Sex, Gender and Development: Challenging Heteronormativity

Sex, Gender and Development: Challenging Heteronormativity

Published May 2010

Authors

Shivananda Khan, Susan Jolly

Publisher

Focus themes

Open full report

If development really did justice to the diversity of people's social and sexual identities, livelihoods and living arrangements, how would it be different to the approaches we see today? What would be done differently? How can practitioners, activists, academics and policy actors concerned with challenging oppressive gender and sexuality norms work together to loosen development's "straightjacket"? This booklet offers insights into these questions with a range of quotes from activists, theorists, and international organisations. These include analyses of existing sex and gender norms, how the development industry colludes with these, and alternative ways of thinking and acting on these issues.

  1. How good is this research?

    Assessing the quality of research can be a tricky business. This blog from our editor offers some tools and tips.

    Read now

Related website content

  • Blog Post

    Progress or platitudes? Women’s rights and gender equality 25 years after Beijing

    05 Mar 2020: This International Women’s Day global institutions and governments are marking the 25th Anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action – a defining framework for change to address gender inequalities and women’s rights.
  • News

    International Women’s Day: Tackling barriers to empowerment

    08 Mar 2018: Over the past year, there has been an exposure of largely socially or publicly invisible sexual harassment and discrimination committed against women. On International Women’s Day, initiatives from the Institute of Development Studies and The ESRC-DFID Impact Initiative are drawing attention to the more visible issues that form significant barriers to women’s empowerment.
  • Gender
    Painting of #DCRainbowCrosswalks Washington
    Heteronormativity

    Within development there has been research, policy and practice which has offered an analysis of the impact of heteronormativity or challenged bad practice.

Related content

  • Document

    The welfare effects of social assistance programmes for women in India

    V. Unnikrishnan / Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, 2020
    The literature has established that the alarming female poverty rate in India is a crucial factor contributing to ‘missing elderly women’.
  • Document

    Women in the gig economy: paid work, care and flexibility in Kenya and South Africa

    A. Hunt / Overseas Development Institute, 2019
    The gig economy is expanding globally, with exponential growth forecast in traditionally female-dominated sectors – notably on-demand household services including cooking, cleaning and care work. But little research to date has focused on gendered experiences of gig work or on gig workers outside North America and Europe.
  • Document

    The politics of social protection in Eastern and Southern Africa

    S. Hickey, T. Lavers, M. Niño-Zarazúa, J. Seekings / United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2019
    The notion that social protection should be a key strategy for reducing poverty in developing countries has now been mainstreamed within international development policy and practice.
  • Document

    What works to prevent cyber violence against women and girls?

    B. Faith, E. Fraser / Department for International Development, UK, 2018
    Cyber violence against women and girls (Cyber VAWG) is a new and emerging form of violence and the term is used to describe how the internet and information and communication technologies exacerbate and magnify acts of violence against women and girls.
  • Document

    Women’s economic engagement and childcare: Moving from survival to a ‘triple boon’

    D. Chopra, S. Nazneen, M. Krishnan / Institute of Development Studies UK, 2019
    Women’s childcare responsibilities are often seen as a barrier to them undertaking paid work. However, this is a two-way interaction, mediated by large quantities of unpaid work.
More like this