Title: Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
Headings: Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
21st May 2015
Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
Diana Koester
'... development work could be more politically smart and more effective if it addressed this blind spot'
'... gender and power are intrinsically linked; understanding this can help us understand both concepts better'
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Diana Koester
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Content: Amongst other things this alternative perspective highlights that women can sometimes have special forms of influence on decision-making because of their specific social status. In Liberia, for example, women working for peace were able to achieve high levels of trust among opposing factions by emphasising their non-threatening roles as sisters, mothers and wives. '... gender and power are intrinsically linked; understanding this can help us understand both concepts better'
So gender and power are intrinsically linked; understanding this can help us understand both concepts better and creates the opportunity that I hint at in the title of this piece – an opportunity for more politically smart development. It does this by offering two really practical pieces of advice: If we think about gender, we’re better at thinking and working politically. A gender perspective shows that the PEA and TWP agendas are currently blind to key components of the workings of power: how power and politics in the family shape power relations at all levels of society; how wider economic, political and social structures rely on and reproduce gender power relations;