In recent decades the presence of women in public life has grown, whether in politics, in the workforce, or in the migrant streams that cross international borders. At the same time, the intensive engagement of activists and researchers with the development establishment has turned "gender" into a legitimate policy issue for institutions and movements operating at different levels. Yet gender inequalities in power continue to be a persistent and integral feature of the modern world and its institutions - whether markets and macroeconomic flows; states, political parties and social movements; or the intimate sphere of family, household and community. Transformative agendas of social change are constrained not only by the continued dominance of market orthodoxy in some important arenas of policy making, but also by shifts in geopolitics, and new forms of religious and cultural politics that are being played out at global, national and sub-national levels.

In the process of designing the research agenda for the 2005–2009 quinquennium, it was decided that research projects on gender, which in the 2000–2005 period appeared under different programme areas, would now be consolidated into this new programme, Gender and Development.

For the new research phase, the following thematic areas have been identified:

• Political and Social Economy of Care
• Religion, Politics and Gender Equality
• Gender Dimensions of Judicial Reform
• Decentralization, Redistribution and Women’s Access to Welfare

These four projects are being developed in a sequential manner. Full funding for the first project (Political and Social Economy of Care) has been secured and work under this area is underway. Partial funding has been secured for the second project (Religion, Politics and Gender Equality) and work is underway. The other two projects are still at a preliminary stage.

Also, United Nations Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and Routledge are bringing out a new series of books that engages with a wide range of contested issues—politics and governance, identity and conflict, welfare state and social policy reform, markets and macroeconomics, the care economy, migration and social rights—through a gender lens and with insights gained from feminist theory. The series is intended for scholars and students of gender studies, development studies, comparative politics and related disciplines. For more information on this series, please click here.