In the last two decades public policies have reflected a drive for accelerated global economic integration ('globalization'), associated with greater economic liberalization. The outcomes have been largely disappointing, even in the estimate of their designers. Rural livelihoods have become more...

The 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (the “Beijing Conference”) was a landmark in policy terms, setting a global policy framework to advance gender equality. Ten years after Beijing, in March 2005, the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women presided over an intergovernmental meeting...