Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development

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Introduction: Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development

Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison and Ann Whitehead*

1 Introduction convictions (cf. Sorel 1941).2 Women appear in This IDS Bulletin reflects on the contested relationship these representations as abject3 victims, the passive between feminism and development, and the subject of development’s rescue, and splendid challenges for reasserting feminist engagement with heroines, whose unsung virtues and whose development as a political project. It arises from a contributions to development need to be heeded. workshop held at the Institute of Development In many ways, the generalisations that are now Studies and the University of Sussex in July 2003.1 part of the currency of gender and development Centred on how to “reposition” gender and represent a success story. Originating in the development, the workshop debates pointed to the discourses of a minority of politically motivated politics of discourse as a key element in social advocates for gender change, they are now taken transformation. Participants explored how, after for granted and espoused by people occupying initial struggles to develop new concepts and many different spaces in a multitude of development languages for understanding women’s position in institutions. But the extent of change in women’s developing societies, feminist phrases came to be lives does not match this discursive landslide. For filled with new meanings as they were taken up many gender and development advocates, it appears into development policy and practice. Discussions that the more women and poverty are equated in turned on the ambiguous fruits of these struggles development discourse, the more many women and their implications for feminist engagement with experience entrenched poverty; the more gender development. is mainstreamed, the less we find effective gender One of the most foundational of these concepts, equality policies within key policy spaces and “gender”, has served both as an organising principle documents. Represented to technocrats and policy- and a rallying call. Researchers have used it to makers in the form of tools, frameworks and generate insights into the relational dimensions of mechanisms, “gender” appears as neutralised of planned intervention that development policy and political intent. Diluted, denatured, depoliticised, practice had ignored. Activists and advocates have included everywhere as an afterthought, “gender” used it to frame a set of demands and to challenge, has become something everyone knows that they and reframe, assumptions. Lessons learnt from are supposed to do something about. One particular places have been turned into sloganised bureaucrat summed it up: ‘when it comes to generalities: ‘women are the poorest of the poor’, “gender”, everyone sighs’. ‘women do most of the work in African agriculture’, There has been no shortage of reflexive ‘educating girls leads to economic development’ engagement within gender and development … and so on. Some have been used as Trojan Horses research, writing and activism (Kabeer 1994; Goetz to open up debates and advocate positions. Others 1997; Miller and Razavi 1998). The collection edited have become popular preconceptions, useful as a by Cecile Jackson and Ruth Pearson (1998), Feminist kind of catchy shorthand to capture the policy Visions of Development, critically reflected on limelight. Others take the shape of feminist fables, changing orthodoxies, and on issues of positionality cautionary tales told with educative intent. And and representation. A growing and increasingly still others gain the status of myths, stories whose sophisticated literature exists on the experience of potency rests in their resonance with deep-rooted gender mainstreaming (for example, Macdonald

