Women’s rights (WR) have been increasingly seen not only as “Human Rights” but also as core components of democracy, which is notably about inclusion irrespective of citizens’ gender. Accordingly, WR have been mainstreamed in development projects but without much questioning about the universality of the various existing international WR conventions, such as CEDAW. Based on the case of Jordanian WR organizations and their cooperation with Western donors, our fieldgrounded paper challenges the universal meaning of WR. It argues that beyond a formally common language, stakeholders have different representations of WR-related norms, which often collide in the context of development projects. By drawing inspiration from Foucault’s “discourse analysis”, we show how Western “liberal” donors, by maintaining an unequal power relation with their Jordanian partners, dominate cooperation and “softly” constrain the WR vision in funded projects. Most importantly, the paper will analyze the reactions of Jordanian organizations and their members to this relationship and the resulting ‘imposed’ WR vision. We argue that Jordanian development actors are more than neutral service providers. Instead, they take the lead over their donors when it comes to the diffusion of WR norms on national and local levels. By reinterpreting, rephrasing/reframing, adapting and negotiating meanings, they develop resistance strategies that counterbalance power relations or bypass imposed visions. We will look more closely at these practices and resistance strategies to show how they influence projects’ implementation and outcomes as well as power relations and competing visions of WR while challenging the clear-cut opposition between liberal and illiberal norms and actors.