Gender Analysis from the Standpoint of Women: The Radical Potential of Women's Studies in Development

Abstract

While ‘gender analysis’ is now a required component in most development projects, controversies surround both the meaning and the desirability of tools currently used for ‘gender planning.’ This paper is particularly concerned with the way in which many of the gender tools, popular among western planners, contribute to the de-radicalization of feminism. In order to address this concern, a conceptual framework is sketched out to analyze gender as an effect of the operation of power. Employing a standpoint epistemology, this framework connects the conceptual and practical elements of feminist work for change, the experiential worlds of women, and the academic realm of feminist theory. Based on Smith's notion of relations of ruling, this framework includes within its analytical scope, not only power as it operates between women and men, but also between the so-called gender expert and the women who, purportedly, benefit from development research and planning. As such, the analysis provided here advances the radical potential for Women's Studies as indigenous knowledge.