Development Discourse on Gender and Communication in Strategies for Social Change

In this paper, I explore institutional discourse on the role of gender in constructions of development communication beneficiaries and on the process of social change facilitated through communication intervention. Analyses are based on descriptions of health, nutrition, and population projects implemented by several organizations since 1975. Since the Decade for Women, development communication projects have focused their attention on women and other marginal groups, whereas USAID has replaced informing strategies with persuasion approaches that target women as reproducers to consume products and services available through the private sector.