Synopsis Many practitioners and thinkers have tried to make women 'matter' in development. However, women focused approaches have often sought to address women's needs outside the wider social contexts in which they live. As a result, they have been perhaps more damaging than earlier 'gender-blind' efforts which simply ignored women's specific concerns. Dorienne Rowan-Campbell introduces papers on issues such as 'mainstreaming' versus specialization, methodologies for incorporating gender analysis into planning and evaluation, the limitations of gender training, the unintended impacts of women-focused credit programmes, and how institutional policies to promote gender equity are often tacitly undermined by patriarchal interests. Papers are drawn from South Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa.