Kate Bedford

The Imperative of Male Inclusion: How Institutional Context Influences World Bank Gender Policy

Abstract This article examines the role of institutional context in shaping policy agendas through a case study of the World Banks gender lending in Ecuador. Using interviews with employees and analysis of policy texts I explore the complex institutional location of Bank gender policymakers, identifying two key constraints on their policy output: (1) the pressure to frame gender policy as increasing productivity and efficiency; and (2) the pressure to frame gender policy as producing complementary sharing between men and women. Given that the efficiency constraint has been much debated in feminist Bank scholarship I explicate the complementarity constraint in more detail. Specifically, I argue that the institutional pressure to define gender policy through a complementary focus on couples led poor men to become hyper-visible as irresponsible partners, and as the crux of the gender policy problem. In turn Bank gender policy was focused on efforts to change them, by encouraging their loving attachment to family and willingness to do domestic labor. I see cause for concern in the dominance of these policy preferences, and I consider how to facilitate their contestation in closing.

Feminists theorize international political economy

This article introduces the women and international political economy special issue of Signs, tracing its relationship to the crisis of neoliberalism as they developed concurrently and highlighting the key themes elucidated in the articles presented here. Three themes, which are reflected in different ways in these articles, are outlined in this introduction in order to illustrate the importance of gender in analyzing international political economy: first, the benefit of multilayered approaches to governance; second, new insights into debates about social reproduction and work; and, third, pressing concerns of intimacy and sexuality. In particular, the introduction foregrounds transnational and postcolonial approaches to political economy questions, including their application in a national frame. The article then identifies the gaps in the literature, and in the special issue itself, and concludes by reflecting on the Janus‐faced nature of crises. We suggest that discursive and political struggles are already taking place that challenge the power relations entrenched within international political economy.

Governing Intimacy in the World Bank

Introduction This chapter charts the policymaking efforts of gender staff in the World Bank — the world’s largest and most influential development institution.1 It attempts to analyse those efforts through the lens of governance, a process that draws on four particularly important insights: (1) That governance, as “a system of rules for public life,” involves multiple sites and actors employing heterogeneous strategies oriented to numerous — and sometimes conflicting — ends (Waylen and Rai, this book; Rose 1999: 21; Mosse and Lewis 2005). The state is only one actor among many here, and multilateral institutions have become increasingly central players in global governance debates (Lamer and Walters 2004a). (2) That the deployment of expertise is a key mechanism of governance (Valverde 1998; Terry 1999). (3) That there are crucial links between micro and macro governance projects. Using Nikolas Rose’s formulation, government refers to the processes through which individuals are urged and educated to bridle their own passions and control their own instincts (Valverde 1998; Rose 1999). (3) That there are crucial links between micro and macro governance projects. Using Nikolas ose’s formulation, government refers to the processes through which individuals are urged and ducated to bridle their own passions and control their own instincts (Valverde 1998; Rose 1999: 3). The governance perspective thus presupposes the freedom of the governed (Rose 1999: 4), but it considers how apparent exercises of free will are connected, in complex and uneven ways, to larger social, economic, and political processes (Cruikshank 1999). For example the family has often been a target of state management efforts, and many attempts to achieve national and imperial prosperity have relied on expert interventions into individual lives, using notions of hygiene, education, health, and so on (Rose 1999: 6; Levine 2003). This insight provides space to consider how multilateral institutions oriented to economic development, trade, and finance, are involved in governance of micro level concerns. (4) That analysis of governance involves tracking the common-sense nature, or normativity, of discourses entrenched as self-evident (Rai, Chapter 1, this book). Specifically, the governance lens requires a disturbance of what forms the “groundwork of the present,” to make the given seem strange and to question what is taken as natural (Rose 1999: 58).

Gender and Institutional Strengthening: The World Bank's Policy Record in Latin America

This article examines the gendered nature of institutional strengthening policies at the World Bank, as part of an attempt to analyse what role gender plays in the institutionalist turn within development policy. It focuses on three snapshots of Bank action wherein debates about gender and institutional strengthening are particularly pertinent: Washington, DC policy texts and Presidential speeches; gender policy enacted in the Latin American and Caribbean region; and an Argentine project loan on social capital promotion and family strengthening. Two themes emerge from these sites: (1) that couplehood between men and women has been identified as a key informal institution necessary for development; and (2) that gender reform has been positioned as an institutional change issue requiring attention to issues such as social marketing. New norms about gender interaction thus emerge as an explicit part of the Banks reform agenda, and are shaping project experiences across Latin America.

Letting the right ones in: Whitelists, jurisdictional reputation, and the racial dynamics of online gambling regulation

Using a case study of a recent UK whitelist intended to regulate online gambling, I examine the affective politics of listing. I pay particular attention to the racial dynamics of black and white listing. By charting how the gambling whitelist worked and failed to work as a tool in the designation of jurisdictional reputation, I argue that the use and subsequent abandonment of the whitelist shows the centrality of racial dynamics to listing practices. This is particularly evident in relation to how the list was deployed in debates about the trustworthiness of the Kahnawá:ke territory and Antigua and Barbuda. In the final section I explore the racialised affective practices forged after the demise of the online gambling whitelist. Although non-listing techniques of governance look to be expanding, in the form of increased surveillance of individual players, lists continue to play a key role in the UK government’s new model of gambling regulation. I suggest that this confirms the continuing importance of black and white lists as techniques of governance, and the value of exploring them and their racialised implications together.

Bingo Regulation and the Feminist Political Economy of Everyday Gambling: In Search of the Anti-Heroic

Abstract This paper uses bingo—a lottery-style game particularly popular with older working-class women—to take forward feminist political economy debates about the everyday. It highlights consumption and regulation as key to research on everyday political economy, and aims to contribute to studies of gambling as a marker of the everyday within critical political economy. Rather than seeing gambling primarily in terms of vernacular risk-taking, however, it argues that gambling is also a pathway into exploring other, more self-effacing political economies—of entertainment, fundraising, sharing, and ‘having a laugh’. Focusing on three key areas of regulatory dispute (over how to win bingo; who can participate; and what defines the game), the research suggests that players and workers are (re)enabling the diverse, plural nature of bingo as a political economic formulation—involving winning; entertainment; fundraising; care; flirting; and playful speculation—in the face of technological and legal processes aiming to standardize the game’s meaning as commercial gambling.

Reflections from a Visitor

Solicited for a special section on the legacy of the Rutgers Women in Politics Ph.D programme.