Themes

The conference will be organized around the following key concerns:

1. Gender(ed) knowledge: Building gender knowledge among researchers and practitioners, and building capacity to use gender analytical frameworks in research and development practice has been going on for more than a decade. While these efforts have popularized gender concepts and their applicability in development sectors, the results are far from satisfactory. Popularization has led to their mechanistic use, resulting in research and practice agendas and frameworks remaining unchanged, with gender being included as a marginal and add-on issue. Depoliticization and instrumentalization of the gender agenda has also taken place: the dominant, positivist frameworks animating development research and practice override critical feminist epistemologies which are at the heart of gender theory. During the conference, we will explore the tension between feminist epistemologies and how gender knowledge is communicated, and the implications of this tension.   

2. Gender researchers and advocates: In this theme, we examine those responsible for ‘doing’ gender in research and development practice and those who often have to train others to use gender analytical frameworks in their work. The different perspectives, approaches and motivations of gender trainers and advocates is widely recognized but rarely scrutinized. Researchers, trainers and advocates are themselves gendered individuals operating within particular spatial, historical and institutional contexts. This has implications for the way in which they think and communicate about gender. This theme explores researchers, trainers and advocates as a diverse group of technicians, professionals and advocates with variable knowledge and understanding, situated in different gendered, spatial and temporal contexts that yield tensions and contradictions as well as strengths.

3. Building capacity on gender- ways forward: This theme will explore what needs to be done differently in building capacity on gender in different institutional contexts, in order to bring new life to the gender equality agenda. Several initiatives for enhancing capacity are underway in South Asia, but there is a need to learn from these and other experiences.

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