‘Men-streaming’ gender? Questions for gender and development policy in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Insofar as gender is still so often equated with women alone, the move from Women in Development to Gender in Development has changed very little. Men as a human category have always been present, involved, consulted, obeyed and disobeyed in development work. Yet men as a gendered category in a feminist sense - involving unequal power relations between men and women and between men - have rarely been drawn into development programmes in any substantial way. This paper addresses conceptual and operational obstacles to men’s involvement in gender and development, drawing on interviews with over 40 representatives of development organizations in Britain and the USA in 1999.