Feminists in Development Organizations ― Change from the Margins

Every day in international development organizations, feminists make use of strategy, tactics, wisdom and skill to act for their principles. Most of their strategies are invisible and their tactics subtle. They draw on networks of friendships and relationships that create ripples of effect in enabling their organizations to be pathways of women's empowerment.

Feminists in Development Organizations arises from a collaborative project between 2007 and 2012 in which a group of feminists working inside the head offices of multilateral organizations, government aid agencies and international non-governmental organizations came together to critically reflect on their work. The personal stories in this book show that these feminists are 'tempered radicals' positioned on the border of the development agencies that employ them. It is a place where they are neither fully one thing nor another: neither fully paid-up, pen-pushing bureaucrats, nor full-blown feminist activists on the barricades. Nevertheless, these feminist bureaucrats see their work as urgent, essential and a necessary contribution to global efforts to achieve women's rights.

Through a series of case studies written by women in development organizations this book reflects on the progress of gender mainstreaming. It shows how feminists can build effective strategies to influence development organizations. It demonstrates and fosters a creative dialogue between feminists working inside and outside bureaucracies for greater understanding and more effective alliances for social change.

This book is aimed at staff of development organizations -- who want their organizations to become an instrument in helping transform the lives of women -- and at students and researchers concerned with the politics of gender mainstreaming.

Rosalind Eyben has had long experience of working as a practitioner and bureaucrat, including at the UK Department for International Development (DFID). She is currently a professorial fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where she has been a member of the Pathways of Women's Empowerment international research consortium, studying power and relations in international aid.

Laura Turquet has worked on gender equality as an advocate and researcher for the past decade, including at the Fawcett Society, Action Aid UK and the newly established United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) in New York.

'The innovative and even subversive strategies these feminist pioneers have deployed to make their institutions more accountable to women is a revelation.'

Srilatha Batliwala, Scholar Associate, Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID)

'Seldom can outsiders understand the challenges of life-on-the-edge within bureaucracies that are ambivalent about employing you for what you believe in.'

Alan Fowler, Emeritus Professor of Civil Society in International Development, Erasmus University