Would teaching gender as core, not boutique, move us closer to the SDG gender equality goal?

The Sustainable Development Goals, through Goal 5 on Gender Equality,put gender as a focus at the heart of every endeavour. Yet with 2030looming, across the globe, we have made insufficient progress towardsgender equality. Despite a plethora of mentions of the aim to achievegender equality in regional and international documents, progress isslow (see https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2022/09/progress-on-the-sustainable-development-goals-the-gender-snapshot-2022 and https://pacificdata.org/dashboard/sdg-5-gender-equality). Whatcan be done? If transformative change is required, then a range ofoptions needs to be explored. Could expanding exposure as to whostudies gender be just one tool for building a pipeline of actors who takea gender lens when engaging with key issues, and speeding up progresstowards the gender equality goal of the Sustainable Development Goals(SDG Goal 5)? How should we rethink the teaching of gender anddevelopment? My proposition is that gender should be mainstreamed inevery course through a revised curriculum as a practical lever for changeand to hasten progress towards Goal 5. The hope is that this paper canencourage conversation both in gender and development circles and thescholarship of teaching and learning, and prompt new lines of researchand action towards rethinking the teaching of gender and development,which can then strengthen the knowledge base in the pipeline ofpolitical decision-makers and development actors. This paper is a call toaction for the repositioning of gender at the heart of all studies – not asan elective or “boutique”, but as core to every subject.ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 5 April 2023Accepted 13 September2023KEYWORDSMainstreaming gender;regionalism; SGD 5: genderequality progress; impact;development; SDG 10:reduced inequalitiesIntroductionToo often, gender and development courses are offered separately as electives or boutique special-isations.1 This siloing does not allow students to see the whole picture, yet “only by looking at thewhole picture can we identify where we might make the most profound impact” (USP 2017). Tomaximise efforts in gender equality strategies, all actors need to consider gendered social relationsand issues of power imbalance. I suggest one practical strategy is better inclusion of gender issues inmainstream teaching. As part of the bigger project of rethinking gender and development studiesfor the twenty-first century, it warrants discussion and further research. This paper supports apivot for gender and development curricula. It strongly suggests that attention in politics,© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided theoriginal work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been publishedallow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.CONTACT Jane Alver [email protected] Faculty of Business Government and Law, University of Canberra,University Drive South, Bruce ACT 2601, AustraliaDEVELOPMENT IN PRACTICEhttps://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2024.2379613