Following the panel at DSA2024 (PE08), Camilly Maubert, Eyram Ivy Sedzro and Sophie Legros are organising a special issue on “”Gender norms change for gender justice: rethinking theory and practice.” for the journal Development in Practice. 

More information can be found here. Deadlines for 6,000-7,000 words manuscripts is the 15th December 2024. The special issue can also include practice notes of 3,000 words and practitioners are encouraged to share their experiences and viewpoints via this medium.  

In recent decades, there has been growing recognition in development thinking that gender norms underpin unjust structures in the division of labour, the distribution of resources and entitlements, politics, land ownership and rights and that these must be transformed to achieve gender justice in the Global South.

These unjust social structures produce and are sustained by multiple forms of violence. Intervention models have been developed to transform gender norms, acting often at the levels of community awareness, media campaigns, economic incentives, and/or critical reflection groups. Yet, while an expanding evidence base shows that it is possible to shift norms to support gender justice, such interventions “can be difficult to do well and are not all effective” (Kerr-Wilson et al. 2020:29). Authors point to a number of limitations, including the fact that knowledge production about norms change “tend[s] to be quantitative, short-term and focused on clinical outcomes” rather than attentive to processes of change (Greig and Flood 2020: 43).

Others argue that the measures used to assess change may not be best suited to capture the nuances of change produced by interventions (Chatterji et al. 2020). Finally, recent publications showed that interventions seeking to change norms are primarily based on behavioural approaches which focus on promoting attitude change at the individual level without paying appropriate attention to intersectional power hierarchies and the structural realities which shape change processes (Cookson et al. 2023, Piedalue et al. 2020, Wazir 2022).

In this special issue, we aim to engage with the processes of gender norms change in the Global South by highlighting the particular need for research to pay more attention to the non-linearity and complexities of normative change. Indeed, while there is growing literature about ‘what works’ to change norms, we suggest that understanding how change happens is as important as knowing whether it happens. Yet, not enough is known about how that change takes place, how people interact with the process, and how to best capture those dynamics.

We invite contributions which provide evidence of the complex and nuanced processes of gender norms change in the Global South and seek to bring together original research that addresses conceptual, methodological, and empirical questions that critically engage with relevant academic debates and practical approaches. The series of papers will highlight the manifold ways in which social norms can change and the consequences of these modalities for destabilising and transforming gender inequalities. It will explore at the granular level how norms change occurs at multiple levels, including in families, communities, organisations, and institutions, either as a result of individual acts of transgression, sustained collective action, policymaking, development interventions, or broader processes of social and economic development.

Papers grounded in experiences from the Global South, especially those dealing with gender norms change in crisis or conflict settings, are especially welcome. We welcome contributions from scholars, experts, activists as well as practitioners to incorporate a diversity of perspectives to advance theory, practice, and policy around gender norms.