ABSTRACT
International development agencies and actors hold out the promise of solutions, but they struggle to cope with the complexity of people’s lives. Srey Penh, a sex worker from Cambodia, was functionally illiterate and lived on the streets. Yet she knew to give development agencies the version of her life that best suited their framework: empowered sex worker, or victim desperate to leave the sex trade. Her story, plus the experiences of the author as an international development volunteer who became an international development academic and practitioner, frame this chapter. International development aspirations of equity and equality – including the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals – are explored, alongside the links between international development and economic growth. Readers are also introduced to the concept of social hierarchies such as gender, race, sexuality, socio-economic status and disability, and the way in which they work to exclude people from the centre of the ‘charmed circle’ of opportunity. Particular attention is paid to the way in which international development has adopted a categorical approach to gender, rather than engaging with gender as a dynamic social process of judgement.
