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Gender Policy Practice – the Cooptation of gender and development in development proj

Page history last edited by Human Sciences Happy Hours in Phnom Penh 13 years, 9 months ago

 

 

FRANTZ WONG

 

Gender Policy Practice – the Cooptation of gender and development in development projects

 

 

The disparities between gender policy, practice and outcomes are often described as implementation “gaps”.  Weberian assumptions of organizations as rationale entities are at the basis of such analysis where organizational policies are meant to inform and guide practice.  The process of translating gender equality policy intent through “projects”, the practice of policy, is assumed to be linear, apolitical and free of ideology.  Addressing the “failures” in implementation is a matter of filling gaps, whether in knowledge, skills, information, leadership, commitment, tools etc. (Jackson, 1997).

 

In exploring the undermining of gender and development, I examine the case study of a Community-Based Disaster Management project in Cambodia.  The case not only illustrates the overambitious gender equality aims and unrealistic claims that development organizations make of their projects, but it is also concerned with how and why such claims come to be, how project “success” is maintained and, as a cost, how the practice of gender equality policy is commandeered to serve the wider purpose of development projects, namely the enrolment of diverse interests through the projection of coherence around “success”.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Project “Success” and the reproduction of gender inequity: the case of the Community-based Disaster Management project in Takeo

 

Presentation to HSHHPP, June 2010 by Franz Wong

 

 

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