Beyond the Business Case: A Community Economies Approach to Gender, Development And Social Economy

Suzanne Bergeron
Stephen Healy

In this paper we explore how international development discourse has placed women at the center of a "smart economics" approach to economic development. While we are heartened by development discourse's new found interest in economies of care and social reproduction, we are troubled by the way that an essentialized conception of gender is attached to a economic growth as usual agenda. We explore the potential of theory of the community economy, with its emphasis on the moment of ethical decision, might serve to unsettle essentialist categories of gender while redirecting the aims of the development process. 

Suggested citation

Bergeron, S., Healy, S. 2013. "Beyond the Business Case: A Community Economies Approach to Gender, Development And Social Economy." Paper prepared for the UNRISD Conference Potential and Limits of Social and Solidarity Economy, Geneva, Switzerland.