With a focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals 5: Gender Equality and Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities, we have published research addressing all of the Equality Act 2010 protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
As an organisation, we believe that people from all walks of life should be able to participate in society on a level playing field. Themes around social justice and equal opportunities run through all of our publishing lists and underpin our overall strategy.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Equity, diversity and inclusion, we aim to address the following goals:
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
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Gender-based violence is a rampant problem in Latin American countries. Historically, state policy to prevent and sanction it has developed slowly, usually having limited impact because of a lack of resources and political will. While the process of policy adoption involved feminist organizations and international norms diffusion, little is known about when and why policy to address gender-based violence can become a political priority. Based on a comparative case study of Peru and Argentina, we show that sustained mass mobilization was the key variable marking a turning point in both countries in state capacity building in that domain. The latter was importantly enhanced as a consequence of the Ni Una Menos protests. Through process-tracing analysis, we show that there was a substantial increase in state resources and personnel, as well as institutional innovation. This transformation occurred in response to the unprecedented mass mobilization of various sectors of society.
It has been well documented that the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses in the UK had discriminatory effects on racially minoritised communities, older people and carers. While separate studies have investigated outcomes for these groups, few have brought them together. This article shares findings from a qualitative study undertaken during the pandemic that investigated impacts on the everyday lives of three racially minoritised groups in the UK: older people and unpaid and paid carers for adults. Situating the data in a wider context and viewed through a feminist lens of everyday political economy, we argue that the pandemic both reflected ongoing crises in and of care and intensified life-making practices of social reproduction. As revealed through narratives of everyday care experiences at the ‘peak’ moment of the pandemic, the crisis was characterised by depletion through care and caring, reinforcing and deepening existing racialised, gendered and class-based hierarchies of inequality.
This conceptual article examines the relational dynamic between the research field focusing on the far right and those critical scholars that endeavour to undertake these studies. It is theoretically anchored in the field of political science scholarship that recognises the key role played by gender in understanding both the ideological underpinnings and the workings of various far-right entities and by intersectionality in explaining complex systems of power and inequality. Specifically, this article addresses how the complex subjectivity of scholars of the far right shapes the demands for and experiences of emotional labour along three interconnected arenas: the fieldwork, neoliberal academia and their private lives. The conclusion highlights the need for more attention to the ways in which unequal demands for emotional labour in the academic context perpetuate existing inequalities and that institutions should improve support for scholars whose work demands a high degree of emotional labour.
Introduction:
Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is an important global health issue linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Adolescents in refugee settings face specific SRH needs and risks, and limited access to needed services. This research, therefore, aimed to develop an understanding of SRH needs of, and risks to, adolescent refugees, to inform adolescent sexual and reproductive health policies and programmes.
Methodology:
The study employed qualitative approaches. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with adolescent refugees and nine key informant interviews with stakeholders, including representatives from NGOs, health facility workers and refugee leaders. We performed content and thematic analysis drawing on the ecological systems theory framework.
Findings:
Reproductive health issues presented by adolescent refugees included menstruation supplies, reproductive health education and contraception. Participants reported several reproductive health risk factors that include risky sexual relationships, child abuse in homes, early marriage, teenage pregnancies and forced marriage, and sexual and gender-based violence.
Conclusion:
The findings highlight significant gaps in adolescent refugees’ knowledge and access to SRH services. These gaps are shaped by cultural norms, limited service availability, and lack of targeted SRH education for young people in refugee settings.
Recommendation:
Targeted training is vital to guaranteeing efficient delivery of SRH services; with humanitarian organisations ensuring their personnel is appropriately trained to support adolescent refugees and their SRH needs. Culturally appropriate services are required to ensure greater buy-in and build trusting relationships with the population.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been at the forefront of feminist struggles for equality; however, movements to prevent VAWG have been depoliticised, particularly by Western voices, with processes rooted in colonialism and patriarchy. Despite a growing movement to decolonise violence prevention and centre voices and experiences of the Global South, many continue to navigate power-imbalanced partnerships. To dismantle power imbalances within North–South and South–South collaborations, it is necessary to reflect on positionalities and ‘power within’, explore deep structures of partnership models, technical assistance and funding mechanisms, and collectively harness the ‘power to’ create systems promoting trust, mutual learning and accountability.
