MPhil Gender and Development
(University of Bergen)
Training Provider: University of Bergen
The main goals of the program is to enable the students to 1) understand the significance of gender for development policy and projects and 2) to use gender as a problematized analytical category in their own research. Students should be made familiar with key concepts and domains of gender analyses. They should learn to examine local level gendered patterns of social organization as well as understanding gender in a cross-cultural perspective. They should be able to understand the gendered aspects of poverty and vulnerability: of global socio-economic and political processes as well as the role of the various institutional actors involved in such processes. Students should also be able to understand gender mainstreaming and the gendered consequences of more specifically targeted development policies. A key concept is human development, not as related to theories of individual psychological development but defined within the frames of socio-political development theory. In this broad sense, human development views the ultimate goal of development processes as enlarging people's choices and capabilities for achieving not only a decent standard of living, but equity in health and education: and more broadly in achieving an environment supportive of empowerment, democracy and human security.