Discussion and outlook

9.1 Summary and new insights

9.1.1 New insights into the mandate period

9.1.2 New insights into the post‐mandate period

9.2 Implications for other human rights NGOs

9.3 The study's theoretical contribution

9.3.1 Ways that comparatively powerless actors can influence norm emergence

9.3.2 Reasons for limited norm diffusion

9.4 Outlook

Appendix

Appendix 1: Coordinators of the Intersectional Women's Network IWN

Appendix 2: Additional graphs and figures

Appendix 3: AI's statute, mandate, and mission

Sources and Literature

Sources

Amnesty International archive

Archive of the Swiss section of Amnesty International, Bern

Archive of the German section of Amnesty International, Berlin

Private archives

Archival Material

Interview Material

Internet Documents

Literature

List of abbreviations.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

ISBN:

9783839460085

3839460085

Publisher Number:

9783839460085