Gender Expertise in Mali: The Performance of Micro Politics in Transnational Encounters

Mali is currently a country under aid regime with a general dissemination of the fable (Cornwal A. et al.) « gender and peace » and « gender to fight powerty », where women are conceived as both victims and targets of development projects and powerful heroin to the realization of a futur wealthy and peaceful Mali. The deployment of this international gender ideology an its technical expertise, based on a neo-liberal policy narrative, is the object of a subtle micro politic in discourses and pratices when reaching the Malian field. Based on a qualitative fieldwok, I will examine how gender expertise is declined in rethoric and action registers rather than being a corpus of norms and knowledge circulate or translate. Using this emic perspective, I will consider gender expertise as a power performance in a micro-political field caracterised by local gender’s rôles and « sex war » on one hand and by the contestation of gender goverementality under « western style » from the malian society.