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Patti O’Neill talks with Rosalind Eyben about being a feminist bureaucrat at the OECD. …

Following the round of UN Conferences on Women from the 1970s to the 1990s, many states in the developing world established national machineries to first 'integrate women into development', and later to spearhead the task of gender mainstreaming adopted in the Beijing Platform for Action.  …

The contents reflect discussions from a Pathways workshop held in May 2008 with participation also from Diane Elson, James Heinz, Sue Himmelweit, Sue Holloway, Ruth Pearson and Janet Veitch. In 2006 the World Bank coined a catchy slogan ‘Gender equality is smart economics’. Said the World Bank’s President in June 2008, “The empowerment of women is smart economics … studies show that investments in women yield large social and economic returns”. Many international aid ministries and United Nations organisations are adopting the World Bank’s argument. …

Women’s empowerment’, as used by international development organisations, is a fuzzy concept. Historical textual analysis and interviews with officials in development agencies reveal its adaptability and capacity to carry multiple meanings that variously wax and wane in their discursive influence. Today a privileging of instrumentalist meanings of empowerment associated with efficiency and growth are crowding out more socially transformative meanings associated with rights and collective action. In their efforts to make headway in what has become an unfavourable policy environment, officials in development agencies with a commitment to a broader social change agenda juggle these different meanings, strategically exploiting the concept’s polysemic nature to keep that agenda alive. …

‘Women’s empowerment’, as used by international development organisations, is a fuzzy concept. Historical textual analysis and interviews with officials in development agencies reveal its adaptability and capacity to carry multiple meanings that variously wax and wane in their discursive influence. Today a privileging of instrumentalist meanings of empowerment associated with efficiency and growth are crowding out more socially transformative meanings associated with rights and collective action. In their efforts to make headway in what has become an unfavourable policy environment, officials in development agencies with a commitment to a broader social change agenda juggle these different meanings, strategically exploiting the concept’s polysemic nature to keep that agenda alive. …

This paper proposes a framework for how empowerment can be conceptually understood and operationally explored. It makes recommendations for forthcoming areas of work within the POVNET Work Programme on empowering poor women and men to participate in, contribute to, and benefit from growth. …

The Research Programme Consortium on Pathways of Women’s Empowerment has an explicit commitment to influencing policy. Yet policy is a concept that carries many diverse and contested meanings. How feminists choose to conceptualize policy will influence their strategic choices in terms of what and how they seek to influence. This paper combines a general review of some of the current sociological and feminist literature concerning policy with a specific look at global policy processes in relation to gender equality. …

The Research Programme Consortium on Pathways of Women’s Empowerment has an explicit commitment to influencing policy. Yet policy is a concept that carries many diverse and contested meanings. How feminists choose to conceptualise policy will influence their strategic choices in terms of what and how they seek to influence. This paper combines a general review of some of the current sociological and feminist literature concerning policy with a specific look at global policy processes in relation to gender equality. …

The Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995 marked a coming together of feminists from all over the world, with an end agreement on a transformative and relatively clear text – the Beijing Platform for Action. Over a decade later, words and agendas around women’s empowerment have changed as the wider international development agenda has moved away from the notion of people centred development of the 1990s. Eyben and Napier-Moore trace those changes and tease out the waxing and waning of different associational meanings attached to women’s empowerment as used in international development agencies. Their historical analysis suggests a current privileging of meanings of efficiency and growth, broadly crowding out meanings of empowerment associated with solidarity and collective action. …

In this conclusion, we discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of the marginal position that feminists working in international development bureaucracies find themselves in. Using their creativity and agency as 'tempered radicals' they seek to turn the disadvantages of marginality - such as a sense of powerlessness and reduced visibility - into advantages, as they try to take forward the women's rights agenda. …

In this conclusion, we discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of the marginal position that feminists working in international development bureaucracies find themselves in. Using their creativity and agency as 'tempered radicals' they seek to turn the disadvantages of marginality - such as a sense of powerlessness and reduced visibility - into advantages, as they try to take forward the women's rights agenda. …

Most international development organisations include women’s empowerment and gender equality as a key objective. But what empowerment means and how best to support it remains a matter of debate. …

Within the constraints of bureaucratic straitjackets and institutional turf battles, this chapter examines the workings of cross-agency gender theme groups (GTGs) to strengthen the gender equality programming of three UN country teams (UNCTs) through an action-learning approach facilitated by Gender at Work. …

The first of three chapters within this book which analyse the research findings from the Pathways Feminist Activists in Global Policy Organisations project, using the device of five fictionalised characters to preserve the anonymity of participants. …

The first of three chapters within this book which analyse the research findings from the Pathways Feminist Activists in Global Policy Organisations project, using the device of five fictionalised characters to preserve the anonymity of participants. …