Masculine Modernity Trumps Feminine Tradition: A Gendered Capacity-building Operation in China

Abstract

This article analyzes the case of a capacity-building technology offered by two North American organizations to a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the People’s Republic of China. The analysis responds to calls for critical investigation of the practices of development agencies, and questions the roots of the so-called NGO-ization practices that aim to create modern and sustainable NGOs according to new public management paradigms. The two United States (US)-based organizations that were offering capacity building, and the Chinese NGO that was receiving it, were all strongly committed to addressing gender issues and practicing gender awareness. Drawing on Sandra Harding’s understanding of the gender coding of modernity, we argue that the capacity-building process was nevertheless implemented with a paradoxical lack of gender awareness. We suggest that recognition of gender as an implicit element of modernity—in this case, in the form of a masculine-coded, capacity-building technology—may serve as a possible entry point to challenging the unequal global North–South relations and the valorization of Western knowledge.