Knowledge about gender has generated a number of approaches and techniques for furthering what counts as progress for women in the discourse of development.

The relationships between gender, religion and development, in which tensions between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ traditions are evident, have attracted increasing scholarly attention in a number of journals’ special issues.
In Papua New Guinea churches are engaging with different forms of knowledge about gender and utilising different techniques for women’s empowerment as they work towards their vision of experiencing ‘life in all its fullness’. In so doing, change to culturally and socially constructed gender relations is being initiated.

In this paper, Jane Anderson explores the sensitivity and complexity of the relationships between gender, religion, and development in the processes of translation of the gender agenda between the ‘secular’ donor AusAID, the faith-based Australian non-government organisations and the Papua New Guinea churches at work in the Church Partnership Program.