Who Needs [Sex] When You Can Have [Gender]?

For academics working in the gender and development (GAD) field, the concept of ‘gender’ is everyday currency. In the UK, at least, social relations of gender analysis, with its roots in socialist feminism, is a major foundation for GAD thinking (Young et al., 1981; Razavi and Miller, 1995a: 27-32). Understanding the concept of ‘gender’ in the context of social relations analysis remains a touchstone of gender and development research, teaching and training in many institutions in the UK and elsewhere. However, outside of academia, within policy and activist arenas, the utility and relevance of ‘gender’ has been highly contested. Indeed, in some policy applications, ‘gender’ has come to lose its feminist political content. This article explores conflicting discourses on the relevance and meaning of gender in policy and activist contexts. We draw on debates over ‘gender’ aired at the NGO (non-government organization) Forum of the United Nations (UN) Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, in September 1995.1 This conference provided an extraordinary opportunity to investigate a vast range of contemporary policy and activist discourses, given the very broad spectrum of interest groups represented there.