Women’s empowerment, broadly construed, is an integral part of Jordan’s neoliberal development strategy. Historically, the women’s movement in Jordan - an amalgamation of activists, journalists, and members of women’s organizations - has pursued women’s empowerment through contentious politics and radical activism aimed at challenging the state and inequitable policies and practices. In its current form, however, the movement relies on donor funding from many of the regime’s development partners (e.g., the UN, USAID, and the EU) and struggles to maintain autonomy from the state. As a result, much of the women’s movement activism becomes entangled with development initiatives that coincide with the regime’s goals. In situating women’s empowerment at the center of these development campaigns, women’s activism risks becoming an extension of the state, rather than a challenge to it. This paper examines the consequences of embedding women’s activism within state-sanctioned development campaigns and contends that this move serves to depoliticize the women’s movement in Jordan. In contrast with the movement’s historical struggles against militarism, (neo)colonialism, civil rights abuses, and inequitable development schemes that disproportionately affect women (i.e., structural adjustment programs), the women’s movement is now intimately wedded to and practically reliant on the state’s development ambitions. By qualitatively tracing changes in the state-women’s movement-development relationship, this paper argues that current structural and institutional arrangements have deradicalized and depoliticized a lot of women’s activism in the kingdom. As further evidence of this phenomenon, the paper includes an analysis of government action on women’s rights in contrast to government repression of other human rights (e.g., due process and freedom of speech) to show how advancements for women are understood as bolstering state development, while advancements on other rights are deemed state security threats. This paper helps us understand some of the constraints on and limits to civil society in authoritarian regimes and explains how neoliberal development strategies can undermine activism in the Middle East.