Gender Myths and Feminist Fables

This collection brings together leading feminist thinkers who examine the struggles for interpretive power which underlies international development.

• Questions why the insights from years of feminist gender and development research are so often turned into ‘gender myths’ and ‘feminist fables’: women are more likely to care for the environment; are better at working together; are less corrupt; have a seemingly infinite capacity to survive
• Explores how bowdlerized and impoverished representations of gender relations have simultaneously come to be embedded in development policy and practice
• Traces the ways in which language and images of development are related to practice and provides a nuanced account of the politics of knowledge production
• Argues that struggles for interpretive power are not only important for our own sake, but also for the implications they have for women’s lives worldwide
• An informed analysis of how ‘gender’ has been transformed in its transfer into development policy and how many authors are now revisiting and reflecting on their earlier work