Beyond Cloak Words, Toolkits, and Gender Myths

Abstract

“Gender, Environment and Development” (GED) as a new subspecialization within the master’s program of Gender and Development Studies (GDS) at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) was an experiment that sought (a) to link a higher education teaching and research program more purposively with development through an integrative learning approach, and (b) to evolve critical perspectives towards how “women, gender and environment” has been conceptualized and practiced by “development.” With the explosion of gender mainstreaming initiatives, the challenge in GED’s teaching program lay ever more in enabling students to unmask assumptions behind the development cloak words of the day: “gender mainstreaming,” “women’s participation,” and “women’s empowerment.” The other challenge was to go beyond the culture of simplification in popularized gender analysis toolkits that prescribes one-size-fits-all action agendas. The messier alternative was to explore how women, men, and natural resource use and management are socially embedded in complex contexts and webs of power and negotiation. In short, GED took the road less traveled. As an experiment, it demonstrates that GED in higher education has the potential to engage development thinking and practice in ways that come to terms with gender and its workings in environment, natural resources, and society.

Key Words:

• gender and environment
• integrative learning
• interdisciplinarity
• development programs
• livelihoods
• social embeddedness