ABSTRACT
Gender equality, as a key aim of modernity and progress, is at the heart of the construction of strategic narratives on development, especially those surrounding global efforts to tackle poverty. This chapter suggests that the articulation of news about gender issues in development and development policies has not been helpful in tackling gender-generated poverty. Gender in development discourses has moved in a more or less positive direction alongside a process called the "feminisation" of poverty. The feminisation of poverty took off in the 1990s thanks to the work of the agencies of the UN, which vowed to better understand women's problems in altered priorities and to empower them with more opportunities to produce economic outputs, social progress and equality. Feminisation brought gender issues to an increasing presence in development news.
