The (un)targeted gendered vulnerabilities in Norwegian development aid—a corpus-assisted discourse analysis

Motivation

Gender is a central concept and a buzzword in the development aid discourse. Like many buzzwords, its meaning is malleable. If aid efforts really are to “leave no one behind,” as the Sustainable Development Goals proclaim, we must critically interrogate how the discursive articulation of buzzwords such as gender can both make visible and hide from view vulnerabilities that should be salient for aid programming. In this article, we focus on the extent to which the mobilization of “gender” by Norwegian development aid non-governmental organizations' is able to bring vulnerabilities related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) to the fore.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine a corpus of Norwegian NGO development aid policy and planning documents to analyse whether and how gender is articulated differently across different types of documents, and what this means in terms of which gendered vulnerabilities become visible.

Approach and methods

We draw on methods from corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) to examine a purpose-built corpus of 88 files pulled from framework funding applications submitted by four Norwegian aid NGOs to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). We analyse the results drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to examine how conceptual translation between policy and programme-level documents opens up space for the concept to be assigned changing meanings.

Findings

While the NGOs at policy level articulate a broad notion of gendered vulnerabilities that include recognition of SOGIE vulnerabilities, this is not translated into practical programme plans. At the programme plan level, gender is articulated as a subject field overwhelmingly concerned with women and firmly attached to a traditional binary sex-gender construct.

Policy implications

Although SOGIE gendered vulnerabilities are increasingly acknowledged in NGO articulations of their priorities and values, this is not reflected in actual programme plans. We argue that this can lead to a misplaced expectation that these concerns are being addressed in the NGOs' activities, obscuring the neglect of SOGIE vulnerabilities in many development aid gender programmes.