'At the end of their relationship, that man offered her a house': Qualitatively exploring Congolese women's agency in navigating sexual relations with UN peacekeepers within the context of a patriarchal setting in eastern DRC.

The UN's Zero Tolerance Policy, which bans all relationships between UN staff and locals, portrays all relationships as exploitative, fails to account for nuances in these relationships and does not acknowledge the agency of local women or communities. This study uses community-based qualitative data from eastern DRC that shares narratives on a wide variety of consensual relationships between peacekeepers and local women. Our paper uses a data-driven approach, including a post-colonial feminist lens, and ideas of structural agency to provide an expanded definition of agency that invites readers to re-examine their views of women in conflict settings. Finally, we provide clear recommendations for the UN and other international non-governmental agencies on policies related to sexual exploitation and abuse.

"Our struggle is for the full loaf": protests, social welfare and gendered citizenship in South Africa.

The waves of popular protest sweeping contemporary South Africa are inadequately explained by anti-globalisation, anti-neoliberal and even anti-government sentiments and analysis. Attention to the gendered dynamics of township life, including the nature of households, gender relations and the critical importance of social welfare provisions to poor women and their households, yields a revised understanding of protests and movements. The Durban-based shack-dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo is used to illustrate these points, as are original quantitative and qualitative data from urban townships in KwaZulu-Natal.

Urban advantage or Urban penalty? A case study of female-headed households in a South African city.

Basic services have improved in many urban areas of South Africa, which should improve health and well-being. However, poverty and ill-health persist and are unequally distributed by race, class and place. This paper explores conditions of the most marginalized group, female-headed households, in a case study of Msunduzi Municipality (formerly Pietermaritzburg). Data from two household surveys conducted in 2006 show important patterns regarding the incidences of and coping strategies around, illnesses and deaths. While some positive environmental health outcomes are apparent, considerable stresses face households in relation to HIV/AIDS related deaths, poverty, and lack of health services. The insights of both urban environmental health and feminist geography assist in explaining the gendered and spatialized patterns of health in post-apartheid urban South Africa.