Sex and gender theories and development planning: what is new is not always better
--> Asking (begging would be more a propos) for a project involvement, I asked my onetime boss and partner Litoy to include me in his planning projects. The ones that he had at the time were looking for a gender sociologist, so we got to talking about theories of gender in development. Jokingly, he asked if I still subscribed in WID (women in development), meaning of course that that theory was passé. He proceeded to name Mosher, the UN gender framework, and if you know Litoy, some other fifty thousand “new” theories that an up to date sociologist worthy of being a member of his team should know. Unable to resist, I asked him if he came across queer theory, and “we are souls, so we don’t have sex and we don’t have gender” theory. Obviously he didn’t. And that, dear blog followers, is the crux of this post. We can construct and deconstruct and then reconstruct theories and anti-theories about anything, in particular today about gender and its role in development planning...