This course is concerned with transitions, transformations and contestations in the contemporary global economy, with a focus on how a gender perspective shifts our understanding of mainstream development and economic discourses. It accounts for social, spatial, and gender inequalities associated with global development using critical and gender perspectives and explores ways of bridging feminist politics and development practice.

The course begins with theorising development and globalization. This includes tracking how development emerged as an agenda and evolved in the context of globalisation. It looks closely at economic, political, and cultural dimensions of globalisation to interrogate the complex relationship between between globalisation, gender, and other axes of inequality. It examines how global governance actors (multilateral organisations, states, businesses, elites, civil society organisations, etc.) shape globalisation. In these discussions, different gender-focused approaches in understanding and rethinking development are foregrounded. These theories and concepts are explored in-depth by looking critically at gendered patterns of inequality in the household and labour markets. The course also discusses feminist policy frameworks and interrogates feminist engagements with states and global governance actors in specific domains such as capital flows, migration, social protection and microfinance, and the Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, it explores counter-hegemonic movements and feminist struggles over recognition, redistribution and representation.