1 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development

2003; Rai 2003; Kabeer 2003). Our aim in meant to us – and what they could mean for us. convening the workshop on which this IDS Bulletin However, rather than becoming, as some feared, was based was to engage with these debates through an exercise in deconstructing the achievements of a particular lens, that of the narratives that gender GAD, the workshop helped reposition successes and development had done much to popularise. and sharpen our reflection on issues of strategy and This introduction draws on workshop debates to direction. In so doing, it captured a shared concern situate the articles in this collection in broader with repoliticising the project of feminist perspective.4 engagement with development and gave many of us a sense of renewed energy and commitment. 2 Perspectives and positions The IDS Bulletin is structured as follows. Articles Gender and development (GAD) now embraces a in Part I explore the origins and status of some of significant body of practitioners, activists, donors the gender orthodoxies that have become embedded and academics. The workshop sought to identify in gender and development advocacy and and bring together a diversity of voices and programming. Some interrogate particular axioms, perspectives from across this field. We invited locating them within struggles for interpretative researchers and practitioners who had been involved power that shape policy processes and politics. with key conceptual and political advances in Others explore how policy fields have been analysis and policy to reflect on how their own work constructed in specific ways in particular places. had been transformed as gender equality and gender Part II turns to focus more directly on development justice issues had been successfully placed on the institutions. Contributors examine the ways in development agenda. We also invited a number of which changing constructions of “gender” have gender “champions” from development framed the objects of development and set the organisations, and researchers and practitioners parameters for debate and intervention. Speaking engaged in critical reflection on gender from different locations, contributors analyse the generalisations and their implications for policy institutional dimensions of efforts at gender and practice. Together, we sought to interrogate transformation. Several look closely at how gender and understand how and with what consequences mainstreaming has affected progress towards gender particular ideas about gender had come to be taken quality and the power of the gender agenda within up by mainstream development organisations. development institutions. Reflecting years of effort to achieve gender justice The original workshop rationale focused on the and get new ways of working taken on by myths and fables that emerge when research gets development agencies, the articles in this IDS Bulletin taken up into development. We were less reflexive, advance different critiques of how gender has been at that stage, about our own investments in certain understood and policies implemented, different ways of thinking about gender. From this vantage understandings of the way in which institutions point, the kind of pervasive notions that we called influence outcomes, as well as different views of “gender myths” were part of the problem, rather than the pitfalls and compromises of political – as we came to recognise – ideas that sometimes we engagement. One widely shared initial perspective, ourselves hold dear, that help give us a sense of however, was a sobering recognition of the direction in our work, and that serve to represent enormous gap between feminists’ aspirations for our convictions as feminists engaging with social transformation and the limited, though development. We reflected on the mobilising power important, gains that have been made. Gender of a good myth, the usefulness of certain stories as inequality has proved to be much more intractable, ways to galvanise and inspire (cf. Hirschmann 1967). and resistance in bureaucracies to be much more A key lesson that emerged from the workshop was sustained, than anticipated. Many participants that our discursive struggles over myths, fables and shared a sense of disillusionment with what had feminist “truths” had been part of the political process become of “gender” in development, and a feeling of engagement with the institutions, resources and of frustration with essentialisms and generalisations, discourses that make up development. simplifying frameworks and simplistic slogans. Locating “older” debates about women’s rights, Our discussions revealed layers of contestation empowerment and material disadvantage on a new around what both “gender” and “development” political canvas inscribed with concerns about

2 Introduction: Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development rights, citizenship and the politics of inclusion, This support can be seen as part of a broader project workshop discussions moved between situated of support to “bottom up” democracy, but is also practice and strategic positioning. This is reflected possibly symptomatic of increasing dependency in Part III, which repositions the feminist on the West. Islah accepts that the proliferating engagement with development on a broader geo- Arab women’s NGOs may have a role to play: in political terrain, capturing some of the struggles advocating Arab rights in the international arena, and conquests, as well as the new ambivalences providing services for certain groups, and and uncertainties, of today’s international feminism. developing policy and information bases. However, This section takes the form of shorter comment she also cautions against expectations that this will pieces, reflecting some of the more informal panel necessarily result in significant or deeply rooted presentations of the workshop. changes in social structures. Feminists engaging with development in 3 A contested engagement with different parts of the world have very different policy experiences, which come from the ways in which Feminists work towards social transformation and their nations and regions are positioned, materially, in doing so create new political spaces. The influence politically and discursively. In a powerful indictment of forums such as DAWN (Development Alternatives of the development industry, Everjoice Win shows with Women for a New Era) and AWID (Association how difficult it is to exercise agency as an educated for Women’s Rights in Development), and the many African feminist working as a policy advocate when international networks of researchers and activists, the only African woman portrayed as having was much in evidence at the workshop; legitimate “voice” is a grassroots woman who is contributions provide several examples of critical perpetually poor, powerless and pregnant. struggles for voice, representation and resources Everjoice’s message is softened with humour but, through these forms of organisation and political together with that from Amina Mama, these are space. The project of social transformation also powerful accounts. They reveal the alienating and demands engagement with the content and processes limited social, political and research identities of development policy – not least because, despite available to African women in a world dominated the failure of most states to meet the target of 0.7 by development institutions and development per cent of Gross Domestic Product for their aid discourses. Feeling fawned upon by the ways in budgets, spending in aid and loans has been rising which development actors and initiatives want in the last 25 years, and for many very poor countries them, and ignored because they are seen through this now constitutes a major source of government distorting and rigid stereotypes, these accounts revenue. remind us of the continuing importance of geo- In engaging with policy, many feminists have political position. Other articles reflect on the sought to make a place for new ideas and objectives tensions between representations of women and in institutions whose organisation, resource preferred policy narratives. Nazneen Kanji and distribution, cultures and power relations are not Carin Vijfhuizen show how difficult it is to voice of their own making. Many of the articles in this policy messages from research in national contexts IDS Bulletin reflect on the complex processes of where the poverty agenda is so hegemonic. Similarly making policy and provide highly nuanced accounts highlighting the disjunction between research of becoming a player at these powerful tables. findings and policy prerogatives, Sylvia Chant charts Running through them is a consciousness of the the disjunction between what is known about contradictions involved in seeking to bring about female-headed households and how they appear radical social change by engaging with those who as targets in poverty policy. hold the power and resources in international and While these articles hold policy at arm’s length, national arenas. This point is raised explicitly by several give detailed accounts of more intimate Islah Jad, who explores the multilateral agencies’ engagement with development institutions. The support for Arab women’s non-governmental workshop participants included several who organisations (NGOs) within the context of the US- reflected on their work within powerful and UK-backed war of words, weapons and international agencies, for example within bilateral resources unleashed against particular Arab nations. donors or UN organisations that interface with

