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Paper short abstract

This paper challenges linear conceptions of development from feminist and decolonial perspectives, centres bodily survival and social reproduction as a non-deferrable ethical starting point,exposing how developmental discourses legitimise harm and rejects modernity as the endpoint of gender justice.

Paper long abstract

This paper adopts feminist and decolonial perspectives to challenge understandings of development as a linear, teleological temporal process, and in particular critiques the normative violence of temporalised labels such as ‘modernisation’ and ‘underdevelopment’ in gender related debates. The paper argues for grounding development in the ethical primacy of bodily needs related to survival and social reproduction, highlighting their non-deferrable nature, everydayness, and structural vulnerability, thereby exposing how developmental discourses justify the neglect and harm of bodies in the present through promises of a better future. Building on this, the paper cautions against a central paradox inherent in development: namely, that gender equality and the protection of bodily needs are often situated within a temporal framework of ‘not yet developed’, through which they are continually deferred and rendered conditional. By rejecting ‘modernity’ and linear stages of development as the endpoint for evaluating gender justice, and by rethinking development while remaining attentive to specific economic and political conditions, the paper advances a negative ethical stance that places limits on the moral overreach of developmental temporality over bodily needs, thereby opening up new theoretical possibilities for feminist and decolonial imaginaries of development.