The Mixed Metaphor of ‘Third World Woman’: gendered representations by international development NGOs

Abstract

Reviewing a recent annual cycle of public fundraising and advocacy messages of international development NGOs (INGOs), this paper examines how gendered representations are used to portray specific notions of global poverty, development, gendered identities, the majority world and its relation to the developed world. The gendering of global poverty and development is realised though many contradictory discursive strategies, including feminisation which, inter alia, naturalises the majority world, distinctive characterisations of people and issues, and binary oppositions of women from the developed and majority worlds. Through both her instrumental and symbolic value, the ‘Third World woman’ serves INGOs by simultaneously projecting ‘universal’ values of motherhood and womanhood and special values of ‘Third World difference’. These representations have significance across Northern audiences' understandings of gender and global inequalities and INGOs' objectives of poverty alleviation, women's empowerment and rights-based development.