Values and Systems: Gender Equality Work in Different Organizational Settings

Ines Smyth works for Oxfam and spent a year as the leading gender specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) - an institution with a very different ethos and priorities. She explores how the characters of the two organisations shape their commitments and approaches to promoting gender equality in their programmes.

Her experience at ADB helps her to look at the world of international NGOs in a new light. She concludes that feminist bureaucrats must persist in tackling obstacles and areas of resistance - even within NGOs - where too often, simple solutions are expected for social problems of intractable complexity.