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State capacity for development is decomposed into two broad dimensions, intrinsic and extrinsic. The former concerns the state’s cohesiveness as a strategic actor, which encompasses the ability of the state to formulate and implement policy in a coherent fashion, and the latter is the state’s ability to extract and redistribute resources. Diverging from previous studies, this paper aims to consider how these intrinsic and extrinsic factors interact to increase health cross-nationally.

This study provides a framework for understanding how domestic and international state autonomy in policy decisions improves the effectiveness of health spending at achieving its intended outcomes. Using two-way fixed effects regression models for a sample of 89 low and middle-income nations from 1996-2012, the author tests the claim that health expenditures reduce infant and child mortality more in nations with higher levels of international and domestic autonomy rather than those with lower levels.

The author finds evidence that supports the theoretical perspective that state autonomy in international and domestic policy, through cohesion, legitimacy and local insight, improves the effectiveness of health expenditures at reducing infant and child mortality.

The data only exist for 89 nations and from 1996 to 2012. In addition, the independent variables of interest that measure autonomy are not direct measures but instead indices.

The health and development of a nation’s citizenry largely depends on prioritizing expenditures in health. This research considers under what conditions nations can better prioritize health expenditures.

In recent years, non-governmental organizations across the globe aim to improve women’s leadership in adapting to the environmental challenges brought on by climate change. Many of these activities involve outreach and network building and, in the process, seek to establish protocols for specific projects and interventions. In this chapter, the authors review the history of development funding, and then present and analyze a different model, a pilot project based in Nepal that encourages monetary contributions from outside of the country to support women’s work in climate change adaptation and mitigation as a result of deforestation. The W+™ Standard is a certification label that endorses projects that socially and economically empower women and improve the environment. It was developed to measure and quantify women’s work in these areas to enable them to receive monetary benefits from promoting biogas cook stoves. Below, the authors assess the economic and social benefits and drawbacks of this model and complement our critique with interview data from the creator of the W+ Standard, and climate change leader, Jeannette Gurung. The authors conclude by giving recommendations for program monitoring and evaluation that can be applied to projects in similar areas.

Departing from an online interactive Gender Café on the topic of Knowledge Management (KM), jointly hosted by a UN agency and the Society of Gender Professionals, this chapter seeks to provide gender practitioners and others with practical examples of how to “gender” KM in international development. Through analyzing the travel of feminist ideas into the field of KM with inspiration from Barbara Czarniawska’s and Bernard Joerge’s (1996) theory of the travel of ideas, the chapter explores the spaces, limits, and future possibilities for the inclusion of feminist perspectives. The ideas and practical examples of how to do so provided in this chapter originated during the café, by the participants and panellists. The online Gender Café temporarily created a space for feminist perspectives. The data demonstrate how feminist perspectives were translated into issues of inclusion, the body, listening methodologies, practicing reflection, and the importance to one’s work of scrutinizing underlying values. However, for the feminist perspective to be given continuous space and material sustainability developing into an acknowledged part of KM, further actions are needed. The chapter also reflects on future assemblies of gender practitioners, gender scholars and activists, recognizing the struggles often faced by them. The chapter discusses strategies of how a collective organizing of “outside–inside” gender practitioners might push the internal work of implementing feminist perspectives forward.

This introduction provides the history and rationale for this volume on gender and practice. The editors’ broad conception of practice, especially gender practice, and the relationships among education, training, and practice, three sections into which the volume’s chapters are grouped, are outlined. Connections between gender practice and the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals are drawn. Each chapter is then summarized and relationships among them are highlighted.