Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance

Neoliberal discourses and the assumptions they reproduce have, more successfully than other forms of economic rationality, monopolized the politics of global governance and development in recent years. So often accepted as 'common sense', the constructedness of the neoliberal faith in marketization, flexibilization, deregulation and privatization have frequently been overlooked. Gendering the World Bank refuses to see the world of economic policy-making and development 'common sense' as value neutral. Rethinking the meaning, processes and effects of neoliberalism in the contemporary politics of development and global governance, the author focuses on revealing how gender matters in and to the global political economy. Recognizing that governance is practiced and studied in a variety of ways and through diverse forms, the author examines the reproduction of tacitly, but crucially, gendered assumptions of economic endeavour, meaning and behaviour, assumptions that are presented as universal and neutral but that are highly ethnocentric, sexed and gendered.

Penny Griffin is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Australia.