What is so interesting about housing policies? I have been asked this question many times over the last years, ever since I became interested in the topic of housing. I used to respond in a simple way, disregarding the complexity of the topic: ‘We cannot allow the existence of one billion people living in slums!’, ‘We live in the 21st century; there must be a way to improve the living con…
In July of 2013, I huddled closely with Yesenia, a mother of two and a respected community leader. We sat on a low wooden bench in the quiet green courtyard behind her home, high in the brown mountains of Andean Peru. I met Yesenia while doing research on the gendered impacts of Peru’s conditional cash transfer program, Juntos. Like most of the othe…
n het kader van de coronapandemie, waarin we vertoeven bij het schrijven van deze uitgave van het Jaarboek Armoede en Sociale Uitsluiting, blijkt een aantal werken uit de literaire rijkdom erg goed te scoren. Zo ziet uitgeverij Penguin een opmerkelijke stijging in de verkoop van zogenaamde pandemie- en rampenliteratuur. In Frankrijk en Italië is de verkoop van La Peste van Albert Camus, versch…
Bangladesh has been successful to date in controlling the spread of HIV in the general population, with a prevalence of less than 0.1%. The main reason for this low prevalence is the early and sustained HIV prevention programmes targeting high risk groups backed by a state-of-the-art surveillance system. Another contributing protective factor is the high rates of male circumcision. There is, ho…
Does the proliferation of jilbabs (headscarves) in Indonesia since 1998 mean the nation has gone hardline? How did democracy happen in Indonesia, which has the largest population of Muslims in the world, and will it stick? Is the term 'Muslim feminist' an oxymoron? Do Muslims even like sex? Julia's Jihad provides the answer to these questions and much, much more: how the nation struggles to ma…