Pathways
Sexuality and Development. Development 52.1
2008 - 2009
Lead Researchers: Andrea Cornwall , Susie Jolly
This special issue of 'Development' originates from a workshop held at the Institute of Development Studies in 2008. It seeks to explore the linkages between sexuality and the development industry and to uncover the impacts of development on sexuality and how to move towards a more constructive engagement.
Resources For This Project
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Approaches To Sexuality In A Multilateral Fund In Nicaragua, Development, 52.1
Camilo Antillón Najlis identifies the interests and priorities of different actors in the development industry in Nicaragua regarding sexuality issues, through the analysis of documents produced by FED and civil society organisations (FED's framework document and 122 project proposals) in the context of two of the project selection processes one in 2006 and the other in 2007. …
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Contemporary Travesti Encounters With Gender And Sexuality In Latin America, Development, 52.1
Giuseppe Campuzano presents issues of identity considered important by many travestis. He places travesti issues in a ‘development’ framework discussing the difficulties of the contemporary situation of travestis in Peru. …
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Feminists Reclaiming Creativity, Unity, Numbers And Time, Development, 52.1
On behalf of Meem, the community of and for Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LBTQ) women in Lebanon, Nadine delivered one of the most exciting and talked about speeches at the Opening Plenary of the International AWID Forum: The Power of Movements held in Cape Town November 2008. She looks at sexuality in relation to feminism from the perspective of an activist working to have women's self-defined expression of sexuality accepted openly in mainstream culture. …
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Governing Intimacy Struggling For Sexual Rights Challenging Heteronormativity In The Global Development Industry, Development, 52.1
Institutions in the global development industry play a pivotal role in governing people's sexual and familial lives. Amy Lind addresses how forms of intimacy are governed through national and global development institutions, both through the visibilization and invisibilization of lesbians, gay men and other individuals who do not fulfill prescribed gender and sexual norms in their societies, with the overall aim of challenging heteronormativity and gender normativity in development thought and practice. …
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Heteronormativity And HIV In Sub-Saharan Africa, Development, 52.1
Heteronormativity is a term yet to be widely linked to HIV and AIDS work in Sub-Saharan Africa. Andy Seale argues that a greater appreciation of heteronormativity offers an opportunity to identify effective strategies to address harmful social norms that drive HIV infection and build synergies between work currently focused exclusively on women and girls, gender and men who have sex with men. A focus on heteronormativity in HIV work can act as a catalyst to the coalition-building needed for accelerated HIV prevention activism in Africa. …
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How The Development Industry Imagines Sex Work, Development, 52.1
Meena Seshu and Nandinee Bandhopadhyay who work with sex workers speak with Cheryl Overs, a sex rights activist, at an open floor session during the IDS conference on Sexuality and the Development Industry. …
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Interrogating Norms: Feminists Theorizing Sexuality, Gender And Heterosexuality, Development, 52.1
Charmaine Pereira looks at changing debates on gender and sexuality. She highlights feminist theorizing that in order to understand the complexity of heteronormative social relations, it is important to examine the relations among gender and sexuality in general, and heterosexuality in particular. …
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Monster, Womb, MSM: The Work Of Sex In International Development, Development, 52.1
Andil Gosine asks whether sex and sexuality have been left unconsidered in international development or not. Sex and sexuality he argues have always been at the heart of development. Three figures have haunted the project of international development: Monster, Womb, MSM (‘Men who have sex with Men’). Anxieties about the sexual proclivities of these figures have driven and shaped the project of international development, both as a teleological metanarrative and in its material application. …
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My Fake Wedding: Stirring Up The Tongzhi Movement In China, Development, 52.1
Xiaopei He describes her activities in China working with the lesbian and gay (tongzhi) movement as activists challenge the conventions and traditions of heteronormativity in innovative and fun ways. …
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Promoting Safer Sex Through Pleasure: Lessons From 15 Countries, Development, 52.1
The pursuit of pleasure is one of the primary reasons people have sex; and sex is the most common way people contract HIV worldwide. Yet information about how to have (or deliver) pleasurable sex and stay healthy are largely missing from health resources and HIV prevention campaigns. Wendy Knerr and Anne Philpott explore how ‘erotophobia’ in the health and development sectors is hindering effective safer sex promotion, and highlight best practices from The Global Mapping of Pleasure, 2nd Edition, a collection of case studies on pleasure and safer sex communication from countries and contexts around the world. …
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Promoting Sexual Empowerment In Community-Based Programmes, Development, 52.1
Hesperian is developing an action resource (book- and web-based tool) that will complement its widely used Where Women Have No Doctor and help community activists work more effectively on all the topics in that book, published originally in 1997. One issue the international team developing the new resource has prioritized is how to help community activists foster sexual empowerment for women. Lucille C. Atkin et al. …
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Reflections On The Construction of Heteronormativity, Development, 52.1
