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: This, paradoxically, brought about a resurgence of social control over women, seen at its most extreme when some NGOs employing female local staff received bomb threats. Gender shapes power inequalities based on other divisions, such as class and ethnicity, and vice versa. In Sri Lanka, for example, a power analysis revealed that almost all women parliamentarians were related to male politicians from powerful political families. The vast majority also came from the dominant Sinhalese ethnic group. Opposition to opening up more parliamentary seats for women representing women therefore “not only stems from a reluctance to share power with women, but also from a reluctance to enable women outside the main ‘political culture’ to access seats of power and authority.” Gender shapes institutions and how they affect the distribution of power. Most political and economic institutions, historically dominated by men, are tailored to (elite) men’s experience. They idealise ‘masculine’ forms of behaviour and rely on men’s power over women. Therefore these institutions tend to ‘lock in’ two types of power - men’s power over women, and the power of the most ‘masculine’ men over everyone. Take political parties.