Gender norms for gender justice: power, transformation, and the politics of change

Abstract

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue argues that dominant development approaches to social norms change have been progressively depoliticised, locating the problem in individual attitudes rather than the structural conditions and power relations that sustain inequality, an omission increasingly untenable in a context of organised backlash. Drawing on 19 contributions examining how norms change occurs through individual transgression, collective action, policymaking, development interventions, and broader processes of economic and social transformation, conflict, and urbanisation, the introduction re-positions gender norms within a gender justice paradigm at two levels: analytically, by connecting norms to the structural and institutional arrangements in which they are embedded, and epistemologically, by treating the narrowing of the knowledge base accompanying their mainstreaming itself as a question of justice. The discussion identifies diverse forms and conditions of normative change across the collection and sets out ways forward for re-politicising the study and practice of gender norms change.