We conducted a qualitative retrospective and prospective, multi-site case study to generate evidence on effective technical assistance and partnership models for adapting and scaling VAWG prevention programmes and contribute to discussions on feminist funding approaches and devolution of funder power. We examined partnership models and power dynamics among funders, programme designers and implementers involved in adapting Program H (Lebanon), Take Back the Tech Campaign (Mexico), Safetipin (South Africa), Legal Promoters Training and Community Care Model (Cape Verde) and Transforming Masculinities (Nigeria). This provocation builds upon findings from this research by offering first-person reflections from some members of the study team, Study Advisory Board and study participants. Authors respond to provocative statements by drawing upon experiences from this study and other projects for how funders, programme implementers and researchers can better work together to accelerate efforts to achieve social and gender justice within and beyond the violence prevention field.
Territorial inequalities in access to care and the lack of health practitioners represent one of the important challenges health systems are facing worldwide. Territorial management seems to be the discipline to address these concerns in a holistic and interdisciplinary way, specifically via the concept of lived territory. Territorial management and health geography share the same vision on the definition of the lived territory, namely a territory which is a social construction, dynamic and shaped by its users. However, territorial management lacks tools to define the lived territory, whereas the ‘relative flows’ method in health geography identifies users’ real healthcare consumption on the territory, offering an operational tool for stakeholders, including healthcare professionals and local decision makers. Focusing on the intersection of management and health geography, this study is looking to address the question: to what extent would the inter- and transdisciplinary approach enable an effective response to the difficulties of access to care in the territory?
This research is based on a case study of the French region Centre-Val de Loire. The findings of the study emphasise an added value of the inter- and transdisciplinary approach in operationalisation of territorial management discipline. The lived territory concept appears a most appropriate grid in the evaluation of inequalities in access to care and thus an effective tool to mobilise the involvement of healthcare stakeholders in a new territorial organisation centred on user needs in care.
This article identifies protests by organized women concerning state-imposed clothing requirements and bans. Relying on secondary sources, government reports, and newspaper accounts, the article analyzes women’s embodiment of protest in three mass actions around the globe: protests against mandatory hijab wearing in Iran, and global “Slut Walks” and “Take Back/Reclaim the Night” marches. The article locates these campaigns in women’s movement activism and shows how activist women, protesting for their goals, embody and hence achieve their goals in these campaigns. In this regard, such protests involve more than vestments: these protests assert women’s citizenship equality with men and demonstrate that achieving a goal that challenges the state is possible. The article concludes with speculations about state responses to women’s embodied protest.
This chapter draws the analyses from each campaign detailed in the previous chapters to explore overall findings. In short, this research has shown that international Twitter-driven hashtag campaigns can and do have relationships with domestic legal change for women and girls. This research provides crucial evidence-based insight for activists, academics, and campaigners around the world working to improve the lives of women and girls. The data shows that there are certain campaign behaviours which are associated with more positive legal outcomes and characteristics which are linked to negative legal outcomes. Campaigns which are domestically driven, with a high level of foreign attention, showing persistence, engagement, and consistency, are more likely to lead to positive legal outcomes. Conversely, campaigns which lack in domestic drive, can be seen as ‘foreign meddling’ or ‘colonial violence’, and fail to achieve persistence, engagement, or consistency, are more likely to lead to negative outcomes.
With over five billion internet users globally, it is crucial to understand social media activism and legal change for women and girls.
This insightful book examines the impact of international Twitter (now X) campaigns on domestic laws affecting women and girls. Exploring the complexities of legal change for women and girls across seven countries from Latin America to Middle East and Africa, the book offers empirical insights into the effectiveness of hashtag advocacy and sheds light on the role of social media in shaping different outcomes.
This is a key resource for understanding the dynamics driving social media activism and its potential impact on the rights of women and girls worldwide.
This chapter gives an overview of why this book is so important, rooting it in frontline advocacy experience and campaign work. Important global internet and social media statistics are presented to frame the research. The chapter then gives a brief overview of the campaigns studied, the theories used, and a roadmap for the rest of the book.