3 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development multilateral donors. Rosalind Eyben’s description “doing feminism”? One recurring theme is that of of how she strategised as a public sector bureaucrat the ways in which the political project of gender to get gender onto the agenda, emphasises how the and development has been reduced to a “technical” view from outside can all too easily miss the fix: as Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay puts it, something subtleties of the policy process. Rosalind’s article that is ahistorical, apolitical and decontextualised vividly suggests the importance of the regular battles and ‘which leaves the prevailing and unequal power that feminists have to wage over particular policy relations intact’. But how did the essentially political outputs, whether these are publicity booklets, policy – and at the same time, deeply personal – issues of statements, or ministerial speeches. A different kind gender get rendered technical in ways that narrow, of process and engagement was described by Diane rather than widen, the scope for transformation? Elson during the workshop. Reflecting on the way In Hilary Standing’s account, the slippage occurs in which feminist economists had succeeded in when donors take a top-down approach to their inserting gender within at least some streams of partners and insist on gender mainstreaming, gender economic analysis, she argued that it had been training and gender goals as part of the important to seize upon the way in which economics establishment of externally demanded gender as a discipline uses stylised facts and to provide commitments and gender credentials. Hilary argues appropriately gendered ones to make alliances with that gender interventions associated with externally more progressive and radical economists. imposed mainstreaming have become a stick with The politics of institutional location – of what which to beat government bureaucrats. Another kind of institutions one is working in or for – is a consequence of donor–national government theme that runs through many articles. Hilary relations is that country bureaucracies are working Standing’s article takes this as one of its main themes, within a very tight space in which the policy and argues for the need to understand the mandates objectives, the methods of arriving at them, and of different kinds of development institutions and the forms of their delivery are externally driven – actors in order to assess whether they should be held as the Poverty Assessments and Poverty Reduction responsible for the social transformatory goals of Strategies graphically illustrate.5 feminism. She points out that the policy objectives Where “gender” comes to be represented in the of Government Ministries are centred on the services guise of approaches, tools, frameworks and they are charged with delivering, such as health and mechanisms, these instruments become a substitute education. Hilary’s article is an account of the perils for deep changes in objectives and outcomes. The of de-contextualised and top-down gender fit between the worlds they describe and any actually mainstreaming (a theme returned to below). She existing relationships between women and men is poses a clear question: why do we expect sectoral often partial. This emerges in Prudence Woodford- ministries to be the site of the policy objectives of Berger’s powerful account of the ways in which gender transformation? She suggests that many particular readings of “gender” come to form part feminists have remained naive about the nature of of the gender recipes of donor agencies, no matter policy processes and institutional change. Certainly, how little their Eurocentric ingredients fit with the a more linear approach to policy-making has tended realities of women’s and men’s lived experiences to inform explicit attempts to change policies. Yet and relationships in other cultural contexts. there is also a broad recognition, as Anne Marie Goetz The professionalisation of gender and (1997) has pointed out, that what policy-makers development has, several participants argued, and bureaucrats want to know will make for very become another technical fix, with an ever looser selective uptake of insights produced by feminist link with feminism. As Everjoice Win said at the researchers or lobbied for by feminist advocates. workshop:

