WHO NEEDS [SEX] WHEN YOU CAN HAVE [GENDER] - CONFLICTING DISCOURSES ON GENDER AT BEIJING

'Gender', understood as the social construction of sex, is a key conce pt for feminists working at the interface of theory and policy. This a rticle examines challenges to the concept which emerged from different groups at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Septemb er 1995, an important arena for struggles over feminist public policie s. The first half of the article explores contradictory uses of the co ncept in the field of gender and development. Viewpoints from some sou thern activist women at the NGO Forum of the Beijing Conference are pr esented. Some of them argued that the way 'gender' has been deployed i n development institutions has led to a depoliticization of the term, where feminist policy ambitions are sacrificed to the imperative of ea se of institutionalization. 'Gender' becomes a synonym for 'women', ra ther than a form of shorthand for gender difference and conflict and t he project of transformation in gender relations. 'Gender sensitivity' can be interpreted by non-feminists as encouragement to use gender-di saggregated statistics for development planning, but without considera tion of relational aspects of gender, of power and ideology, and of ho w patterns of subordination are reproduced. A completely different att ack on 'gender' came from right-wing groups and was battled out over t he text of the Platform for Action agreed at the official conference. Six months prior to the conference, conservative groups had tried to b racket for possible removal the term 'gender' in this document, out of opposition to the notion of socially constructed, and hence mutable, gender identity. Conservative views on gender as the 'deconstruction o f woman' are discussed here. The article points out certain contradict ions and inconsistencies in feminist thinking on gender which are rais ed by the conservative backlash attack on feminism and the term 'gende r'.