Feminist Development Communication: Empowering Women in the Information Era (An Old and Rare Book)

Back of the Book Empowering Women Worldwide Series The series Empowering Women Worldwide aims to bring insights into women's empowerment experience from an interdisciplinary perspective. Empowerment must build the ability of women to think critically about oppressive ideology and practices and encourage them to firmly resist the forces that desire to isolate and silence them. Empowerment has been often referred to as a process through which people gain control over their own lives and life environment.

Empowerment aims to reduce the powerlessness that has been created by negative valuations in the society. The books in this series will raise several fundamental questions on women's empowerment and national and international policy for furthering research and action studies to improve women's quality of life.

It is our contention that the voice of oppressed and marginalized groups must be heard if they are to become empowered. Such empowerment is necessary to avoid cases of distorted development, that is, to avoid situations in which there is extreme poverty and gender inequality in the midst of economic affluence. It is our conviction that empowerment of women will tilt the balance of power in favour of gender justice and distributive justice. We hope the books in this series will provide valuable insights for researchers, social welfare workers and policy-makers to identify factors and processes that may contribute to higher levels of development and seeks to raise social consciousness on women, redefine agendas and rethink strategies that will empower women worldwide. In today's knowledge economy, analysis of the process of empowerment is a key to progress. This series is a humble contribution in this direction.

About the Book A lot is alreads written on development communication, but this book addresses feminist perspectives on development communication The scope of the book extends to a variety of perspectives and sharing personal experiences as well as contemporary issues on theory, practice and processes of women's empowerment The book is divided into three well organized sections which theorizes. contextualizes and reassesses the field feminist development communication. The chapters in this volume will provide a critical evaluation of the field of feminist development communications and investigate the contributions of feminism to development communication and the interrelationship between media, gender and development studies.

The six chapters in Part One. Theorizing Feminist Development communication, address the complex intersection in development of women of forces-historical, cultural, political, social and economic with the rise new media, the Internet and various forms of networking. Part Two. Reassessing Feminist Development Communication, contains SIX chapters that explore the images, representations, self identities, myths of women's modern identity in the mass media which act as barriers to and present opportunities for women's empowerment. The tour chapters in Part Three, Contextualizing Information and Communication for Women's Health examine the role and performance of communication in women's health empowerment.

Communication forms an integral part of all strategies focusing on development of women. this volume will serve as a reference book for Feminist theoreticians policy makers, social activists, academicians, researchers and students in several disciplines who are passionate about women development and empowerment.

About the Authors Subhash R. Joshi works as a freelance Consultant for Social and Communication Research His areas of specialization include Communication Research, Media Studies, Media Software Planning and Documentation Earlier (1977-2004) he was with the Development and Educational Communication Unit (DECU). Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Ahmedabad, India and held important positions in several satellite based communication projects including Kheda Communications Project, Jhabua Development Communications Project, Training and Development Communication Channel of DECU/ISRO. He has published many research papers in reputed journals and books He has to his credit an edited book titled Children, Youth and Electronic Media Prospects and Portents (2006) He was a Fulbright Scholar in Psychology at Western Michigan, USA during 1970-71 for his Masters degree. He has travelled extensively in India and abroad. He was associated with several international organizations including AMIC, AIBD, UNESCO, ORBICOM and completed several research studies on trans-national communication, cross-cultural communication, and television landscape in India.

Kiran Prasad is Associate Professor in Communication Studies, College of Applied Science at Salalah. Ministry of Higher Education, Oman and Professor in Communication and Journalism at Sri Padmavati Mahila University, Tirupati. India. She was Commonwealth Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for International Communication Research. University of Leeds, UK and Canadian Studies Research Fellow at the School of Journalism and Communication. Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She is also the youngest ever recipient of the State Best Teacher Award' for university teachers from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India A prolific writer and well known communication philosopher, she is author/editor of over seventeen books and conceptualized many theories in communication studies. Her recent books include Communication for Development Reinventing Theory and Action (2009, in 2 Vols 1: Information and Communication Technology Recasting Development (2004), Women. Globalization and Mass Media International Facets of Emancipation (2006), and HIT und AIDS Vulnerability of Women in Asia and Africa (2008) She has to her credit over 100 papers in journals of national and international repute and has researched extensively in India and abroad on the interrelations between communication and development studies

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