Gender in development: What lessons for addressing inequality on the grounds of religion or (non)-belief?

This paper examines how understanding processes of redressing the gender blindness of international development can offer illuminating insights to addressing religious inequalities as a blind spot in development policy. The first part of the paper discusses the possibilities and tensions for comparing gender and religious (in)equality, both as analytical lens and aspirations in development. In the second part of the paper, we reflect on the inferences that can be drawn for in-roads to changing attitudes and behaviours to make development more aware of, and responsive to, religious inequalities and freedom of religion or belief. The methodological approach combines empirical data generated from interviews and roundtables with development practitioners and policymakers, with an integrative literature review. It also explores the conceptual conundrums in the use of the different terms, situating them in their historical background and interrogating their ideological underpinnings. Distinct historical trajectories mean that whereas a key challenge to mainstreaming gender in development has been its recognition at the highest political level, in the case of freedom of religion or belief, the challenge is to reconfigure its politicisation from being predominantly a foreign policy issue to one that is constitutive to the advancement of an inclusive development agenda. The paper argues that there are pertinent similarities in some of the challenges to incorporating a gender sensitive lens over the past 50 years and the current resistance to addressing religious inequalities or freedom of religion or belief matters in international development. Accordingly, analysis of the successes and limitations of efforts to mainstream gender in development sheds light on some of the political and institutional dynamics encountered when seeking to make development policy-makers, planners and practitioners more aware of power dynamics pertaining to religious inequalities that have been overlooked.