Globalization has intensified pressures on poor women, and they have resisted in both the North and the South in movements that are either exclusively female or significantly female. This book analyzes women's grassroots activism in the two key areas of claims to livelihood and human rights.

Globalization has intensified the pressures on poor women. They have resisted in both the North and the South in movements that are exclusively female and in others where women play a significant part. This book brings together scholars and organizers to record and analyze women's grassroots activism in two key areas: claims to livelihood and human rights. Opening with the historical struggle for emancipation, it covers more recent examples of diverse resistance: women fighting for environmental and reproductive rights, mobilizing against poverty and racism, fighting the inequalities imposed by structural adjustment programmes and campaigning for human rights. The cases range form the British miners' strike to making gender central to the Guatemalan peace process. They contribute to the ongoing debate about the scope of women's movements, while demonstrating how women's activism around needs and rights is a crucial element in the global struggle for equality and justice.

1. Introduction - Sheila Rowbotham and Stephanie Linkogle 2. Facets of Emancipation: Women in Movement from the Eighteenth Century to the Present - Sheila Rowbotham 3. Uncommon Women and the Common Good: Women and Environmental Protest - Temma Kaplan 4. Women Community and British Miners' Strike of 1984-85 - Meg Allen 5. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Women's Self-Mobilization to Overcome Poverty in Uganda - Sylvia Tamale 6. Adithi - Creating Economic and Social Alternatives - Viji Srinivasan 7. New Roots for Rights: Women's Responses to Population and Development Policies - Navtej Purewal 8. Nicaraguan Women in the Age of Globalization - Stephanie Linkogle 9. Sexual Politics in Indonesia: From Soeharno's Old Order to Soeharto's New Order - Saskia E Wieringa 10. Creating Alternative Spaces: Black Women in Resistance - Pragna Patel of Southall Black Sisters interviewed by Paminder Parbha 11. Individual and Community Rights Advocacy Forum: Campaigning for Women's Rights in Papua New Guinea - Orovu Seope 12. Guatemala: Implementation of the Gender Demands Included in the Peace Accords - Lessons Learned - Clara Jimeno