Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: An Introduction

Using a word like reclaiming in a title might well conjure up an image of looking back rather than forward. It could even suggest a notion of rejection rather than an image of opportunity. We use the term ‘reclaim’ in its most positive and forward-looking sense: meeting the challenges of the future by taking back what belongs to women. It may be a rhetorical device but it is linked to our vision of the book as contributing to ways to change fundamental inequalities inherent in gender relations and livelihoods embedded in today’s economic development policy and agricultural and community practices. The book highlights the analyses, methodologies, and practices that emerge from the diversity of experiences of the authors, who are from Brazil, Great Britain, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Tanzania, the Netherlands, Uruguay, and the United States working in policy, funding agencies, civil society networks, social movements and academe. Starting from a repositioning of sustainable livelihoods as a political and gendered concept by Sumi Krishna, the book points to where spaces are opening for gender and sustainable livelihoods issues while also noting where spaces have closed as a consequence of the shifts in policy narratives on gender, development, agriculture, business, environment, and technology. In timing the book to come out in the summer of 2012, we aim to contribute to the spaces opening up around the Rio+20 process.