Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice

Seeking to catalyze innovative thinking and practice within the field of women and gender in development, editors Jane S. Jaquette and Gale Summerfield have brought together scholars, policymakers, and development workers to reflect on where the field is today and where it is headed. The contributors draw from their experiences and research in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to illuminate the connections between womens well-being and globalization, environmental conservation, land rights, access to information technology, employment, and poverty alleviation.Highlighting key institutional issues, contributors analyze the two approaches that dominate the field: women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD). They assess the results of gender mainstreaming, the difficulties that development agencies have translating gender rhetoric into equity in practice, and the conflicts between gender and the reassertion of indigenous cultural identities. Focusing on resource allocation, contributors explore the gendered effects of land privatization, the need to challenge cultural traditions that impede womens ability to assert their legal rights, and womens access to bureaucratic levers of power. Several essays consider womens mobilizations, including a project to provide Internet access and communications strategies to African NGOs run by women. In the final essay, Irene Tinker, one of the fields founders, reflects on the interactions between policy innovation and womens organizing over the three decades since women became a focus of development work. Together the contributors bridge theory and practice to point toward productive new strategies for women and gender in development. Contributors. Maruja Barrig, Sylvia Chant, Louise Fortmann, David Hirschmann, Jane S. Jaquette, Diana Lee-Smith, Audrey Lustgarten, Doe Mayer, Faranak Miraftab, Muadi Mukenge, Barbara Pillsbury, Amara Pongsapich, Elisabeth Prgl, Kirk R. Smith, Kathleen Staudt, Gale Summerfield, Irene Tinker, Catalina Hinchey Trujillo