Pathways Events

Reclaiming Feminisms: Gender and Neo-liberalism

The Reclaiming Feminisms: Gender and Neo-liberalism conference was held at the Institute of Development Studies from 9-10 July 2007 and was co-hosted by the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme and Birkbeck College, London. The Pathways programme linked with openDemocracy to provide communications outputs from this conference - see the openDemocracy site for a blog giving highlights and also a podcast of interviews with Andrea Cornwall (IDS), Anne-Marie Goetz (UNIFEM) and Cecilia Sardenberg (NEIM) recorded at the conference.

Conference Programme (pdf file 89KB)

Link to List of Participants and Biographies

The aims of the workshop are to:

reflect upon the relationship between feminisms and neo-liberalism, in the context of international development
address the question of whether and how the concepts and principles which shaped gender and development thinking and practice have been appropriated and transformed by neo-liberal development institutions and discourses
share experiences and perceptions arising from individual and collective struggles both within and beyond the framework of development.

Building on recent work which highlights the need to critically reassess approaches to gender within mainstream development theory and practice, this workshop will focus specifically on whether, and if so how, dominant neo-liberal discourses of development have systematically appropriated and transformed feminist concepts - and on the prospects for reclaiming and reframing feminist engagement with development.

Questions

We will be inviting participants to address some of the following questions:

It can be argued that feminist analyses of power and ideology have been marginalised in favour of an emphasis on the individual’s ability to make choices. Do we still need to look at patriarchal ideologies? Is the notion of ‘consciousness’ a useful one?
How do we analyse the contested concept of ‘agency’ in the context of gender and development? Why has it become so central to neo-liberal development discourses on gender?
What are the implications of the currently almost ubiquitous emphasis on women’s relative ‘efficiency’?

Group discussion on gender construction

Photo/openDemocracy. Group Discussion on gender construction

Have gender-based initiatives been incorporated into the prescriptive moral framework of neo-liberal ideology where certain ‘rights’ are conditional on the fulfilment of ‘responsibilities’?

Are women’s movements which question the parameters of the neo-liberal model rendered invisible within current GAD scholarship?
Can empowerment be granted from ‘above’ or does it have to be taken? What are the implications of ‘partnership’ in the context of neo-liberal policy?
Are dominant discourses of gender and development being used to legitimise contemporary imperialist projects?
Is feminism inherently ‘Western’? Can Black and ‘Third World’ feminist critiques of mainstream GAD approaches be reduced to questions of ‘cultural difference’?
Participants have been selected to represent a diversity of engagements with the questions with which the workshop will be concerned.