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Sexing development and relocating gender: An organisational case study

Abstract While gender has become increasingly mainstreamed1 in international development, it has lost its sharpness as an analytical tool and operational means to women's liberation. Sexuality, while it intersects with gender as a social construct, has been largely ignored within development contexts. This paper draws on findings that emerged from the gains and struggles experienced by project staff in a large international development agency engaging communities on issues related to sexual and women's rights. In so doing, it illustrates how a sexuality lens can move beyond gender equity and sexual health programmes focused on women's vulnerability (largely framed around protecting women and promoting access to services and contraceptive or condom use) to richer understandings of the range of social and cultural factors shaping sexual meanings and gender roles. Reshaping understandings of gender and sexuality requires a change from the conventional development discourse based on biomedical and moral-based sensibilities that associates sex with risk and danger, towards one that also recognises pleasure and agency. Sexuality is a vital aspect of development and sexual rights are a precondition not only for HIV/AIDS prevention, reproductive health or rights, but also for gender equality and social inclusion more widely. While personal and organisational transformation is fundamental, broader social, cultural and political forces, from community groups to governments and donors at large, must lie at the heart of change.