Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations and Challenges

by Ann Whitehead (Editor), Andrea Cornwall (Editor), Elizabeth Harrison (Editor)

This collection of essays by leading feminist thinkers from North and South constitutes a major new attempt to reposition feminism within development studies.

Feminism's emphasis on social transformation makes it fundamental to development studies. Yet the relationship between the two disciplines has frequently been a troubled one. At present, the way in which many development institutions function often undermines feminist intent through bureaucratic structures and unequal power quotients. Moreover, the seeming intractability of inequalities and injustice in developing countries have presented feminists with some enormous challenges. Here, emphasizing the importance of a plurality of approaches, the authors argue for the importance of what 'feminisms' have to say to development.

Confronting the enormous challenges for feminisms in development studies, this book provides real hope for dialogue and exchange between feminisms and development.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, International Development

262 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2006

About the author

Anne Whitehead, author and historian, was born in Sydney but spent much of her childhood in England and Papua-New Guinea. Because of a peripatetic engineer father, she was educated at eleven schools, including Lincolnshire and Yorkshire villages, the PNG highland goldfields and coastal town of Lae, and boarding schools in Charters Towers and the Queensland Gold Coast. In 1972 she graduated from the University of Sydney with an MA in Australian Literature and later (2001) a PhD in Government and International Relations.