WUNRN

CALL FOR PAPERS - Gender & Development: Business and Enterprise

The March 2012 issue of the international journal Gender & Development, (published for Oxfam GB by Routledge/Taylor and Francis) will look at Business and Enterprise. There is now growing recognition that business can – and must - be part of the solution to global poverty and inequality. By enabling poor women and men to obtain decent employment, affordable goods, services and credit, as well as improving incomes through access to markets, businesses – the ‘private sector’ - can contribute to human development.

Development and feminist policymakers and practitioners, and researchers, including private sector workers themselves, are all invited to share insights in this Business and Enterprise issue of Gender & Development. The journal is essential reading for all concerned with gender-fair development. It is currently read in over 90 countries, and our content is published as an online and print journal at www.tandfonline.com/gad. We also publish material from the journal on our free access website at www.genderanddevelopment.org

A key focus in this issue will be the impact on development, gender equality and women’s rights of progressive businesses, which are integrating social and environmental responsibilities into their core business operations and decision-making processes, for example through Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethical Trading Initiatives. Article ideas might include:

· Examples of companies and jobs offering women ‘decent work’, discussing the reasons for these initiatives/charting their impact on livelihoods, working conditions, rights, equality.

· Have new business strategies such as Corporate Social Responsibility, etc, actually improved conditions for female workers? Have multi stakeholder initiatives such as the UK Ethical Trading Initiative delivered promised benefits for women workers? What can concrete case studies tell us about the impact of these on women's lives?

· Home-based workers – case studies of initiatives which focus on the particular challenges of decent work for women homeworkers

· What are the effects of efforts to make goods and services affordable to poor women and men and their dependents in developing countries, on the target markets, and on local economies?

Another focus in this issue will be the scope offered by small and medium enterprise to provide decent work for women in developing countries, and the barriers to entry and growth of women-owned businesses. We will focus on ways in which NGOs and businesses can support women to scale-up their operations, increase their bargaining power in markets, diversify the goods and services they offer, and gain access to the resources they need to turn their activities into successful enterprises. Ideas:

· Examples of development/business initiatives promoting female entrepreneurs in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector – particularly focusing on the following:

o Constraints and opportunities for women starting and growing SMEs

o Do women-owned SMEs perform differently from men-owned businesses, in terms of wages/working conditions for their employees, product lines, ways of doing business?

All articles need to be based on first-hand experience, or research on-the-ground in particular country contexts. We particularly welcome contributions from development practitioners with first-hand experience to share. Don’t worry if you think you are not a writer for a journal – we will help you with style and language! For full guidelines and more information on the journal visit www.genderanddevelopment.org

Please send a paragraph outlining your proposed idea for an article for this issue to csweetman@oxfam.org.uk, , as soon as possible, and before the commissioning deadline: 8 August 2011. If we are able to offer space for your contribution, we will write to you by 15 August to say so. Commissioned articles will need to be completed for a deadline of 15 October 2011.