Introduction: gender, development and fundamentalisms

Gender & Development Religion Women's Right

This issue of Gender & Development focuses on the impact of religious fundamentalisms on women’s rights and gender justice. While the term fundamentalisms is both emotive, and contested the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) argues for its use as ‘the term most commonly understood by activists’ (AWID 2016, 5). AWID defines religious fundamentalisms as extremist ideologies which invoke religion to gain political, economic and social power, and justify discrimination, intolerance and violations of human rights; which use coercion and violence to impose their ideologies; and which draw on the notion of a communal, shared identity (‘us’) against all others (ibid.).