Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

“Developing” Gender Equality: A Transnational Feminist Critique Of International Development Theory And Practice, Caroline Crystal

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Gender equality is increasingly understood as fundamental to international development, despite how the field differs from feminism in its intellectual tradition and ultimate goals. However, legitimacy, gender and understandings of gender equality are transnational and not global modalities, and even the most well-meaning institutions are not absent from global power relations or individual subjectivities. Often located in the “West,” international development organizations frequently make assumptions shaped by Western hegemony and therefore reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address. I explore the overlaps and asymmetries between transnational feminism and the gender equality programs of international development organizations such as the …