Regeneration and the curious tale of gender blindness Available to Purchase

The Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) is a key social‐economic regeneration instrument in the UK delivered through partnerships of cross‐ sectoral organisations with local communities. The article discusses recent research which found that women’s needs and capabilities were largely ignored in SRB. The reasons stem from widespread “gender blindness” characterised by familiar gender‐neutral motifs which deny the salience of gender as a variable through which human life and inequality are experienced. Gender blindness was additionally supported by social processes and institutions which have emerged from shifts in public policy and political change since the 1980s. The gender blindness of the late 1990s is described as a new manifestation of discrimination and its curiousness is that it is evident in a policy context which gives high priority to combating social exclusion.