Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice

Briefly reviewing the evolution of the field of women development, the author argues that the field has lost the dynamism characteristic of earlier periods of constructive tension between theory and practice that led to the adoption of the gender and development framework and the incorporation of issues of multiculturalism, human rights, and political participation into a field that had largely been defined in economic terms. Today, however, critical theory is caught in an “anti-neoliberal” position that is increasingly outdated and that has interpreted women’s work, individual agency, and the role of the state in ways that hinder rather than facilitate new thinking and better outcomes for women participants in WID/GAD projects and programs.