Aiding Empowerment: Democracy Promotion and Gender Equality in Politics

In recent decades, women's political empowerment has become an important foreign policy and assistance objective. Every year, donor governments and multilateral organizations partner with hundreds of civil society groups around the world to train women to run for office, support women legislators, campaign for gender quotas, and bolster women's networks in political parties and parliaments.

What ideas about gender, power, and political change guide these aid programs? What have practitioners...