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Gender Away: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business

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Gender Away: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business Mainstreaming Gender or “Streaming” Gender Away: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay 1 Introduction and technical assistance in development policy and This article is about taking stock of experiences of practice. My job involves working with international mainstreaming gender. It addresses two related organisations, national governments and national concerns. First, that after three decades of feminist and international non-governmental organisations activism in the field of development – both at the (NGOs) to integrate a gender perspective in policy level of theory and practice – most development and practice. In this article, I use my own experiences institutions have still to be constantly reminded of to interrogate how the concerns of feminists from the need for gender analysis in their work, policy- similar locations with the political project of equality makers have to be lobbied to “include” the “g” word are being normalised in the development business and even our own colleagues need convincing that as an ahistorical, apolitical, de-contextualised and integrating a gender analysis makes a qualitative technical project that leaves the prevailing and difference. Second, by constantly critiquing their unequal power relations intact. This normalisation own strategies, feminist advocates have changed is happening at both the level of discourse and their approaches, but institutional change continues material practice. to be elusive (except in a few corners). Gender and development advocates cannot be 2 Gender mainstreaming: the bold faulted for their technical proficiency.1 Making a new strategy case for gender and development, developing and Mainstreaming was the overall strategy adopted in implementing training programmes, frameworks, Beijing to support the goal of gender equality. The planning tools and even checklists, unpacking political rationale for this strategy follows on from organisational development and change from a what feminist advocates had been struggling to gender perspective, have all contributed to building establish – that rather than tinkering at the margins technical capacity and pushed forward technical of development practice, gender should be brought processes for the integration of gender equality into centre stage (Razavi 1997). concerns in development. The literature also Gender mainstreaming involves: acknowledges that gender equality is as much a political as a technical project and efforts have been G the integration of gender equality concerns into directed towards creating “voice” and influence, the analyses and formulation of all policies, lobbying and advocacy. programmes and projects; So who are “we”? I situate myself among those of G initiatives to enable women as well as men to us who started out in the development movement formulate and express their views and participate of the 1970s in a Third World country. I was shaped in decision making across all issues. by the feminist movement in India, was groomed by the international gender and development movement The Organisation for Economic Cooperation in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, and am now and Development/Development Assistance in a northern institution which does research, training Committee (OECD/DAC) guidelines state: 95 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development A mainstreaming strategy does not preclude serve, the creation of the demand for democratic, initiatives specifically directed toward women. accountable and just governance has to go hand in Similarly, initiatives targeted directly to men are hand. necessary and complementary as long as they Much of the work in integration has been promote gender equality. (OECD/DAC 1998: 15) concentrated on institutions and involved improving the technical processes in development. Gender In practice, there are two interrelated ways in which advocates have had to make a case for integration of gender equality concerns can be mainstreamed: gender issues by showing how this would benefit integrationist and transformative or agenda setting. the organisation and meet official development priorities. To do this, they have developed 2.1 Integrationist frameworks, checklists and tools for gender The aim is to ensure that gender equality concerns integration in policies and programmes and trained are integrated in the analysis of the problems faced people in gender awareness and planning, monitoring by the particular sector; that these inform the and evaluation. The challenge that feminist advocates formulation of policy, programmes and projects; in development have faced and continue to face is that specific targets are set for outcomes and that that their work straddles both worlds – the technical the monitoring and evaluation of policies and and political – but the development business only programmes capture the progress made in the tolerates the technical role. achievement of gender equality. Why is this so? Both integrationist and transformative versions of mainstreaming require 2.2 Transformative or agenda setting explicit acknowledgement of equality goals. These The aim is to introduce women’s concerns related entail redistribution of power, resources and to their position (strategic interests) into mainstream opportunities in favour of the disadvantaged, which development agendas, so as to transform the agenda in the case of gender mainstreaming happens to be for change. For example, one of the ways of ensuring women. Many of the reasons why the development that gender equality concerns are integrated in business barely tolerates any role for feminist agriculture is to make sure that extension services advocates has to do with the understandings of the address both women and men and that development process itself. The most influential technological packages are appropriate for both and pervasive understanding of development is women’s and men’s roles in agriculture. However, that it is a planned process of change in which the issue might be that women in their own right, techniques, expertise and resources are brought and not as wives or dependants of men, have no together to achieve higher rates of economic growth rights over land. Advocacy for women’s land rights (Kabeer 1994). is thus necessary to set the agenda for change of mainstream programmes addressing gender 3 From incorporation to rights inequality in agriculture. In recent years, concerns about the accountability Integration and transformation require work at of decision-making institutions to the public, respect two different institutional levels. While integration for human rights and the need for enhanced voice involves working within development institutions and participation have tempered this economically to improve the “supply” side of the equation, a defined development agenda. Even so, transformative agenda requires efforts to create transformation – as signifying changes in relations constituencies that demand change. The latter of power and authority and growing equality requires an understanding of the nature of political between social groups – is hardly ever explicitly society, state–society relationships, and the extent acknowledged as a goal, except where it is to which particular contexts the policy-making instrumental to the development imperatives of institutions are dependent on, or autonomous from, poverty eradication, improvement in children’s the influence of international development and health, family welfare, intra-household equity and financial institutions. Integration depends for its fertility decline. success on transformation. In order to build the The international policy agenda throughout the accountability of policy-making institutions to the 1960s, 1970s and much of the 1980s was less gender-differentiated public they are supposed to concerned with women’s rights than with how to 96 Mainstreaming Gender: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business incorporate women into the development process. undermined, as when Molyneux’s distinction Both scholarship and activism at this time was between strategic and practical gender interests concentrated on convincing international (1985) became translated in development planning development agencies about the importance of language as needs rather than rights (Moser 1989). women’s roles in development. Even though the However, there are other reasons why the UN’s Commission on the Status of women (CSW), development business can barely tolerate the set up in the early 1970s, functioned as the only technical role of gender and development advocates, international institution at that time devoted to while rejecting outright the political project of addressing the issues of justice for women, it was gender equality. These have to do with deep-seated more concerned with analysing and responding to resentment of and consequent resistance to the the development-based economic and social issues project of equality between men and women and concerning women, rather than defining and the language of politics that assertions of equality pursuing rights issues (Molyneux and Craske 2002). brings forward.2 The language of women’s rights is It was not until the 1990s that the focus shifted to deeply disturbing because it involves separating rights and led to the questioning of women’s position out the identity of women as citizen-subjects from in their own societies. their identity as daughters, wives and mothers, the This focus on rights was brought about by the subject of social relations. It is
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