GLOW - exploring global norms and violence against women in Ethiopia

GLOW is a research programme exploring global norms and violence against women (VAW) in Ethiopia. The international community has invested substantial resources in establishing the Sustainable Development Goals and similar global norms, hoping they will drive forward global development. Yet we know little about their use, relevance and influence in development at national and local levels.

Through qualitative field studies in Ethiopia and internationally, GLOW produces new knowledge on how actors and politics mediate the relationship between dissimilar global and local norms in a way that enables social change towards the elimination of VAW. GLOW is a collaborative research project conducted in partnership between European and Ethiopian researchers, running from 2019-2023. It is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by DIIS.

Combating violence against women and improving gender equality are critical development challenges across the world. Gendered injustices prevent women and girls from participating equally with men and boys and have grave social, economic, and societal consequences. Gender equality norms such as  the combating of VAW are under pressure from many sides today, from strong anti-feminist discourses to threats to women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights from groups across the world. GLOW’s research and findings will provide relevant actors, from public organizations to civil society, with a renewed understanding of the role of global norms in efforts to address structural and culturally embedded gender inequalities and VAW.

Because do global norms actually help create development? GLOW will produce new knowledge on the dynamic interplay between global norms, national politics and development. Given that global norms are constantly disputed and renegotiated by actors, efforts to combat VAW are not a stable formula which donors can pull down from the shelf and turn into concrete development cooperation. The specific manifestations of norms depend highly on the actors involved and the situation in which they are unfolding. GLOW’s exploration of global VAW norms’ local manifestations makes three points of impact:

First, GLOW explains how VAW is addressed in national politics and the role of global norms in that process. VAW reflects a profound inequality between women and men, and addressing inequalities is typically a challenge to the distribution of power in society because this distribution allows and profits from existing inequalities. GLOW will identify the conditions facilitating and constraining VAW policies.

Second, GLOW uncovers the interaction between local communities and development projects, traditionally characterised as a superficial engagement where local populations avoid the substantive changes that development actors try to pursue. GLOW studies major development interventions in Ethiopia to explore how actors and national policies mediate between the global norm of elimination of VAW and local practices of gender-based violence.

Third, GLOW analyses Ethiopia’s political efforts to influence global norms on VAW. There is a tendency to neglect the role of the Global South in global norm production. To redress this and to examine Ethiopia’s official position on the global norm of eliminating VAW in detail, GLOW studies selected situations of global norm production with a focus on Ethiopia’s positions, initiatives and discourses. Thus, GLOW contributes with Southern perspectives on norm production as well as the unexplored linkages between norm engagement by country representatives at different levels.

GLOW is a collaborative research project. The involved researchers are:

Dereje Feyissa Dori (AAU)

Meron Zeleke (AAU)

Anchinesh Shiferaw (AAU)

Fana Gebresenbet (AAU)

Lars Engberg-Pedersen (DIIS)

Adam Moe Fejerskov (DIIS)

Karmen Tornius (DIIS)

Helen Abelle (AAU)

Yitaktu Tibebu (AAU)