This paper examines the case of gender mainstreaming in Vietnam to consider how different approaches to gender training have shaped what gender mainstreaming means, what it aims to achieve, and who is involved during implementation. I specifically focus on the role that training and trainers play in transforming abstract policy commitments to fit the needs of different local constituents, who are themselves embedded in a variety of competing political and gendered projects designed to transform social relations. I specifically use the case of a train-the-trainers workshop that brings together Women’s Union leaders from rural provinces in northern Vietnam to learn how to apply gender mainstreaming concepts and tools in their work with local communities. In the process, gender experts as teacher/trainers and their students actively negotiate the meaning of gender, equality and development, particularly at the intersection of class, generation and geographic location. In my analysis, I argue that training serves as a key political space, place and process where development subjects are produced and “expertise” is negotiated. It is a place where power and knowledge are constructed (and contested), and where trainers and trainees make visible their own political commitments and intentions as “insiders” and “outsiders” to the development project. As such, training serves as a significant site of engagement and contestation over the cultural and political meaning of gender mainstreaming in the context of development.
