Editing Development aid (section)

=== Criticism of aid for gender equality ===
Petra Debusscher of [[Ghent University]] has criticized EU aid agencies for following an "integrationist approach" to gender mainstreaming, where gender mainstreaming is used to achieve existing policy goals, as opposed to a "transformative approach" which seeks to change policy priorities and programs fundamentally to achieve gender equality.<ref name=":15" /> She finds that this approach more closely follows a Women in Development model than a Gender and Development one. Debussher criticized the EU's development policy in Latin America for focusing too much attention on gender inequality as a problem to be solved for women.<ref name=":16">Debusscher, Petra. "Gender Mainstreaming in European Union Development Policy Towards Latin America: Transforming Gender Relations or Confirming Hierarchies?". ''Latin American Perspectives''. '''39''': 190.</ref> She found that the language used represented more of a Woman in Development approach than a Gender and Development Approach.<ref>Debusscher, Petra. "Gender Mainstreaming in European Union Development Policy Towards Latin America: Transforming Gender Relations or Confirming Hierarchies?". ''Latin American Perspectives''. '''39''': 192-194.</ref> She notes that men's role in domestic violence is insufficiently brought forward, with program and policy instead targeting removing women from victimhood.<ref name=":16" /> Rather than discussing the role of men and women relative to each other, women are discussed as needing to "catch up with an implicit male norm".<ref name=":16" /> Debussher also criticized EU's development aid to [[Southern Africa]] as too narrow in its scope and too reliant on integrating women and gender into existing aid paradigms.<ref name=":17">Debusscher, Petra; Hulse, Merran. "Including Women's Voices? Gender Mainstreaming in EU and SADC Development Strategies for Southern Africa". ''Journal of Southern African Studies''. '''40''' (3): 571-572.</ref> Debusscher notes that women's organizations in the region are often concerned with different social constructions of gender, as opposed to the economic growth structure favored by the EU.<ref>Debusscher, Petra; Hulse, Merran. "Including Women's Voices? Gender Mainstreaming in EU and SADC Development Strategies for Southern Africa". ''Journal of Southern African Studies''. '''40''' (3): 566-567.</ref> For EU development aid to Europe and surrounding countries, Debsusscher argued that programs to encourage education of women were designed primarily to encourage overall economic growth, not to target familial and social inequalities.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Debusscher|first=Petra|s2cid=143826318|date=1 October 2012|title=Mainstreaming Gender in European Union Development Policy in the European Neighborhood|journal=Journal of Women, Politics & Policy|volume=33|issue=4|pages=333|doi=10.1080/1554477X.2012.722427|issn=1554-477X}}</ref>

Some criticism of gender equality development aid discusses a lack of voices of women's organizations in developing aid programs. Debusscher argued that feminist and women's organizations were not represented enough in EU aid.<ref>Debusscher, Petra. "Gender Mainstreaming in European Union Development Policy Towards Latin America: Transforming Gender Relations or Confirming Hierarchies?". ''Latin American Perspectives''. '''39''': 191-192.
</ref> and that while feminist and women's organizations were represented in implementing policy programs they were not sufficiently involved in their development in EU aid to [[Southern Africa]].<ref name=":17" /> Similarly, Jones and Swiss argue that more women need to be in leadership positions of aid organizations and that these organizations need to be "demasculinized" in order to better gender mainstream.<ref>Jones, Robert; Swiss, Liam (September 2014). "Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending". ''Sociological Forum''. '''29''' (3): 583-584.</ref> T.K.S. Ravindran and A. Kelkar-Khambete criticized the Millennium Development Goals for insufficiently integrating gender into all development goals, instead creating its own development goal, as limiting the level of aid provided to promote gender equality.<ref>Ravindran, TKS; Kelkar-Khambete, A. "Gender Mainstreaming in Health: Looking Back, Looking Forward". ''Global Public Health''. '''3''': 139.</ref>