Pathways
Feminist Activists in Global Policy Organisations
2014 - 2011
Lead Researcher: Rosalind Eyben
This project has identified and worked with feminist activists working within international development organisations that are shaping discourse and policy action – it explored their strategies and strengthened capacity to bring about change.
Resources For This Project
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A Feminist Bureaucrat At The OECD, Patti O'Neill Talks With Rosalind Eyben
Patti O’Neill talks with Rosalind Eyben about being a feminist bureaucrat at the OECD. …
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Feminists in Development Organizations
Every day in international development organisations, 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 organisations to be pathways of women's empowerment. …
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Feminists Working in International Development Organisations: An Account of a Reflexive Practice Workshop
This workshop held from 26-28 October 2008 brought together participants in a reflective practice project, a small and self-selected group of feminist policy practitioners working on women’s rights and gender equality issues in the head offices of international development organisations, who aim to be more effective in their work by studying and reflecting on their own experiences. The workshop provided an opportunity for collective reflection and analysis. Some brought with them a long experience of working in global policy spaces while others are relative newcomers. Our specific responsibilities and working environments have varied considerably. …
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Strategies Of Feminist Bureaucrats: Perspectives From International NGOs. IDS Working Paper 396
This paper explores the challenges and opportunities for feminists working as women’s rights and gender equality specialists in international non-governmental development organisations, as analysed from an insider practitioner perspective. Part 1 identifies the strategies used and the challenges encountered when Turquet lobbied DFID on its gender equality policy while struggling to avoid marginalisation within her own organisation, Action Aid. In Part 2, Smyth describes how she left Oxfam for a year to work in the Asian Development Bank and uses this experience to consider the strategic opportunities available to a gender specialist working in an NGO such as Oxfam as compared with working in an international finance institution. …
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Strategies Of Feminist Bureaucrats: United Nations Experiences. IDS Working Paper 397
This paper explores the challenges and opportunities for feminists working as women’s rights and gender equality specialists in the United Nations as analysed from a practitioner perspective. Part 1 by Joanne Sandler analyses the experience of feminists struggling with the institutional sexism of the UN bureaucratic machine and shows how this played out in the difficult but ultimately successful negotiations around the creation of UN Women. In Part 2, Aruna Rao describes how cross-agency UN Gender Theme Groups worked together through a process of reflexive inquiry to strengthen the gender equality programming of three UN Country Teams, respectively in Morocco, Albania and Nepal. …
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What Does It Mean To Be A Feminist Within A Global Policy Institution? Challenges Of Identities, Alliances And Accountabilities
Since February 2007, a small group of feminist activists working from inside the head offices of international development organisations (bilateral, multilateral and INGO) have been participants in a project to explore how they can encourage their organisations to be pathways of women’s empowerment. The project’s objective is to encourage greater strategic awareness among the policy activists themselves concerning their room for manoeuvre, and secondly to stimulate discussion among others as to how they could optimally support those working from inside bureaucracies. In this paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, I explore the challenges facing these feminist activists in building relations for institutional and policy change for women’s rights. Research participants believe that the principal factor in successfully changing institutional arrangements, albeit subversively, is networking and alliances within and between organisations as well as with the wider women’s movement. …
