The rhetoric of development is often deployed as a means of legitimizing neoliberal projects. This event examines the ways that neoliberalism, as a set of policies and a governing logic, has differential impacts on the lives of women in the global South, examining two specific cases.

Michelle Baobala (MA Candidate Development Studies, York University) will address the disjuncture between the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDG) rhetoric of gender equality, implementation on the ground and the lived realities of urban Guyanese women. The MDG’s are significant, as the global framework by which the international donor community adheres, underpinned by a neoliberalizing logic.