Heteronormativity in the development sector: where are we now?
Channel: IIED
Date: 2022-12-09

This online event explored gender and sexual diversity in the development sector, and how heteronormative discourse has evolved in the past decade.

Eleven years ago, Susie Jolly published an article detailing the ways that international development work was heteronormative, assuming heterosexual gender stereotyped household models and framing sexuality as a problem of ill health or violence, rather than a potentially pleasurable contributor to wellbeing.

Jolly recently revisited her assessment, and while the sector is largely still heteronormative, LGBTI and sexual pleasure have now made an entry into development discourses. But funding and action remain limited. And both LGBTI and pleasure have been co-opted at least to some degree to reinforce other intersecting axes of inequality.

In this IIED Debates event, organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Jolly reflected on the possibilities of an integrated approach to sexuality. She argued that in these dark times of war, pandemic, climate crisis and conservatism, we need more than ever joined-up thinking and solidarity across and beyond diverse sexuality causes, that cannot be twisted to other purposes or used to pit one progressive cause against another.

Speakers:

0:00 Introduction
0:52 Tucker Landesman (moderator), a geographer with a multidisciplinary background and 10 years' experience researching and implementing projects on urban development, climate change and public health
10:31 Susie Jolly, honorary associate for the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). From 2010-17, Susie led the Ford Foundation sexuality education grant making programme in China.
33:44 Dr. SN Nyeck, multidisciplinary associate professor in Africana/gender studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.
55:15 Question-and-answer session

More information: https://www.iied.org/heteronormativity-development-sector-where-are-we-now

#lgbtqia #urban