ABSTRACT
Despite numerous international conventions and declarations in support of gender equality, appalling practices of gender-based violence, abuse, discrimination, isolation, and ostracism persist. Internationally agreed prescriptive norms in development cooperation have come to describe what ‘development’ is about, but what happens when aid agencies engage with these norms? Given that gender inequalities continue to characterise most societies, one may wonder whether a steady diffusion of global norms to these organisations accurately portrays how norm engagement is taking place in this field. Based on seven case studies of major ‘new’ and ‘old’ donors (AMEXCID, South African development cooperation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Islamic Relief, Oxfam, Danida, and the World Bank), this chapter identifies three structural challenges that tend to bias and dilute global norms on gender equality when aid agencies engage with them. The chapter concludes that donor organisations cannot avoid addressing gender equality in their development cooperation, but that they do so in relatively different ways. Although many norms are changed and watered down in this process, the chapter stops short of arguing that global norms have no role to play in the struggle against gender inequalities.
