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• Vandeskog, Hil Ousland & Buts, Jan (2025). The momentum of gender and the SDGs: a corpus-assisted study of Norwegian development aid discourse. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 12. doi: 10.1057/s41599-025-04684-4. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article analyses a corpus of documents produced by four Norwegian development aid NGOs. The aim is to assess whether the 2015 introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) resulted in salient discursive changes, specifically in usage patterns surrounding the concept of gender. The corpus data consists of 154 texts, with a total of ~900,000 tokens, gathered from funding applications produced between 2010 and 2020. We draw on methodological tools from corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to carry out an analysis in three stages. First, we take stock of the visibility of references to specific SDGs in the corpus by means of frequency counts. Second, we employ collocation tables to test the hypothesis that the adoption of the SDGs introduces temporal variation in usage patterns pertaining to gender that exceeds variation observed across different types of NGO documents. Third, we draw on collocation networks to examine specific shifts in the discursive function of the phrase gender equality. Overall, we find that while the textual imprint of the SDGs is clearly present in the texts produced after 2015, no extensive transformation regarding the articulations of gender can be noted. In our conclusion, we discuss our findings in the context of the relation between the SDGs and human rights discourse and discuss the implications of the observed relation between intertextuality, conceptual flexibility, and the translational process of norm diffusion.

• Vandeskog, Hilde Ousland; Buts, Jan; Heggen, Kristin & Engebretsen, Eivind (2025). The (un)targeted gendered vulnerabilities in Norwegian development aid—a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Development Policy Review. ISSN 0950-6764. 43(1). doi: 10.1111/dpr.12816. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Motivation Gender is a central concept and a buzzword in the development aid discourse. Like many buzzwords, its meaning is malleable. If aid efforts really are to “leave no one behind,” as the Sustainable Development Goals proclaim, we must critically interrogate how the discursive articulation of buzzwords such as gender can both make visible and hide from view vulnerabilities that should be salient for aid programming. In this article, we focus on the extent to which the mobilization of “gender” by Norwegian development aid non-governmental organizations' is able to bring vulnerabilities related to sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression (SOGIE) to the fore. Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine a corpus of Norwegian NGO development aid policy and planning documents to analyse whether and how gender is articulated differently across different types of documents, and what this means in terms of which gendered vulnerabilities become visible. Approach and methods We draw on methods from corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) to examine a purpose-built corpus of 88 files pulled from framework funding applications submitted by four Norwegian aid NGOs to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). We analyse the results drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to examine how conceptual translation between policy and programme-level documents opens up space for the concept to be assigned changing meanings. Findings While the NGOs at policy level articulate a broad notion of gendered vulnerabilities that include recognition of SOGIE vulnerabilities, this is not translated into practical programme plans. At the programme plan level, gender is articulated as a subject field overwhelmingly concerned with women and firmly attached to a traditional binary sex-gender construct. Policy implications Although SOGIE gendered vulnerabilities are increasingly acknowledged in NGO articulations of their priorities and values, this is not reflected in actual programme plans. We argue that this can lead to a misplaced expectation that these concerns are being addressed in the NGOs' activities, obscuring the neglect of SOGIE vulnerabilities in many development aid gender programmes.

• Vandeskog, Hilde Ousland; Heggen, Kristin & Engebretsen, Eivind (2021). Gendered vulnerabilities and the blind spots of the 2030 Agenda’s ‘leave no one behind’ pledge. Critical Policy Studies. ISSN 1946-0171. 16(4), p. 424–440. doi: 10.1080/19460171.2021.2014342. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Agenda 2030 with the Sustainable Development Goals makes the transformative pledge to ‘leave no one behind.’ This paper asks how Agenda 2030 bring certain gendered vulnerabilities to light and make others invisible, and how this affects that transformative pledge. Through a close reading supported by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory we explore the concept of gender in Agenda 2030 and how it captures gendered vulnerabilities. For contrast, we analyzed a statement by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) activists.

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• Vandeskog, Hilde Ousland (2020). Everything is political - a critical lense on gender and aid. Full text in Research Archive
• Wallacher, Hilde (2011). New Powers: How to Become One and How to Manage Them. Journal of Peace Research. ISSN 0022-3433. 48(2), p. 266–266. Full text in Research Archive
• Vandeskog, Hil Ousland (2025). Out of text, out of mind? Exploring competing discourses of gendered vulnerabilities in Norwegian NGOs’ Development aid through corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Universitetet i Oslo. ISSN 9788234806445. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis analyses how the articulation of the term "gender" in development discourse determines which gendered vulnerabilities are prioritized or ignored. With a focus on 2010–2020, the study explores potential intertextualities in the domain of “gender” of Norwegian development aid NGO texts and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 The research asks: What gendered vulnerabilities are visible or invisible in Norwegian aid NGO texts in the SDG era? What are the implications of the articulations of gender in aid NGOs’ planning texts for the SDGs' leave no one behind-pledge and the rights-based approach to development? The thesis makes use of corpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADS) and Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to analyse policy, strategy, and planning texts from four Norwegian aid NGOs. This facilitated an exploration of collocation patterns around "gender," revealing its discursive constructions in different textual settings. An analysis of the gender discourse in Agenda 2030 revealed a narrow association of "gender" with "women" and "girls," closing off the text’s scope for recognising broader gendered vulnerabilities. The research also found a surprising stability in the NGOs’ gender discourse before and after the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, beyond an increase of fixed expressions lifted directly from the SDGs. The most significant finding of the thesis is that there was a strong commitment to SOGIE issues in the aid NGOs’ policy documents, but that terms associated with this discourse were entirely absent in strategies and planning texts. This suggests unresolved tensions in what gender means for the NGOs’ work. This can be read as a pragmatic response to polarized global discussions on gender issues. However, this strategy risks sidelining sexual and gender minorities, undermining the rights-based approach and the commitment of the SDGs to “leave no one behind.”

• Wallacher, Hilde (2012). The Abatangamuco - Engaging men for Women's Empowerment in Burundi. Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). ISSN 9788272884436. Full text in Research Archive
• Vandeskog, Hilde Ousland (2012). Engaging Men - The Abatangamuco and Women's Empowerment in Burundi. PRIO. Full text in Research Archive

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