The political practices of gender experts: repurposing women's empowerment

Abstract

Gender experts are increasingly employed across governments, multilateral donors, companies, and NGOs where they are defining a new profession and a new field of study, driving calls for research into the relationship between expertise and feminism. At the same time, the instrumentalization of the women's empowerment approach has prompted analysis of whether it can be reharnessed to its radical roots. By interviewing 25 gender experts, this article examines their political practices in navigating their work at a time when there is unprecedented support for gender equality, and yet interventions overwhelmingly focus on women's market inclusion. The article underscores the profound contradictions generated by the privatization of development, where most gender experts support increased private sector involvement but operate in a hostile environment and devote substantial labour to gender-capacity building. Based on the limited scope for re-radicalising women's empowerment, the article proposes advocating for feminist participatory action research as an alternative.