Gender and Resilience-Thinking: New Policy Paradigm or Neoliberal Orthodoxy?

Over the past decade, resilience has emerged as a key priority linking disparate areas of British policy, including international development, climate change, international security, domestic counter-terrorism measures, domestic infrastructure, education and health. Yet while resilience has captured the attention of critical policy scholars, research to date has focused near-exclusively on resilience as a dimension of international development and security agendas. Moreover, the gendered dimensions of resilience have not been mapped. This paper charts the movement of resilience from foreign to domestic policy, and in particular its growing influence in education and health (especially mental and sexual health) policy in the UK. Drawing on a corpus analysis of policy documents produced over the last 10 years, it documents the multiplying meanings and targets of resilience-thinking, noting in particular a shift from efforts to foster resilience at the level of the population towards fostering resilience at the level of the individual, and the necessary gendering of resilience this entails. It argues that resilient individuals, as conceptualised in contemporary social policy, bear a strong resemblance to the self-regulating subjects associated with Third Way and Thatcherite models of citizenship. While gendered, resilience is thus an individualizing concept which hinders efforts to promote gender equality.