Vol. 9 No. 2 (2024)

Introduction to the monograph: ‘Feminisms and development: a necessary cartography of power in international cooperation’.

Sweden's announcement of a 'feminist foreign policy' in 2014 initiates a trend followed by an increasing number of countries, including Spain.

This article seeks to question and reflect on this state-driven process, its innovation and implications. Although the imprecise use and absence of a shared definition of a feminist policy, is alleviated by the existing consensus on its key constituent elements.

The article will conclude with a reflection on the challenges and opportunities facing its operationalisation.

This text tries to explain, from my experience as a development worker, the main challenges of the Spanish cooperation system in order to implement a feminist cooperation policy, taking advantage of the announced reform of the international cooperation system. Although the work on gender equality is one of the hallmarks of Spanish cooperation, its aesthetic use has been increasing in recent years, as in other sectors, coinciding with the fact that feminism has become fashionable and international cooperation has lost weight in society, in the world. This is compounded by several structural problems of official cooperation which affect the entire system and have been exposed for decades, without any concrete reforms to solve them. The model of international cooperation for development and humanitarian action that Spain is committed to depends on this. The disavowal of expert knowledge, both in cooperation and gender equality, are at the base of the challenges to be overcome. To implement feminist cooperation, it is necessary that feminism permeates within the organizations and that development workers have a greater voice in the cooperation system.

This article presents a decolonial and anti-racist analysis of the proposal for feminist cooperation of the Kingdom of Spain contained in several documents, such as the Feminist Foreign Policy (MAEC, 2021). The article analyzes to what extent this feminist perspective is “transformative” of the realities and gender inequalities of the countries receiving cooperation and foreign action. To do this I will rely on documentary review, on the monitoring of spaces where this policy has been discussed (some of which I have been a part of) and on the analyzes of decolonial, anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-systemic feminisms, particularly Abya Yala.

Vulnerability and resilience are two concepts currently present in most social policies, which have been positioned in the main discourses regarding the reduction of gender inequality. Current actions to mitigate vulnerability are focused on the search for resilience and the public policies are guided under this paradigm.

Through a literature review methodology, this article performs a critical analysis of the dimensions of vulnerability and resilience, currently present in social and development policies in Spain that engage gender inequality and permeate to the social welfare system. The evolution of the treatment towards women in Spanish policies shows a change in the treatment of women, from being seen as a single subject (vulnerable group) to being seen as women with agency in situations of vulnerability. But this fact causes only few changes in the structures that generate inequality and situations of vulnerability and coexisted with the transfer of responsibility present in resilience approaches.

Since the Beijing Conference (1995), equality between women and men is recognised by the international community as a human rights issue and a necessary condition for development, social justice and peace. In the same vein, the 2030 Agenda emphasises the centrality of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in order to make progress towards sustainable development. However, the practices of international development cooperation have been very diverse in this area and have not always been transformative, maintaining and reproducing structural gender inequalities. Based on a systematic literature review, this article explores feminist evaluation - its principles and practical implications - as an evaluative approach with great potential to contribute to cooperation with a greater impact on equality.

This article aims to present an analysis from a feminist perspective of the implications of humanitarian border work in migration contexts. Humanitarian borders are areas where aid and rescue practices have merged with surveillance and rejection. It is striking that one of the least addressed analytical perspectives in the construction of humanitarian border work is the feminist and gender perspective, giving rise to an important gap in critical scientific literature. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork carried out, the continuum of sexual violence has been identified as a common axis to two apparently unconnected topics: the situation of refugee and migrant women and the situation of female humanitarian workers. The analysis presented here is the result of two ethnographic investigations carried out in Madrid (Spain) and Mexico City and Puebla (Mexico) between 2021 and 2024.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the first projects focusing on menstrual hygiene were developed with the aim of reducing girls' absenteeism from school. These projects were based on a representation of girls as precarious menstruating bodies, (re)constructing Western expectations of normality for the female body. Furthermore, by focusing on hygiene management, these interventions tend to reinforce the idea of the female body as dirty and to be managed in the private sphere. The proposed approach thus responds to and sometimes reinforces gender norms, contributing to the production of docile a-menstrual bodies.
In Santa Rosa de Copán, the school is also recognized as an ideal place to improve knowledge about menstruation because of its wide reach. However, information on the subject is inadequate and does not correspond to existing policies. Furthermore, a traditional view persists that associates menstruation exclusively with the female body and sexual reproduction. The sexual division that is taught serves as a device of gendering the body, perpetuating cultural practices and social norms that justify gender inequality. In this context, the participants have shown an interest in receiving support from the cooperation sector. Thus, it is possible to assume a strategic authority to accompany the agency of local women (and others) in leading change.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate a critical feminist view of the prescription and consumption of psychopharmaceuticals by women, with the aim of making contributions that may help to overcome its underlying difficulties. Therefore, from a gender-based analysis, it is argued that certain psychopharmaceuticals have been promoted to reinforce characteristics associated with the predominant gender roles in different historical periods, simultaneously favouring the alleviation of symptomatology and hiding the socio-cultural and political factors that generate psychological suffering in women.
Considering this context, we propose the need to incorporate a feminist perspective in the management of women's discomfort/suffering, where, from a depathologizing and critical political framework, their psychological processes are accompanied. Thus, it refers to the importance of adopting an understanding and interpretation of psychic discomfort that highlights its emergence as a response to different vital adversities. Along with the above, it is urged to integrate theoretical models of accompaniment that promote transformation in the way women approach their life histories and their identities, among other issues. Likewise, and as last poing, it refers to the importance of integrating a human rights approach into the care provided, which would promote an informed, consensual and more horizontal approach to the prescription of psychopharmaceutical drugs.

The aim of the study was to determine the role of socio-educational inequalities in the employment and economic experiences of 256 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer after five years or more. It is a cross-sectional, descriptive and correlational study in which a self-administered questionnaire designed by the team was used. The results indicate that the economic situation tends to be worse for 40% of the women and that cancer is more likely to have a negative effect on labor market insertion when they have a low level of education. This reaffirms Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality, since in the labor market women are not only discriminated against because they are women, but more variables are involved in the process, in this case the level of education of women with breast cancer, which has an impact on their economic and employment situation.