The term ‘participation’ has become a principle guiding development projects since the 1980s. Even though the popularity of participation represents ongoing changes in development thinking which critically reflects the shortcomings of the previous project model, several scholars still express concerns about the disjuncture between the rhetoric and practice of participation, which ends up aggravating the exclusion of the previously excluded social groups. In recognition of such critiques, this article examines the exclusionary tendency of participatory development model with a particular focus on gender. For this purpose, this article comparatively analyzes the project participation by gender in four development projects which were implemented from 2006 to 2008 in the district of San Marcos, a Peruvian Andean village. In reference to the two influential frameworks in the development policies and research: Women in Development (WID) and Gender and Development (GAD), this article proposes the following two research questions: 1) whether participation was more exclusionary to women and men; and 2) whether women’s project participation entailed changes in gender relations which can be considered empowering. In conclusion, this article argues that: 1) development projects were not necessarily more exclusionary to women than to men especially when the previous gender roles corroborated with new roles imposed by the project participations; and 2) the project participation rarely led to any substantial changes in gender status which I measure through the analysis of women’s control of access and their roles in decision making at diverse levels.