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Feminists and advocates of women's rights, mainly women, have tried to promote gender equality in development while a different set of academics and practitioners, mainly from backgrounds in rural development policy and practice, have worked to promote participatory development. While there have been overlaps in the methods used, gender advocates have sometimes ignored the importance of participation. Similarly, critiques of early work promoting participatory methods highlighted shortcomings in terms of gender. More recently, there have been important discussions of how to combine approaches and promote both gender equality and participaton in policy and planning proceses, as well as in development programmes and projects. As this article shows, strengthening these alliances will help create a strong basis for social change.

This special anniversary issue of Participatory Learning and Action contains articles by previous guest-editors and authors from the last 20 years who were invited to revisit their contributions and provide an update on current thinking. The overview reflects on the overlapping themes and parallels in the lessons learnt and suggestions for ways forward.

Guest editors: Robert Chambers, Nicole Kenton and Holly Ashley

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA, formerly PLA Notes) is the world's leading series on participatory learning and action approaches and methods. PLA publishes articles on participation aimed at practitioners, researchers, academics and activists. All articles are peer-reviewed by an international editorial board. See: www.planotes.org

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