A review of the unintended gender effects of international development efforts

There is widespread recognition among scholars, international aid providers and evaluators of the need to take into account the unintended outcomes of international development efforts. Practitioners have also signed on to charters that promise they will do their utmost best to ‘do no harm’. This article focusses on the often overlooked unintended gender effects. A rigorous literature review was conducted to reveal some of the most prominent unintended consequences as documented in primary research in development studies. Five prevalent unintended gender effects were identified: (1) household dynamics, (2) anti-foreign backfire, (3) overburdening of women, (4) human trafficking and sexual exploitation and (5) hype. While not all of the unintended gender effects are negative, most of the reported unintended effects jeopardise the intended outcomes of the interventions. This research provides both a call and a tool to analyse more systematically the unintended gender effects of international development efforts.