Reducing poverty is a political challenge. It involves overcoming class-based interests in inequality and it requires effective institutions to deliver resources to and create opportunities for the poor, frequently in the face of local opposition. When poor women are the target of these kinds of interventions, resistance can be even more intense than opposition to pro-poor measures…. Notions of gender equality are profoundly counter-cultural in many societies …. Efforts to promote women’s equal entitlements to resources and equal opportunities to flourish in their productive and private lives encounter considerable social resistance. This resistance is often shared by development workers - from the top-level decision-makers to the "street-level" workers who implement policy
