Gender and politics: two sides of the same coin

Abstraksi

This paper summarises the findings of the Developmental Leadership Program’s overall Gender and Politics research. Recent influential work on thinking and working politically has been justifiably criticised for being somewhat gender blind. Professional siloes and assumptions go a long way towards explaining this. In reality, gender sensitivity and thinking and working politically are two sides of the same coin - both are working processes which aim to understand, engage with and ultimately reform unequal power dynamics to bring about change. There is a great deal to be gained, both conceptually and practically, from these two worlds coming together – mutual learning, better and deeper analysis, greatly strengthened practice, and improved results – but to date there has been little cross over of learning. Both approaches are challenging to implement effectively, and fraught with pitfalls. Many of those who champion thinking and working politically have expressed concern about overly top-down, donor-driven and technical approaches to implementation – which can in turn limit the very local ownership and impact the interventions are meant to achieve. Variations of this same criticism have been directed at gender mainstreaming. Much of the innovation on effective implementation, and on bringing these two approaches together, is coming not from academics but from practitioners. This paper draws on the experience of three case studies and a review of 14 development programmes which are innovating in their work on aspects of power, politics and gender – drawing out commonalities, complementarities, challenges and lessons.