SASNET: Centre for Global Gender Studies

GADNET has evolved out of Global Gender Studies, formally established as the Centre for Global Gender Studies (CGGS), a unit at Göteborg University, within its School of Global Studies, on 1 January 2004.
Its history, however, dated back many years. In 1993 the first took root in a multi-disciplinary feminist seminar, Femfo, which started, based at the Dept. of Peace and Development Research (PADRIGU).
In June 2003 Prof. Gita Sen from the the Centre for Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India, inaugurated the Network for Global Gender Studies, that later evolved into CGGS.

The South Asia oriented researcher Dr. Monica Erwér from the Dept. of Peace and Development Research (PADRIGU) became the first Deputy Director for CGGS. She was also first Coordinator for the Swedish Gender and Development Network (GADNET), established in 2004, see below.
Since August 2009, Dr. Erwér works as Team Leader for the Swedish non-governmental organisation Svalorna Indien-Bangladesh (The Swallows India Bangladesh section) an organisation headquartered at Lund, and working mainly with local organisations in Tamil Nadu (India) and in Rajshahi district (Bangladesh). More information about The Swallows India Bangladesh.

Other South Asia oriented researchers working with CGGS are Dr. Gunilla Blomqvist, and Dr. Marie Thynell, both from PADRIGU. More information about their respective research, see the PADRIGU page.

Naila Kabeer, was a guest professor (Hasselgren Professorship) at the Centre for Global Gender Studies in 2004 (up to 15 January 2005), but is now back to her ordinary position as Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, UK. She is however still closely engaged with PADRIGU, and is a member of the board for the Centre for Global Gender Studies.
Kabeer who comes from Bangladesh is a social economist and works primarily on poverty, gender, and social policy issues. She is the author of books such as ”Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought” (Vero 1994) and ”The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka” (Verso 2000). In 2003 she published ”Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals – a handbook for policy makers and other stakeholders” at IDRC Books, the publishing arm of Canada's International Development Research Centre).

Gender and Development Network (GADNET)

The first major project within the CGGS was to initiate the national Gender and Development Network (GADNET) for which CGGS received Sida/SAREC funding for the period 2004-09. GADNET has developed into being a multidisciplinary national network of Swedish researchers and doctorate students with specific research interests in gender and development. It was launched in April 2004 and even though it is institutionally based ay CGGS, Göteborg University, is also organises activities such as seminars and conferences all over Sweden, via key contact persons (called nodes) at different universities and university colleges. These are supposed to form sub-divisions of the national network. More information on GADNET’s organisation.

In 2009, GADNET created a sub-network entitled GADIP. Its role should be to bridge the gap in knowledge and experiences between scholars and practitioners, building on excellent contacts with researchers, networks and practitioners in Europe and the South. Activities include bi-annual combined GADNET/GADIP workshops that will be arranged on highly topical issues, for instance on ’Gendered Migration’ (planned for the spring 2010). Keynote speakers will be renowned researchers and activists.
On December 1, 2009, the Research Secretariat at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) decided to award SEK 500 000 to GADNET as a networking grant to run its sub-network GADIP during the period 2010–2012. It is one out of four new networks getting funding from Sida in 2009, with a mission to bridge the gap between researchers and development work practitioners in Sweden. See the list of networks supported by Sida 2009.

GADNET arranges yearly Dream Catcher workshops, as they are called.
The first workshop arranged in August 2004 focused on ”Citizenship, rights and gender justice”. More than forty members of GADNET attended, and the speakers at the workshop included internationally renowned researchers and activists, i.e. Prof. Drude Dahlerup, Prof. Naila Kabeer and Ms. Muthoni Wanyeki, the former executive director of FEMNET. The 2004 DreamCatcher was in itself a follow-up to another conference arranged in August 2002 on ”Gender and power”, also visited by Naila Kabeer (research fellow at IDS Sussex).
28 February– 2 March 2005, GADNET organised a major conference in Göteborg on ”Negotiating Gender Justice Conference”, to which 12 invited researchers from the South contributed. The conference focused on gender relations in countries in the South and aims at exploring how meanings of gender justice are negotiated at all levels of society, in parliaments as well as in bedrooms, and aimed at initiating sustainable contacts between researchers in Sweden and their colleagues in the South.
GADNET organised a workshop on ”New Challenges for Gender Justice fundamentalisms, markets and rights” in Uppsala 10–11 November 2005. The workshop, hosted by the Collegium for Development Studies at Uppsala University and the Nordic Africa Institute, discussing gender politics and efforts towards ‘gender justice’ at different sites and scales in different countries. Among the lecturers were Shahra Razavi (photo to the right), Research Coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Developmnent (UNRISD) in Geneva; and Prof. Saraswati Raju, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Venue: Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala. More information on the workshop.

13–15 December 2006, GADNET organised a Global conference on ”A World in Transition – New Challenges for Gender Justice” in New Delhi, India, conference, continuing the exploration of gender justice begun during the first international conference “Negotiating Gender Justice”, held in Göteborg, Sweden in 2005 (see above). The New Delhi conference was organised in collaboration with the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS). Keynote speakers were Dr. Vina Mazumdar, Founder of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi; Prof. Ulla Björnberg, Department of Sociology, Göteborg University; Dr. Anupama Roy, Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi; Dr. Ritu Menon, Women Unlimited, New Delhi; Dr. Adriana Ortis-Ortega, Women’s Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico; Prof. Jayati Ghosh, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (photo to the right), Director, Centre for Study the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; and Prof. Kim Eun-Shil, Department of Women’s Studies, Asian Centre for Women’s Studies, Seoul, South Korea. The conference was exclusively open for GADNET members and by CWDS invited researchers.

In 2008, GADNET organised a Dreamcatcher conference 6–7 March at Lund University. It was titled "Gender, Religion and Development", and was organised by the researchers Sidsel Hansson and Monica Lindberg Falk, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.

The 2009 GADNET Dreamcatcher/GADIP workshop was entitled ”Gendered Resistance at times of Economic Crisis”. It was held at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg on Friday 30 October 2009. More information.

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SASNET - Swedish South Asian Studies Network/Lund University
Address: Scheelevägen 15 D, SE-223 70 Lund, Sweden
Phone: +46 46 222 73 40
Webmaster: Lars Eklund
Last updated 2011-04-08

SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

Gender and Development Network (Gadnet) c/o School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University

Gender and Development Network (GADNET)