Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure

Andrea Cornwall is professor in anthropology and development at the University of Sussex, where she is an affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence and director of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme. As a teenager, she harboured a secret desire to be an agony aunt when she grew up, inspired by clandestine readings of her mother’s Cosmopolitan, but became an anthropologist instead, focusing much of her research on gender, sexuality, sex and relationships. Joining the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) as a fellow in 1998, she supported the emergence of work on sexuality and helped establish the Sexuality and Development Programme. She has published widely on gender and sexuality in development and is executive producer of Save us from Saviours, a short film on Indian sex workers’ challenge of the rescue industry.Kate Hawkins is director of Pamoja Communications and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She has worked as a policy analyst and advocate on sexual and reproductive health and rights. With Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and others, Kate has contributed to the Sexuality and Development Programme at IDS with a particular focus on how research influences policy and practice and the improvement of communication and knowledge exchange. Kate is on the Steering Committee of The Pleasure Project, an initiative which aims to make sex safer by addressing one of the major reasons people have sex: the pursuit of pleasure.Susie Jolly is a hybrid activist/researcher/communicator/trainer and is currently also a donor. From her different positions she consistently seeks to challenge the ‘straitjacket’ of gender and sexuality norms that disempower so many people. She currently leads the Ford Foundation sexuality and reproductive health and rights grant-making programme in China. Previously, she founded and led the Sexuality and Development Programme at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She has had extensive engagement with gender and development issues internationally, with six years’ experience at the BRIDGE gender information unit, IDS, as well as a lifetime of feminist activism.

• Introduction: Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure - Susie Jolly, Andrea Cornwall and Kate Hawkins1. Thinking with Pleasure: Danger, Sexuality and Agency - Bibi Bakare-Yusuf2. Challenging the Pleasure versus Danger Binary: Reflections on Sexuality Workshops with Rural Women's Rights Activists in North India - Jaya Sharma3. Sexual Pleasure as a Woman's Human Right: Experiences from a Human Rights Training Programme for Women in Turkey - Gulsah Seral Aksakal4. Better Sex and More Equal Relationships: Couple Training in Nigeria - Dorothy Aken'Ova5. Building a Movement for Sexual Rights and Pleasure - Xiaopei He6. Enabling Disabled People to Have and Enjoy the Kind of Sexuality They Want - Lorna Couldrick and Alex Cowan7. Desires Denied: Sexual Pleasure in the Context of HIV - Alice Welbourn8. Sex is a Gift from God: Paralysis and Potential in Sex Education in Malawi - Anaïs Bertrand-Dansereau9. Why We Need to Think about Sexuality and Sexual Well-Being: Addressing Sexual Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa - Chi-Chi Undie10. Could Watching Porn Increase Our Expectations of (Safe) Pleasure? An Exploration of Some Promising Harm Reduction Practices - Anne Philpott and Krissy Ferris11. Challenging Clitoraid - Petra Boynton12. How Was It for You? Pleasure and Performance in Sex Work - Jo Doezema13. Eroticism, Sensuality and 'Women's Secrets' Among the Baganda - Sylvia Tamale14. Laughter, the Subversive Body Organ - Ana Francis Mor

Finally women's pleasure is being taken seriously. What a relief! Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure is a fantastic book, and will certainly be an important tool in creating a more pleasure-filled world, and isn't that what we all ultimately want? Highly intelligent, knowledgeable writers from the front lines of women's struggles from all corners of the globe make reading this collection of essays, well, deeply pleasurable, and extremely satisfying.