Following Swedish Aid: Translation and Transformation of Sweden’s Gender Equality and Sexual Rights Discourses in the Development Cooperation with Eastern Europe (FoSAid)

Time period:

1 January 2024 – 31 December 2026

Project leader:

Sofie Bedford

Project member:

Volha/Olga Sasunkevich

Funder:

Swedish Research Council

Type of award:

Project grant

Total funding:

4,333,000 SEK

Swedish strategies for development cooperation see gender equality as a precondition for democracy and for just and sustainable global development. As a result, Sweden is among the leading countries when it comes to providing development aid for promotion of gender equality and sexual rights in non-Western contexts. Informed by theory of translation and actor-centered theory to democratization, FoSAid focuses on how the choices and strategies of key actors in democracy assistance – donors, implementers, aid-recipients and their beneficiaries, as well as the interaction between them, impacts the features and functions of Swedish promotion of gender equality and sexual rights discourses in Armenia and Georgia.Two researchers with a background in political sciences and gender studies will use qualitative textual and ethnographic methods to follow how Swedish financial support allocated for gender equality and sexual rights development project facilitates the travel of Swedish idealized narratives across national, regional, and geopolitical borders and how these narratives get reinterpreted, contested and adapted in the process. FoSAid’s ethnographic approach requires a prolonged engagement with the research field, thus, the project will last for 3 years.FoSAid’s micro-level focus on the agency of actors involved in development cooperation will provide new knowledge about achievements and failures in promotion of gender equality and sexual rights in Eastern Europe.