Gender & the Politics of Development

This course interrogates how gender is made an object of development. First, we look at gender as a category of analysis, the liberal underpinnings of thinking about female emancipation, and the ways in which ‘women empowerment’ has been translated into a set of interventions. Second, we look at some of these interventions, for example, financial inclusion, and political representation. We critically assess how the problem of empowerment is constructed and what is abstracted from it in order for the solutions to become portable and dissociated from their historical specificities. Finally, we will take a granular view of ways in which women rework the politics of citizenship, organize to demand better working and living conditions, and how they engage every day in alternative worldmaking.