Working gender after crisis: partnerships and disconnections in Sri Lanka after the Indian Ocean tsunami
This article focuses on how northern non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their partners, community-based organizations (CBOs), are ‘working’ gender after a crisis. It explores the relationship between one NGO aiming to mainstream gender and a women's CBO in a village
in southern Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. The gender policies of the NGO and how the CBO has co-opted these policies are analysed in terms of discourse, interdependence, power and performance. Structural and individual challenges for working gender in post-crisis situations are analyzed
and the constraints for making deep reaching changes that can alter gender relations are identified. Because of differences in the conceptualization and implementation of gender policies and practices, the CBO has manoeuvred to maintain its own interests, while the NGO has experienced disconnections
in working gender between organizational levels and locations of implementation. In conclusion, it is argued that for changes to take place, knowledge production on gender needs to be locally situated and sensitive to the structural conditions and power relations with which organizations and
communities engage.
Keywords: Sri Lanka; asociaciones; mainstreaming; mainstreaming de género; non-governmental organizations; organizaciones no gubernamentales; partnerships; trabajo de género; working gender
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway 2: Department of Geography, Faculty of Social Science and Technology Management,Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
Publication date: 01 February 2013
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