4 Technical solutions to political In some cases, mainstreaming is almost problems? counterposed against feminism … In some cases, Several of the articles in this IDS Bulletin, like the young people come into this work not having workshop discussions, are preoccupied by the been part of feminist analysis, thinking, groups question posed by Cecilia Sardenberg: how did etc., they come into this work largely as “doing gender” become something different to technocrats. They may be given the task of

4 Introduction: Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development

“mainstreaming gender”, yet have not come from contested, and becomes a particular object of the feminist movement and have never engaged contestation when it is applied and advocated within with the politics of these issues. In this case, you bureaucracies. Working within them, feminists are don’t have the tools and analytical understanding constantly frustrated when they come up against that gender has come from feminism, and you barriers to any exercise of power. The links that can are told constantly that the organisation is not be made with other feminists, locally, nationally a feminist organisation, but a development and internationally become vitally important. organisation, and mainstreaming is seen as an Advances in technology mean new forms of end in itself, not political. connectedness, from fast and independent communication with local political actors, to access Several commentators reflected that while to knowledge about movements and practices professionalisation did loosen links with feminism, around the globe. The difference this has made for it has also provided livelihoods, work, and indeed feminist engagement, from within and outside identities, for feminists. The need to resource development institutions, is significant. progressive work and projects requires some acceptance of the objectives and framings of those 5 The struggle for interpretive that hold the purse strings. Yet equally, it is still power possible to find ways to work with gender in ways The “story” of gender in development in donor that are congruent with transformational agendas. agencies takes its form from the constant The articles giving detailed accounts of how repackaging of ideas that produces a regular feminists have worked in different institutional sites reassertion of key axioms in the guise of different contain some pointers as to how this can be done. cloak-words, from “poverty reduction” and Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Ramya “empowerment” to “rights”, “exclusion” and Subrahmanian describe the disjunctures and “citizenship”. In the process, some aspects of gender dissonances that have accompanied the agendas are privileged and others discarded, as mainstreaming agenda as it has taken shape in dissonant meanings are pushed out of the frame. several settings. Maitrayeee asks how possible it is Depending on this frame, identical projects have to enforce gender equity commitments if institutions distinctively different prospects; harnessing the don’t have the promotion of gender rights or gender discursive power of certain terms may provide levers justice as their objective. Drawing on the instructive for opening up policy space, but also limits what example of gender in education policy in Australia, is possible as these terms also define domains of Ramya argues that it is necessary to get things right discourse that have their own boundaries. in many different political arenas to create the kind A number of articles examine the discursive of synergy that will enable feminists working within aspects of feminist narratives of development government bureaucracies to be successful. directly. The “stylised facts”, stories and images that Turning the question of the efficacy of gender have been used in the making of “Gender and advocacy without supportive politics on its head, Development” have done a great deal. They have Jo Beall and Alison Todes argue that explicit gender facilitated the dedication of resources, the commitments may have less to offer in processes production of policy space, the creation of a cadre of change than the advocates of tools such as “gender of professionals and a body of organisations of planning” might have us believe. In their case, the various kinds whose work is to deal with issues of fact that women in Cato Manor in South Africa had gender. In these contexts, gender myths are an a long and active history in community politics was outcome of negotiation and contestation – as Maxine the main factor in ensuring gender equity was Molyneux put it at the workshop, they are ‘part of advanced. Without this, a technical project of gender a struggle for interpretive power’. Rosalind Eyben’s mainstreaming alone would have made little analysis of how particular images and ideas about difference. Their analysis highlights the critical, women were put to use in a series of booklets and often overlooked, significance of contextual produced by the UK Government’s Overseas pre-conditions for transformatory gender practice. Development Administration (now Department for To return to the vexed question of the “technical”, International Development, DFID), reveals how it is clear that the meaning of gender remains this ‘struggle for interpretive power’ works in the