Jaya Sharma shares her concerns about assuming that norms govern us entirely and of constructing a binary between the ‘normative’ and the ‘non-normative’. She argues that such a binary can be arrogant and privilege as ‘ideal’ those seen as ‘non-normative’. It is perhaps closer to reality and more empowering to see the play of norms as a process of negotiation rather than placing them in a hegemonic and binary framework. …
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Researching South African Youth, Gender and Sexuality Within The Context Of HIV/AIDS, Development, 52.1
In the context of HIV/AIDS, youth have become central to contemporary South African social thought and educational policy concerns regarding changing behaviour, addressing gender inequalities, safe sex and preventing the spread of the disease. Yet we know very little about how youth in specific social contexts give meaning to gender and sexuality. Greater understanding of these processes would appear vital to successful educational strategies in the protection against HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Deevia Bhana and Rob Pattman argue that the lives and identities of young men and women must be central in any initiative to change behaviour. …
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Same-Sex Sexuality And Diversity Employment Policies In UK-Based International Development Agencies, Development, 52.1
UK-based international development agencies are introducing the concepts of diversity and sexual orientation into their staff employment policies for the first time. Based on interviews with agency staff and a study of diversity policy documents, Carolyn Williams outlines some of the difficulties that have emerged. She proposes that future debates and policymaking need to explore how to interconnect sexual identity, social and cultural diversity, while paying careful attention to the protection of individual's right to privacy. …
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Saying No To Forced Early Retirement From Sex: Time To Broaden The Scope Of HIV Prevention In Kenya, Development, 52.1
HIV prevention messages have an impact on people's sexualities in ways that are unimaginable. In Kenya, consultations with HIV positive people under the Maanisha programme reveal that HIV prevention messages work to regulate and stigmatize sexual expressions among people already infected with HIV. Regrettably, these stereotypical strategies are promoted by health experts and HIV/AIDS service providers. Interventions must break with stereotypes and create spaces for behaviour change strategies that begin with positive peoples lived experiences, acknowledging their complexities and working with them in a more equitable and mutually respectful interaction. …
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SexPolitics And Rights In Development, Development, 52.1
This article provides an introduction to the Development special issue on Sexuality and Development. The articles in the issue are based on discussions held at a workshop on Sexuality and the Development Industry at the Institute of Development Studies in April 2008. The aim of the journal is to examine international development's connections with sexuality and look for more creative and constructive means of engagement. It sets out why sexuality is an important issue to address and explores why the development industry has failed to constructively take on the issue in the past as well as to propose how to do it better. …
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Sexuality And Sexual Rights In Muslim Societies, Development, 52.1
In August 2008, the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR) organized the CSBR Sexuality Institute, the first international Institute on sexuality and sexual rights in Muslim societies in Malaysia. Liz Amado presents how the Institute expanded the discourse, knowledge and thinking around sexuality in Muslim societies, as well as providing a unique space for the much needed exchange of information and experience among sexual rights advocates. …
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Sexuality And The Development Industry, Development, 52.1
A Chinese lesbian activist shows photos from her three way fake ‘wedding’, held in a Beijing restaurant to open up discussion on restrictive social and sexual norms; a Nicaraguan consultant tells the tale of how he was told the sexual and reproductive strategy he’d been commissioned to write contained ‘too much sex’; two Indian sex worker rights activists trade stories of hapless NGO efforts to ‘rehabilitate’ sex workers; and a Nigerian activist explains how she used discussions of multiple orgasms as a means to spark discussions on sex, pleasure, relationships, intimacy, polygamy and female genital mutilation with married couples in the northern Nigerian state of Minna, where Sharia law has been in place since 2000. These and other conversations brought together over 70 activists, academics, donors and development practitioners from more than 25 countries at a workshop at the Institute of Development Studies, in April 2008. The workshop was hosted by the IDS Sexuality and Development programme and co-sponsored by the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium, both of which are funded by the UK’s Department for International Development. It sought to explore the linkages between sexuality and the development industry. …
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The Taming Of The Shrewd Meyeli Chhele: A Political Economy Of Development's Sexual Subject, Development, 52.1
Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in West Bengal, India, Akshay Khanna examines the conditions under which epidemiological knowledge about ‘men who have sex with men’ is produced and brought to circulate. He looks at conditions under which particular idioms of gender and sexuality are transformed into epidemiologically over-determined identity categories. The Sexual Subject that circulates in development praxis as an embodiment-in-the-world, it is argued, would be better understood in terms of the political economy that makes its intelligibility and circulation possible. …
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Women Who Have Sex With Women In The Global HIV Pandemic, Development, 52.1
The global HIV/AIDS pandemic has pushed sexuality issues higher up on the development cooperation agenda but the sexual health and rights of lesbian women and other women who have sex with women are often completely missing from sexual and reproductive health and rights policies, materials and documents. Karin Lenke and Mathilda Piehl are concerned that this underlying homophobia and heteronormativity will lead to these women being unable to enjoy their full human rights in any field. …
