(En)Gendering Capacity: Neoliberalism, Empowerment, and Responsibility for Women in the UN’s Capacity Building Agenda

Authors

Sabrina K. Harris, Bucknell UniversityFollow

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1629-6833

Keywords

Capacity building, development, UN, neoliberalism, feminism

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Research Article

Abstract

This article analyzes how the UN constructs capacity building as an element of its development agenda. It theorizes that the UN operates as a governmental actor, adopting and pursuing a political rationality of good governance, while also navigating structural limitations to its organizational authority in implementing this agenda imposed by the liberal international order. As such, this article argues capacity building emerges as a valuable technology of development for several reasons: firstly, it operates as an individual-level intervention, circumventing UN limitations on authority in mandating state action, and secondly, it is framed as demand-driven and empowering while delivering on the UN’s effort to improve the international system by promoting good governance. To explore this dynamic, this article undertakes an institutional ethnography of official UN texts to trace the thematic construction of the UN’s role amongst its dual mandate to promote empowerment and improvement. It finds that the UN constructs capacity building in accordance with neoliberal logics of efficiency and optimization, and in the process, specifically targets women as essential subjects who can most effectively deliver its good governance objectives. Thus, capacity building emerges as a uniquely gendered technology of development designed to promote neoliberal ideals of development as a way to confront structural failures of governance within the liberal international order, circumscribing women’s engagement in the development process as a result.

Recommended Citation

Harris, Sabrina K. (2025) "(En)Gendering Capacity: Neoliberalism, Empowerment, and Responsibility for Women in the UN’s Capacity Building Agenda," Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis: Vol. 4: Iss. 3, Article 5.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55533/2765-8414.1139
Available at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/emancipations/vol4/iss3/5