5 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development context of a large aid bureaucracy. Reflecting on can rescue them. It represents its objects as so this experience at the workshop, Rosalind highlights lacking in the resources that underpin agency, and not only the strategic uses to which myths were in such political and economic deficit, that they put, but also the tactical moves made by gender will never be able to get into a position on their advocates within the organisation to win spaces own from which they can make claims. and push the boundaries of what was acceptable: Powerlessness described in this way by outsiders simply serves to reinforce it. Some myths we believed in at the time, some Participants were very aware that the struggle were included because they went down well over meaning occurs and has occurred in a with management, some were instrumental, discursive landscape that has constantly been some are embarrassing, some we couldn’t put changing. Some of the most contested discursive in earlier because we didn’t have the power … terrain in today’s development discourse is around notions of “empowerment”. As associations with Others highlight the importance of myths in collective action and more radical transformative getting resources to women and the potential hazards agendas are sloughed away to make the notion of abandoning them in favour of representing what palatable to the mainstream, “empowerment” has is a much more complex reality. As Sylvia Chant become about individual women having a little suggests, the pervasive representation of female- more money. The myth of female autonomy is one headed households as the poorest of the poor achieves that many of us would like to see as untroubled. a sleight of mind that permits a conflation of women Yet Srilatha Batliwala and Deepa Dhanraj show just per se with poverty, the implications of which have how troubling the convergence can be between been so effectively explored by Cecile Jackson (1996). certain ways of thinking and doing gender and It becomes barely possible to imagine conditions pervasive neo-liberal policy choices that centre on under which female-headed households thrive, let enabling women to have their own money. They alone those in which women would actively choose take the example of self-help groups in India, to free themselves from partnerships with men. And favoured for their association with “empowerment”, yet, Sylvia observes, bringing women and poverty and suggest that they may not only have deepened into the same discursive frame has worked, to some the immiseration of poorer women, but that they extent, to enable some women to gain better access have also deflected their energies away from other to resources. forms of engagement, not least the political. The articles also contain much less benign A further lesson from the articles and the examples, pointing to cautionary tales about workshop is that the struggle for interpretive power instrumentalism and the ambivalent benefits of is not simply a struggle against and struggle for, it alignment with discursive framings of mainstream is also a struggle within. By this we mean that the development. There are many dangers when the myths, stories and fables we ourselves make are struggle for interpretive power is lost and myth part of the discursive work we do to make sense of making and stereotyping become the ways in which the world. Discourses are not just tactical, but are gendered power relations are reproduced. This is powerful forms of interpretation for ourselves as a point made forcefully by Rekha Pappu in her well as others. They enable us to act. If we discard analysis of the discourse of education in the Indian the notion of interests in favour of a language of context. Education may not be the unmitigated rights and citizenship, or displace the language of good that it is often portrayed to be; indeed, without conflict with the language of trade-offs, is this only, examination of the content and hierarchical or even primarily, an opportunistic response? Do implications of educational processes, education we spot a potential discursive space that will unlock itself may both reinforce stereotypes and limit resources or get us to the table with the powerful opportunities. Everjoice Win demonstrates how and adopt it mainly for these reasons? We think the discursive position as perpetually poor, not. We adopt different languages about how we powerless and pregnant works to place African explain the routes to gender justice and equality to women as illiterate victims of national systems of ourselves because we have learnt from experience. resource distribution and disadvantage, putting What certain gender myths, feminist fables and them in such abject positions that only development stylised facts can, and cannot, do has become much

