On behalf of our collegues at the Departement for Global Development and Planning we would like to inform about their upcoming seminar:

Regendering the gender debate: reflections on choices and constraints in teaching and researching gender issues cross-culturally

Seminar at University of Agder 20^th -21^st of August 2014, Department for Global Development and Planning. In this two-day seminar the aim is to discuss how to teach and do research on gender issues within development studies. Given the current emphasis on gender mainstreaming, gender equality and empowerment of women in the South we organize an event highlighting the importance of context and lived experience. We will emphasize the experience of men and women and their everyday life concerns as important points of entry for an understanding of how to think and do gender and development. Only when the experiences of women and men in local contexts inform the use of concepts such as gender and empowerment, can there be a potential for insights beyond general assumptions. Highlighting everyday life and context also enables a perspective which allows men to come back on the development arena as something more than a constraining factor for women and their struggle for independence and empowerment. Moreover, understanding gender practices in particular lifeworlds enables us to acknowledge multiple realities. Such a focus underlines the importance of comparison in order to avoid generalized labels. In doing so, we also question the underlying western ideal of independence in our efforts to work for gender equality in the South. This seminar will gather national and international scholars, also including scholars from the South. Our participants will approach the theme from different perspectives, which is why it is important to bring them together for further discussions and exploration. The seminar also allows for a dialogue between researchers and practitioners. By allowing for such a discussion across the field of theory and practice we aim to produce new knowledge and insight into how to think about and practice gender mainstreamed development. We refer to the preliminary program for names of invited speakers. WHEN: 20^th -21^st of August, 09:00-18:00 WHERE: University of Agder PROGRAM: Final program gender and development REGISTRATION: https://eras.uia.no/reg.php?id=1168