Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure (Hardcover)

This pioneering collection explores the ways in which women's sexual desires are experienced by them and how this experience effects women's empowerment. It shows that an exploration of pleasure can have a hugely positive impact for women at the personal, social and political levels. Traditional gender and development discourses tend to engage with sexuality in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over emphasizing these negative aspects has subsumed women's sexualities under violence, danger and fear. The media, the pharmaceutical market, pornography and the market more broadly on the other hand celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of (young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV negative) people are 'eligible' for sexual pleasure. The book brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both south and north of the globe. It demonstrates both conceptually and through examples of mobilisation, programming and policy, how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.