ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the inclusion of gender into development thinking, spanning the introduction of the ‘women in development’ (WID) approach in the 1970s, the adoption of ‘gender and development’ (GAD) after the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, and the current discourse on decolonising gendered development approaches. The chapter discusses the political nature of GAD and the challenges of implementing it. It critically considers the existing power balance within the wider development arena that drive and maintain feminist thought at the edge of the discourse. The chapter demonstrates that a consideration of the religion–gender nexus can only take place in a decolonised implementation of the GAD approach.
