Hope to see you in number at our next Human Sciences Happy Hour !
Once a month - 6pm – Baitong Restaurant
(7 st 360/ Norodom Bd, Beung Keng Kang I)
Wednesday June 2nd, 2010
Franz Wong
"Gender Policy Practice – the Cooptation of gender and development in development projects"
The disparities between gender policy, practice and outcomes are often described as implementation "gaps". Weberian assumptions of organizations as rationale entities are at the basis of such analysis where organizational policies are meant to inform and guide practice. The process of translating gender equality policy intent through "projects," the practice of policy, is assumed to be linear, apolitical and free of ideology. Addressing the "failures" in implementation is a matter of filling gaps, whether in knowledge, skills, information, leadership, commitment, tools etc. (Jackson, 1997).
In exploring the undermining of gender and development, I examine the case study of a Community-Based Disaster Management project in Cambodia. The case not only illustrates the overambitious gender equality aims and unrealistic claims that development organizations make of their projects, but it is also concerned with how and why such claims come to be, how project "success" is maintained and, as a cost, how the practice of gender equality policy is commandeered to serve the wider purpose of development projects, namely the enrolment of diverse interests through the projection of coherence around "success".
