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Contributing to ongoing debates about what happens when feminism is institutionalized in global governance, this article examines how gender equality is given meaning and applied in humanitarian aid to refugees, and what the implications are with regard to the production of subjectivities and their positioning in relations of power. Drawing on Foucauldian and postcolonial feminist perspectives, the analysis identifies two main representations of what it means to promote gender equality in refugee situations. Gender equality is represented as a means to aid effectiveness through the strategic mobilization of refugee women’s participation, and as a project of development, involving the transformation of “traditional” or “backward” refugee cultures into modern societies. The subject positions that are produced categorically cast refugees as either passive or problematic subjects who need to be rescued, protected, assisted, activated, controlled and reformed through humanitarian interventions, while humanitarian workers are positioned as rational administrators and progressive agents of social transformation. In effect, gender equality is used to sustain power asymmetries in refugee situations and to reproduce global hierarchies.

In recent decades, humanitarian aid to refugees has increasingly employed neo-liberal forms of governing that are characterized by an emphasis on accountability, measurement of performance, and the decentralization of responsibility for welfare. This paper examines the implications of the neo-liberalization of the international refugee regime for humanitarian aspirations to promote gender equality, and argues that neo-liberal strategies and practices of government fundamentally shape the meaning of gender equality,equality and the organization of its promotion in humanitarian aid to refugees. This paper e analysis draws on a Foucauldian governmentality perspective, and, based on interviews with humanitarian workers, shows how neo-liberal technologies of government are employed in gender equality programmes in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh. The paper concludes that neo-liberal forms of gender equality promotion have a number of problematic effects: the meaning of gender equality becomes superficial and instrumental, and international “expertise” is privileged at the expense of refugee ownership, when gender equality is constructed as a technical, administrative issue rather than an issue of power and politics.

In humanitarian aid to refugees, participatory and community-based approaches are today strongly emphasized as the path towards more efficient protection and assistance. Participation and community mobilization are particularly constructed as a vehicle for the promotion of gender equality. This paper explores how participatory and community-based approaches are used in efforts to promote gender equality in humanitarian aid to Burmese refugees in Thailand and Bangladesh. Refugees in Bangladesh, especially women, are problematized as passive and dependent due to their alleged lack of 'community spirit' and participation. In contrast, the political activism of refugee leaders and women's organizations in Thailand is represented as problematic, illegitimate and unruly. While refugees in Bangladesh do not participate enough, it appears that the refugees in Thailand participate too much. Drawing on interviews with humanitarian workers, this paper examines this paradox through a governmentality perspective, draws out the meanings attached to the concept of participation in humanitarian policy and practice and shows how participation is employed in the government of refugees.

In humanitarian aid policy and practice, the importance of women’s participation is strongly emphasised. However, this article argues that women’s participation has become an instrument for optimising the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian operations rather than a tool for the promotion of gender equality. Drawing on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, the article examines how women’s participation is represented and employed as a means to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian aid in two refugee camp contexts, in Bangladesh and in Thailand, and asks how such strategies affect the gendered relations of power that shape women’s lives in the camps. Based on interviews with humanitarian workers, the analysis shows that programmes that promote women’s participation as a means for the achievement of other goals can reinforce existing gender inequalities, but also, despite their constraining effects, contribute to open up new opportunities for women. However, equality is treated as a side effect, not a goal in its own right. In conclusion, the article suggests that renewed engagement with the political project of feminism is needed to counter the de-politisation and instrumentalisation of gender in humanitarian aid, and bring the goals of equality and justice back in.