Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development

This collection brings together leading feminist thinkers who examine the struggles for interpretive power which underlies international development.

• Questions why the insights from years of feminist gender and development research are so often turned into ‘gender myths’ and ‘feminist fables’: women are more likely to care for the environment; are better at working together; are less corrupt; have a seemingly infinite capacity to survive
• Explores how bowdlerized and impoverished representations of gender relations have simultaneously come to be embedded in development policy and practice
• Traces the ways in which language and images of development are related to practice and provides a nuanced account of the politics of knowledge production
• Argues that struggles for interpretive power are not only important for our own sake, but also for the implications they have for women’s lives worldwide
• An informed analysis of how ‘gender’ has been transformed in its transfer into development policy and how many authors are now revisiting and reflecting on their earlier work

Content:
Chapter 1 Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: The Struggle for Interpretive Power in Gender and Development (pages 1–19): Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead
Chapter 2 A Bigger Piece of a Very Small Pie: Intrahousehold Resource Allocation and Poverty Reduction in Africa (pages 21–44): Bridget O'Laughlin
Chapter 3 The Construction of the Myth of Survival (pages 45–65): Mercedes Gonzalez de la Rocha
Chapter 4 Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell (pages 67–84): Melissa Leach
Chapter 5 Political Cleaners: Women as the New Anti?Corruption Force? (pages 85–103): Anne Marie Goetz
Chapter 6 Resolving Risk? Marriage and Creative Conjugality (pages 105–126): Cecile Jackson
Chapter 7 Feminism, Gender, and Women's Peace Activism (pages 127–143): Judy El?Bushra
Chapter 8 Myths to Live by? Female Solidarity and Female Autonomy Reconsidered (pages 145–163): Andrea Cornwall