The strategic adeptness of women's organizing in African and Caribbean contexts has resulted in significant advances in women's legal rights and political participation, policy discourses and provisions for women. However, the opportunities afforded by development funding have been contradictory. Specific advances in one or more areas have often been accompanied by wider de-politicization that may steer attention away from controversial subject matter and issues, or more radical actions. Often, feminist energy and skills are redirected towards providing skills and services to a development industry concerned by 'mainstreaming gender' in inclusionary ways that serve to maintain the status quo. In this sense, radical feminist agendas tend to remain at the margins, while the mainstream landscape is complicated by new professionals variously referred to as 'gender trainers', 'gender experts' and 'gender consultants' who offer distilled technical skills that are freed from the historical-political ferment that concerned the generations before them.