Gender Dilemmas in International Development Studies

The article looks at how recent thinking on gender has led to discussions on how development itself is powerfully gendered, with important implications for international development studies. The essay is based on reflections from editing two handbooks for Palgrave and Oxford University Press. It describes how feminist critiques of gender can create dilemmas in international development studies and practices by examining five issues. These include the engagement of theory and practice-based knowledge, development as transformative politics, inter-sectionality issues and the inter-section with sustainability issues. The author concludes that radical theoretical agendas require new methodologies that bridge the divide between practice-based analysis and 'global' theory, on the basis of research in high-income countries. The challenge here is to learn from theory and research in the Global South, through those who are breaking new ground from the perspectives of living and working in the South.

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