Africa: African women challenging neo-liberal economic orthodoxy

Despite the many international commitments to gender equality, much remains to be done in terms of mainstreaming commitment to gender equality into development. It seems that the major global development institutions appear currently to be more concerned with mainstreaming trade into development. For example, the outcomes of the major international conferences, from the International Conference on Financing for Development to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, show a great deal of progress made in mainstreaming trade into development. Women’s rights and gender activists have voiced their concern that this progress is paralleled by lip service to gender equality and women’ s rights, says this article from the journal Gender and Development: Women Reinventing Globalisation.