ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the complex evolution of gender equality issues within the World Bank, with an emphasis on the processes through which knowledge is produced and contested in the institution. Smart Economics is a powerful discourse with roots in many institutions, just as the trends that influence Gender and Development today are not the work of any one institution. The story of gender in the Bank is bound up with an institutional history of feminists working inside and outside the Bank to effect change; activists critiquing dominant development paradigms and practices; and conceptual and organizational changes within the institution itself. The post-Washington Consensus brought about major intellectual and rhetorical shifts in the Bank's work and therefore opened up policy space for critical staffers to advance feminist (and other) agendas. Methodologically, the chapter draws on the analysis of World Bank documents and interviews with World Bank staffers.
