The ‘gender lens’: a racial blinder?

Abstract

While gender is highly visible in development theory and practice, race is rarely mentioned. This paper asks why this is, and how far Gender and Development (GAD) itself is implicated in the lack of recognition of race. The paper begins by acknowledging the complexity of the question: that race, gender and development are all contested terms and represent continuing sites of struggle. It then explores various aspects of ‘race in GAD’. These include: the charge of cultural imperialism; the false simplicity in the labelling of ‘women’, which masks the very different terms on which ‘third’and ‘first’world women were ‘brought into’development; and the failure of core GAD frameworks to recognize black feminist thought, so critically limiting their analytical power. The paper then goes on to discuss the racial marking of expertise in development and the ambivalent ways in which value is assigned through this. The paper concludes by reflecting on the interplay of identities in development planning and what this reveals of the implication of development more broadly in the construction of social difference.

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