Thea Hilhorst’s post has generated a lot of traffic and interest, so it’s time to push you a bit. We’ve come up with 9 statements reflecting different views of the relative importance of the issue, and the kinds of measures development workers and academics should take. You can select a maximum of 4 of these – those you most strongly

Guest post from Dorothea Hilhorst of the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University. She suggested this just after I had got off a plane to Mexico, so I figured I had to publish it…. Update: this post has generated so much interest that we’ve put up an opinion poll here – please complete it after you’ve read this

Guest post from Ayesha Khan of the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi Do aid dollars help or hinder the women’s movement? In Pakistan, there are advocates of both points of view. I believe that my recent research as part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) programme has gathered enough evidence to settle it: there is a

Today is the UN International Day for Rural Women, so here are Patti Petesch, Shelley Feldman  and Lone Badstue to introduce some really interesting new research on what works. What can a Positive Deviance approach add to our understanding of gender equality in rural villages? To find out we analysed a sample of 79 villages in 17 countries and identified eight

I go to quite a few academic conferences and to be honest, they sometimes make me fear for my sanity. Mood swings; weird rages against people (OK, men) who insist on stating the blindingly obvious at great length, in obscure academic jargon; a twitchy need to check emails and twitter feed every few minutes; sudden enthusiasms and exhaustions. I seem to

Guest post by Emily Brown of Oxfam GB), and Rebecca Haines and Tam O’Neil of CARE International UK. For many development professionals, political economy has become the gold standard of foundational analysis for programming. It helps us to understand how power and resources are distributed in a society or sector and is important for ensuring our programmes and campaigns avoid cookie-cutter

Ayo Ojebode, of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, introduces his new research on a fascinating social movement, part of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability research programme In a world where movements appear and fizzle out just as they are getting started, Nigeria’s Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement is an exception. Meant to be a one-day march in 2014,

Guest post from Max Lawson, Oxfam’s Head of Inequality Policy  I am generally a positive kind of person. It is something Duncan and I have in common.  But I must admit, keeping an optimistic outlook can be quite hard in these dark days.  The seemingly ever-larger gap between rich and poor. The rise of racism, sexism and fascism in the

US subtitler v Dr Who (who is from Huddersfield) Oxfam’s new ‘Make Change Happen’ MOOC (free online course) kicks off next week. Register here. Fox News TV presenter falls off chair. Colleague pretends nothing happened and goes into next segment. Weird. Adding formulaic pro-diversity statements to job ads actually reduces the number of applications from minority groups. Other approaches like

I’m glad to see Penny Lawrence, an Oxfam big cheese for 12 years before she resigned so publicly last February, has been busy reflecting and talking to other leaders (and me) about how large lumbering INGOs need to change. She has put together a useful paper on the topic (a source of endless fascination to INGOs, maybe not so much to

Stefan Dercon of the Blavatnik School of Government introduces two new reports. Am I alone? Was I the only one who could not believe it when the World Development Report 2016 said that 85 per cent of jobs in Ethiopia could disappear due to automation? Am I also the only one who sighs when a young entrepreneur claims the app

It was only intended as a bit of Friday fun, but last week’s post on which devspeak words you would most like to ban generated such interesting comments that it warrants a follow up. First up, the people have spoken. After 500 votes, ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘the field’ are the clear joint winners in the hall of devspeak shame, well ahead