Representations of women and gender in DFID's development-security-counterterrorism nexus

Abstract

In a post-9/11 environment, the Department for International Development (DFID) shifted its strategic focus towards an integrationist approach that aligned mainstream development programming with the national security agenda. A key part of those reforms was integrating counterterrorism – directly and indirectly – into DFID's portfolio. Using a feminist institutionalist approach, I examine how discourses about women, development, security, and counterterrorism are reproduced through a ‘development-security-counterterrorism nexus’. Within the nexus, DFID represents a key site for the production, reproduction, and evolution of gendered discursive practices1 about women. I argue that institutional evolution is possible through a process of discursive evolution where certain discourses become more or less engrained or ‘sedimented’2 depending on the presence of alternative ideas and knowledges. The central research question asks how did gender-sensitive development work evolve after 9/11 and what factors influenced and shaped this evolution? The main findings were that as counterterrorism aims, objectives, and methods became more emphasised in UK development programming, a sense of institutional incoherence and poor strategic direction adversely affected how gender-sensitive programming was designed and implemented. Furthermore, I conclude that gendered development policy was largely based on assumptions rather than evidence, which negatively impacted how programmes were implemented.

Women’s discursive agency in transitional justice policy-making: A feminist institutionalist approach

“…139 We develop discourse-focused feminist institutionalist analysis of men's domination, previously illuminated by studying the representational function of discourse in the poststructuralist tradition. 140 Our analysis of men's and women's 'talk in action' 141 reveals the power dynamics at the level of micro-level interactions in mixed-sex institutions. When women challenge domination at the micro-level of discourse, this can open up space for asserting gender-sensitive policy positions and contribute to dismantling masculine gendered hierarchy in institutions.…”