Different Commonalities: Gender Mainstreaming and the Marginalization of Difference in Economic Development

Gender mainstreaming in economic development has occurred in terms that contribute to the homogenization of women’s experiences and to the exclusion of difference as legitimate terrain of analysis at institutions such as the World Bank. Feminist difficulties with the theory and politics of difference have been and will continue to be complicit with this problematic aspect of gender mainstreaming at such institutions. Since differences among women are at least as important as commonalities in defining needs and grounds for political action, the exclusion of difference from the discourse of development must be challenged directly in feminist theory and practice.