6 Introduction: Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development clearer through the mixed successes and failures of international levels in a range of politically located feminisms in the last 20 years. Inevitably, the history organisations, and between feminists located of that period is also a history of debates, disputes internationally, regionally and nationally. and dialogues within feminism and between As the workshop proceeded, it became clear that feminists. We shift and change our discourse and repositioning gender in development was not simply analysis in response to those histories. a matter of thinking anew what gender is, and of finding new ways to engage with development 6 International feminism in institutions. More urgent was the need to explore a troubling times feminist response to the darkening international GAD originated in a particular era of feminist political climate of the new millennium that could thinking that was embedded in the politics of the both respect and bridge difference. Deniz Kandiyoti’s time. Revisiting feminist agendas and their reflections on her work in post-Taliban Afghanistan relationship with development calls not only for illustrates just how narrow the political space for taking stock of what has happened with gender in international feminist solidarity work might be and development, but also for a broader view that takes the need for highly nuanced and contextual responses in the much-changed global setting. New global to support national and local women activists. The economic relations underpin several of the articles. geopolitical context she identifies is that of the new In Brazil, Cecilia Sardenberg indicates how ‘a politics of armed democratisation and regime change perverse combination of the processes of within in-aptly named failed states – those that are globalisation, production restructuring and the war torn, lack governance and whose political large-scale advancement of neo-liberalism’ are economies are based on illegal trade in drugs, arms widening the social and economic inequalities or high value commodities. Along with Islah Jad and between women, and between men and women, Anne Marie Goetz, she questions the effects of the as well as between the races, classes and generations. good governance, democratisation and women’s Amina Mama’s article describes the difficult rights “trinity” at the core of international conditions in which feminists work on gender at development policy for the new US-dominated the under-resourced universities of Africa.6 And the regimes. Emphasising that prospects for Afghani worsening everyday conditions of women’s lives is women depend on the outcomes at the national level a main theme in Ruth Pearson’s commentary, which of struggles over constitutional and citizenship rights, places today’s GAD debates about the relation she suggests that women activists may end up the between empowerment and work for women within losers, because of ‘a growing gap between discourses a historical context of theorising this relation and in transnational feminist networks, politics at the in an empirical context in which ‘being exploited national level and the ways in which gender relations by capital is the fate of virtually all women in today’s which are embedded in complex layers of historical global economy’. Arguing that increases in wages and cultural determination’ are actually being played will not on their own make women either less poor out in the everyday. or more powerful, Ruth urges minimum income, The urgent task for gender and development labour regulation and proper social policy as key feminists is to find an ‘appropriate politics of feminist expectations from states, which should solidarity’ (Kandiyoti) when ‘conservative forces are resource the collective provision of services and building alliances and have more effective strategies’ recognise women’s reproductive responsibilities. (Molyneux). Echoing themes raised in Srilatha Running through the commentaries in the last Batliwala and Deepa Dhanraj’s article, Anne Marie section and throughout the workshop is a renewed Goetz and Maxine Molyneux reflect on the troubling concern with the triple locations of the international, state of feminism in the context of a resurgence of the local state and local feminisms. “Development” ideologies, meta-narratives and the exercise of power and development actors are but one part of this wide from the right. They affirm a stronger sense of the canvas. What feminism has come to mean in different value of feminisms in today’s political climate, locales is diverse, and situated in particular histories, suggesting that excessive soul-searching about the particular struggles. Such differences are potentially value of feminism as ideology, vision and form of very divisive and they are and have been a source organising may be misplacing vital energy. Anne of ongoing tension between feminists working at Marie reminds us that many feminisms have had ‘a

