Recasting power and transforming governance: A feminist perspective from the South

Viviene Taylor looks at the many challenges that experiences of governing and being governed pose for democratic movements and for those previously excluded from government. She draws on research undertaken with women in selected countries in the global South by Development Alternatives with Women in a new era (DAWN) on governance and social transformation. She points to several factors that emerge from the research that have implications for democratic governance. Among them are how governments face the need for a formative break with the old order and, at the same time, how they ensure continuity with it. How women with critical feminist consciousness enter political spaces in ways that change political institutions in order to bring government closer to people. And what type of resources is required to change formal and informal rules and structural relationships of power.