Global norms in development organizations

How do development organizations understand, work with and institutionalize global norms on gender equality? Over the past 4 years, a DFF-funded research project based at DIIS entitled GLONO or “Global norms and heterogeneous donor organizations” has explored this question through in-depth case studies.

In the first part of a new two-part Special Issue in Progress in Development Studies, DIIS researchers along with colleagues from the United Kingdom explores the overarching question through as different cases as Oxfam GB, feminicide and AMEXCID in Mexico, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Special Issue shows the many different ways in which development organizations engage with and relate to global norms of gender equality, from symbolic institutionalization to radical change.

It argues that lines of difference between ‘new’ and ‘old’ donors do not shape how these organization engage with norms as much as notions of organizational cultures, histories and actors. As such, taking particular ideas about gender equality further remains heavily circumscribed by contextual and contingent factors.