Caught between the orientalist–occidentalist polemic: gender mainstreaming as feminist transformation or neocolonial subversion?^*

* This work has been co-authored, with equal contributions from both collaborators at each stage of writing.

ABSTRACT

Here we provide a critical reading of gender mainstreaming as a potential emancipatory force that has been co-opted within orientalist–occidentalist polemics. This remains a critical period in the “mainstreaming” debate, where feminist reappropriation is necessary to repoliticize the concept and reorient development sector focus from tokenistic inclusivity to social transformation. We consider two sides of the debate. In the first scenario, the requirement for gender mainstreaming in international development discourse has not only failed to address its original feminist goals, but has become (or remained) an extension of orientalist, neocolonial projects to control and “civilize” developing economies. Here, a putative concern for gender equality in development is used as a means to distinguish between the modern, civilized One and the colonial, traditional Other. In the second scenario, gender mainstreaming is held up as all that these “othered” occidentalist forces stand against; an exemplar of the inappropriate imposition of “western” moralistic paradigms in non-western contexts. Ultimately, the co-optation of gendered discourses in development through these orientalist–occidentalist polemics serves to obfuscate the continued depoliticization of mainstreaming. A critical question remains: can gender mainstreaming ever transcend this discursive impasse and reassert its feminist transformatory potential?

KEYWORDS:

• Co-optation
• feminism
• gender mainstreaming
• occidentalism
• orientalism

Acknowledgments

We extend our thanks to Sara de Jong and Susanne Kimm for their input and efforts in bringing together this thematic section and we thank the reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Suzanne Clisby is a senior lecturer, director of postgraduate Gender Studies at the University of Hull and PI of the Horizon 2020 GRACE Project. She is an editor of the Journal of Gender Studies and her research focuses on feminisms, gender, identity and development in UK and global contexts. She has published across a range of areas within gender, policy and development arenas, most recently a monograph focusing on links between gendering women’s identities and mental well-being.

Athena-Maria Enderstein is a Research Fellow at Associazione Orlando in Italy working on the Horizon 2020 GRACE Project and pursuing a PhD at the University of Hull in the UK. Her current work focuses on translating gender expertise and key competencies into innovative cultural practices for equality in Europe. She is interested in gender transformative approaches, emergent technologies in feminist research, masculinities and transnational equality processes.

Notes

* This work has been co-authored, with equal contributions from both collaborators at each stage of writing.

1. Women in Development (WID) is an approach employed widely in the development sector emerging in the 1970s and 1980s which recognized the absence of women in development planning as problematic. The integration of women was intended to make the development process more efficient, but critiques of WID include the charge of “tagging women on” rather than changing the flawed development paradigm itself (see, for example, Momsen 2010).