Using gender-analysis frameworks: theoretical and practical reflections

While gender research methodologies, such as gender-analysis frameworks, can contribute to ensuring that development practice promotes gender equality, their use is only one element in the process, and cannot alone ensure that gender considerations are integrated into development practice. Their use needs to be combined with, and based on, clear political and theoretical underpinnings and specific goals and objectives. This article reflects on the challenges experienced when training in and using these frameworks, examining the importance of the theories underlying various frameworks, the necessity for clear objectives for such work, and ultimately the need to be mindful of the challenges experienced if attempts are made to reduce ‘the political project of gender and development . . . to a ‘‘technical’’ fix’ (Cornwall et al. 2004, 4).