7 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development moral vision beyond gender inequality’ and implies too great? Maxine Molyneux’s article points to several the need to renew ‘imagined social alternatives’ from commentaries that suggest that the transformative within autonomous feminist organising. agenda has been ‘neutralised not to say excised’, not Maxine and Anne Marie foreground the state as because of technicification or bureaucratisation, but the main credible site to launch long-term projects from ‘a theoretical position that sees integration into of social justice, a theme in a large number of articles existing states and institutions as, in itself, an in the workshop. Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and abandonment of the broader, “critical” and at least Nandinee Bandopadhyay’s articles give detailed implicitly revolutionary goals of much second wave case studies of feminist engagement with the local feminism’ (Molyneux, this IDS Bulletin). This view state. Maitrayee describes how the gender unit of was not much in evidence at the workshop, where a donor organisation worked closely with women’s admittedly participants were weighted towards a civil society organisations that were challenging predominantly UK-influenced history that centres dominant conceptions of both women’s rights and on a number of key institutions. Yet the relationship entitlements. The coalition of Indian sex workers between GAD and feminism remained a contested described by Nandinee has succeeded in one. Positions varied from Ruth Pearson’s reflection undermining deeply entrenched stereotypes about that ‘it might be time to disinter feminism from GAD’, both sex work and trafficking in novel and to Marjorie Mbilinyi’s suggestion that this entails challenging ways. An increasingly important talking about re-politicising feminism, and Cecilia dimension is the scope for solidarity with and Sardenberg’s observation that “doing gender” had between autonomous women’s movements that come to represent something safe, something different increasing communication and connectivity, to “doing feminism” and that ‘if we are talking especially through the internet, can provide.7 But feminism, we are talking politics’. If participants how and with what success organised women can differed in their ownership of gender and make demands on the state will be very different development, they re-affirmed feminist ownership for different local feminisms. A particularly of gender and the importance of continuing to engage important variable here is what scope for sovereign with policy, replying ‘No’ to a question Ruth Pearson decisions is left after the effects of “democratisation” posed: ‘Do we then disown this wayward daughter enforced by either arms or heavy aid dependency. we created, because we don’t like her company?’ This engagement is, of course, always more than 7 Solidarity across difference the struggle for interpretive power. The form and Feminist engagement with development has content of policy must also be kept open and this required the embrace of simplifications, in order too involves debate, dialogue and dispute. This was to make strategic alliances and some inroads in the particularly evident in the workshop assessment intensely political arena of policy-making. This in of the growth of rights-based approaches from turn requires vigilance and struggle to avoid women feminist perspectives that saw this development being represented as cardboard victims or heroines, very differently. Dzodzi Tsikata’s commentary and to keep discourses open enough to capture records her profound misgivings with the adoption nuances, ambiguities and complexities in real of rights language by UN agencies and international women’s lives and choices. As Prudence Woodford- donors and lenders. She remarks on two Berger argues, the kinds of alliances that we now coincidences: first, that the requirement by need are those based around a politics of international agents that Southern governments identification rather than the, often unhelpful, guarantee more rights for their citizens coincides oppositional stereotypes that have been the stuff of with their promotion of economic policies which so much gender myth-making. Alliances are always restrict access to basic services; and second, that made at some costs, because they are made with these requirements are being made at the same time those who share some, but not all, political goals; as US and UK governments have denied their and while all the workshop participants agreed on responsibility to international law to pursue the so- the need for such alliances, it was infinitely more called “war on terror” and are eroding their own difficult to agree on the point at which compromise citizens’ civil and political rights and some women’s becomes defeat. rights. Without understating the importance of When do “some costs” become costs that are just rights and rights talk for feminists, she suggests that

8 Introduction: Repositioning Feminisms in Gender and Development there is little reason to believe that top-down rights relations between Northerners and African women approaches will be any more likely to deliver gender also shifts dramatically’ (Win, this IDS Bulletin). justice than previous top-down approaches, For these strategic engagements, new forms of especially given the great difficulty the majority of partnership are needed that are sensitive to the women have in accessing any forms of justice at all. differences that have divided us and the dangers of Other contributors noted that rights-based the polarities “development” constructs. The approaches at the moment frequently serve the workshop brought together women who had been powerful and were concerned at the origin of rights active as feminist thinkers and actors in gender and talk in Western individualism. For yet others, however, development from a wide range of locations. These rights-based approaches represent a considerable differences, which have been, and are, a fertile field advance. As Maitrayee argues, talking about rights for division and conflict, emerged in the workshop privileges women’s identities as citizens, rather than as debate and dissent. Reflecting on different simply as mothers, wives and daughters (Lister 2003; perspectives on a troubled history gave us a growing Meer with Sever 2003). The language of rights lays sense of the possibility of working towards an claim to public space for women. After all, as Maxine appropriate politics of solidarity and working in ways reminds us, women’s movements in a number of that respect difference. For these we need, as Amina continents have used the instruments of human rights Mama argues, to foster the ‘independent networks as a basis for their struggles, countering a ‘thin and intellectual strategies that enable us to utilitarian version of rights’ with a wider ethic of socio- continuously challenge and critique policies, but also economic justice to provide a new normative and to provide alternative visions and ideas for how to do analytic framework for fighting discrimination and it better’ (this IDS Bulletin). It is through finding new injustice. For Everjoice Win, rights talk requires a ways of working with difference, expanding the critical shift that ‘would see us moving beyond our possibilities for building appropriate forms of solidarity favourite African woman, to strategic engagements to create new alliances for influence and action that with those other women who not only need support bridge old divides, that feminist engagement with but who can be strategic allies and leaders in development can begin to meet some of the development. But of course this means the power formidable challenges that we all now face.

