Practising Pragmatism: The Framing of Gender Among Development Professionals in India

Abstract

This article identifies the ways in which researchers and practitioners situated in different institutions engage with different systems of knowledge in their study of gender in the context of development, and the implications it has on how these professionals work together. Key informant interviews with 25 gender specialists from universities, research organizations, NGOs, UN agencies and donors undertaken in Delhi, India, are used as an illustration. The study finds that researchers/practitioners perceive that they study gender in dissimilar ways based on differences in academic training, professional roles and explicit affiliation with feminism. In practice, however, they have adopted ‘pragmatic’ ways to bridge the epistemological divide between the perspectives of ‘gender and development’ and ‘feminism’. These pragmatic practices are visible in the ways in which they work with the government, academia and donor organizations. I voice their need to traverse the quantitative–qualitative divide in order to strengthen our understanding of gender. The study demonstrates that researchers can negotiate epistemological differences for the sake of achieving the common goal of gender justice. This is important as the field of research on gender expands globally, with the emergence of new sites of knowledge production and emphasis on numerical evidence.