Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives in Aceh

This book offers a critical analysis of gender mainstreaming initiatives in the post-tsunami context in Indonesia. Aiming to challenge the terms of the debate in gender mainstreaming and disaster reconstruction efforts, Jauhola and offers an important contribution for the discussion of what 'feminisms and disasters' could be. The work provides an in-depth analysis of three governmental practices of gender mainstreaming: the use of the concept pair sex/gender; the use of gender analysis and the use of project management tools and local subversion that challenges the potential normative violence of gender mainstreaming. Providing a post-structuralist reading of gender mainstreaming the book aims to illustrate that this framework does not lack political alternatives, but rather, it offers an alternative focus for feminism and for the re-conceptualisation of 'political', and provides tools for practitioners of aid aiming to come to grips with the complexity of gender equality policy agenda and its potential violent social consequences in global politics. Although development discourse and aid practices have received much attention, this has not extended to gender mainstreaming initiatives. Drawing on extensive field research in Aceh, this text is one of the first book length studies, and thus provides a significant addition to Indonesian literatures on feminism and subversion, gender mainstreaming, heteronormativity, and global political economy.