Abstract

This chapter is about the achievements and challenges relating to the half-century of feminist engagement with the global actors and institutions of international development cooperation – otherwise known as ‘aid’. Some feminists have refused to have anything to do with what they perceive to be an instrument of patriarchal global capitalism. Yet others, including the present author, have struggled to realize aid’s transformative potential. Although success has been variable and compromises frequent, international aid has nevertheless provided manifold opportunities for individual and collective feminist agency, including in the global spaces and institutions that an unavoidably partial (in both meanings of the word) account explores in this chapter. ¹