Gender and Development in India, 1970s-1990s Some Reflections on the Constitutive Role of Contexts

Some Reflections on the Constitutive Role of Contexts Mary E John The ideologies of globalisation and structural adjustment seek to make one deaf to the immediate past and to anything that does not speak in the language of efficiency. However, the contemporary changes overtaking us, disturbing as they are, also hat hour the possibility of bringing our political and intellectual engagements on to new and fruitful terrain. For those who have been working at the interface of gender and development, it is time to refigure their priorities, not by secluding themselves within some putative 'pure' economy, but by broadening feminist conceptions of the economy itself Rescuing the notion of gender from its ritualistic incantations and making it really work for a more emancipatory and inclusive social order is one of the ways open to them, one they have every reason to take.