Notes 2. Georges Sorel argues: ‘… myths are not descriptions of * We incurred many debts in producing the workshop and things, but expressions of a determination to act … A this IDS Bulletin. Julia Brown worked tirelessly to organise myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical the workshop and Jenny Edwards made a huge with the convictions of a group’ (1941: 33). contribution to the smooth running of the entire project, 3. Ferguson (1999) has used the term abjection to describe from initial contacts with workshop participants to the this positioning with respect to Africa and this certainly coordination of this IDS Bulletin. We are enormously resonates meaningfully with the gender constructs under grateful to them both for their skills, attention to detail, scrutiny. hard work and commitment, which we have called on in 4. A full list of articles presented at the workshop and of full measure. We would also like to thank Alison Norwood workshop participants can be found at the end of this for her forbearance and patience to us as Editors. Many IDS Bulletin. A separate special journal issue is planned thanks also to Dorte Thorsen and Emma Jones and a team containing a further selection of articles. Summaries of of IDS and Sussex postgraduate students for their help at workshop articles are available at: www.siyanda.org (enter the workshop and to our colleagues at IDS, especially at ‘gender myths’ as keywords into the search engine). BRIDGE and in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex, for their support. 5. For elaboration of the issues of gender within PRSPs (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) and PAs (Poverty 1. The workshop on ‘Gender Myths and Feminist Fables: Assessments) see Lockwood and Whitehead (1999) and Repositioning Gender in Development Policy and Practice’ Whitehead (2003). was organised jointly by the Institute of Development Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the 6. This is discussed in greater length in Mama (2004). University of Sussex. It was funded by DFID, Sida and 7. Amina Mama commented forcefully at the workshop on the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We are very regional inequalities in internet access and the incorrect grateful to them for their support for the workshop and assumption that most African academics and activists for the production of this IDS Bulletin. The views expressed now have good access. in this introduction are those of the authors alone.

9 IDS Bulletin 35.4 Repositioning Feminisms in Development

Macdonald, M., 2003, ‘Gender equality and References mainstreaming in the policy and practice of the Ferguson, J., 1999, Expectations of Modernity: Myths UK Department for International Development and Meanings of Life on the Zambian Copperbelt, (DFID): a briefing from the UK Gender and Berkeley: University of California Press Development Network’, London: UK Gender Goetz, A.M., 1997, Getting Institutions Right for and Development Network Women in Development, London: Zed Books Mama, A., 2004, ‘Critical capacities: facing the Hirschmann, A., 1967, Development Projects challenges of intellectual development in Africa’, Observed, Washington, D.C.: Brookings inaugural address Prince Claus Chair in Institution Development and Equity, The Hague: Institute Jackson, C., 1996, ‘Rescuing gender from the of Social Studies (ISS) poverty trap’, World Development, Vol 24 No 3: Meer, S. with Sever, C., 2003, ‘Gender and 489–504 citizenship: overview report’, Gender and Jackson, C. and Pearson, R. (eds), 1998, Feminist Citizenship Cutting Edge Pack, Brighton: BRIDGE, Visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy, Institute of Development Studies London: Routledge Miller, C. and Razavi, S. (eds), 1998, Missionaries Kabeer, N., 2003, Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty and Mandarins: Feminist Engagement with Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals: Development Institutions, London: Intermediate A Handbook for Policy-Makers and Other Technology Publications in association with Stakeholders, London: Commonwealth United Nations Research Institute for Social Secretariat and International Development Development (UNRISD) Research Institute (IDRC) Rai, S., 2003, Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing Kabeer, N., 1994, Reversed Realities: Gender the State? Institutional Mechanisms for the Hierarchies in Development Thought, London: Advancement of Women, Manchester: Manchester Verso University Press Lister, R., 2003, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives, Sorel, G., 1941, Reflections on Violence, New York: Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Peter Smith Lockwood, M. and Whitehead, A., 1999, Gender Whitehead, A., 2003, ‘Failing women, sustaining in the World Bank’s Poverty Assessments: Six Case poverty: gender in Poverty Reduction Strategy Studies from Sub-Saharan Africa, Geneva: United Papers’, Report for the UK Gender and Development Nations Research Institute for Social Network, London: Christian Aid Development (UNRISD)