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Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice

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Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice St Comp Int Dev (2017) 52:242–260 DOI 10.1007/s12116-017-9248-8 Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice Jane S. Jaquette 1 Published online: 7 May 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract Briefly reviewing the evolution of the field of women development, the author argues that the field has lost the dynamism characteristic of earlier periods of constructive tension between theory and practice that led to the adoption of the gender and development framework and the incorpo- ration of issues of multiculturalism, human rights, and political participation into a field that had largely been defined in economic terms. Today, how- ever, critical theory is caught in an Banti-neoliberal^ position that is increas- ingly outdated and that has interpreted women’s work, individual agency, and the role of the state in ways that hinder rather than facilitate new thinking and better outcomes for women participants in WID/GAD projects and programs. Keywords Women/gender and development . Liberalism . Neoliberalism . Feminist theory Marking the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the Women in Development Office at USAID (in 2014), the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action (in 2015), and the continued commitment to gender equality in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, this essay reflects on the origin, evolu- tion, and future of the field of Women/Gender and Development. I draw on my personal experiences as a scholar, bureaucrat, and activist to argue that the sometimes contentious exchanges between feminist theorists and those * Jane S. Jaquette [email protected] 1 Department of Politics, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, USA St Comp Int Dev (2017) 52:242–260 243 designing and carrying out women and development policies were often pro- ductive in the past.1 Today, however, the field of women/gender and develop- ment is stalled, and the gap between theory and practice has grown wider. Many feminist theorists now argue from anti-bureaucratic and Banti-neoliberal^ positions that obstruct potentially fruitful dialogues that could advance the field and increase its positive impact. In the past, shifting ideological and practical challenges led to critical engagement between feminist theory and development practice. Development emerged both as an academic field and as a policy challenge during the 1970s, when Cold War conflicts between East and West and North-South debates over the causes of underdevelopment stimulated often heated conversations among feminists about the rationales for and effects of women and development practices. The liberal egalitarian convictions of the US feminists who lobbied for the establishment of a Bwomen in development^ (WID) office in the US Agency for International Development (and in turn provided the impetus for WID programs in other bilateral and multilateral foreign assistance agen- cies) were challenged by Marxist and dependency theorists as well as by Bcultural^ or Bdifference^ feminists (Jaquette 1982). In the late 1980s, post-modern and post- colonial theorists added new critical perspectives.2 Facing several barriers, from institutional resistance to gaps between project goals and results, practitioners looked to feminist theorizing in order to adapt their strategies and buttress their arguments for prioritizing women and gender equity (Jaquette 1990; Kabeer 1994). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this led to a shift from BWomen in Development^ (WID) to BGender and Development^ (GAD). Today, WID and GAD are institutionalized, but have lost dynamism, while feminist theoretical critiques have now coalesced around a rejection of Bneoliberalism^ and a demand for Bstructural^ or Btransformative^ change (e.g., Jahan 1995; Runyan and Petersen 2014). The field of women/gender and development could be reenergized by a more fruitful engagement between feminist theorists and WID/GAD practitioners. But the longstanding feminist bias against bureaucracy (Ferguson 1985) means that critics often do not think con- structively about how to address gender and development policies that must be made and carried out by government, multilateral, and NGO bureaucracies. The prevalent feminist perspective rejects Bneoliberal capitalism^ and, in doing so, interprets 1 My own engagement with women and development issues began in 1975 as an amateur filmmaker and participant in the Tribune, the NGO meeting parallel to the UN International Women’s Year (IWY) conference in Mexico City that launched the Decade for Women (1975–1985). In 1979–1980, I served (overlapping with another academic, Kathleen Staudt) as a policy analyst in the Women in Development Office at USAID, specializing in Latin America (Jaquette 2014), and participated as an official delegate to the regional preparatory meeting for the UN Mid-Decade Conference in Copenhagen (Jaquette 1995). Returning to teaching as the BThird Wave^ of democratic transitions began to take place during the 1980s, I did interviews on how women’s movements were organizing to oppose militarism and raise women’s issues as democracy was restored in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru (Jaquette 1994). In the early 1990s, Sharon Wolchik and I organized a project to compare women’s roles in transitions in Latin America and in Central and Eastern Europe (Jaquette and Wolchik 1998). In 1990–1991, I served as president of the Association for Women in Development, founded in 1982 to connect policymakers, practitioners and scholars. I was invited to head the Women and Development Office early in the administration of President Bill Clinton, but declined for personal reasons. Gale Summerfield and I co-edited Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice (2006) in recognition of Irene Tinker’s impact on the field, and I continue to teach and write about gender and development issues. 2 On the evolution of feminist theory, see Evans (1995). 244 St Comp Int Dev (2017) 52:242–260 women’s work, women’s individual agency, and the stake women have in a capable state in ways that close off rather than expand the possibilities of improved policies and practice. I conclude by suggesting some ways in which feminist theory and practice might reconnect and thereby improve the positive impact of women and development practices across the global South. Liberal, Marxist, and Cultural Feminist Critiques of Modernization Early in its history, the field of women/gender and development relied heavily on liberal feminist thought. The WID Office in the US Agency for International Devel- opment was established in 1973 by the Percy Amendment, which was passed by Congress in response to lobbying by US feminists riding a wave of legislative successes guaranteeing women’s equal access to education and credit, a Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and a dynamic (though ultimately unsuccessful) campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (Tinker 1990; Tinker 2006). The consensus that women should be taken into account in development assistance, recognizing both the negative effects of gender-blind policies as well as demand for programs and projects that could benefit women, was reinforced by the commitments of member states to the Program of Action agreed on at the first UN conference on women, held in Mexico City in 1975, and subsequent transnational organizing by women. The implementation of the Percy Amendment in USAID, as well as women and development initiatives taking place in other bilateral and multilateral foreign assistance agencies, was shaped by Ester Boserup’s pioneering book, Woman’s Role in Economic Development (1970). Boserup challenged the conventional view that modernization was good for women. She contrasted women’s roles in agricultural production in Africa and Asia to show that technological advances (going back to the plow) had marginal- ized women’s labor and reduced women’s status. In Africa, this trend was further exacerbated when cash crops were introduced by colonial bureaucracies, which gave capital, seeds, and market access to men, leaving low productivity and low-status subsistence farming to women. Early WID efforts at USAID and in various UN and bilateral foreign assistance agencies focused on righting the balance, encouraging the recognition of women as productive farmers, and funding projects to create new income-generating opportunities. Although these efforts were small in scale and not always successful, they were egalitarian in their goals of giving women more economic independence, ideological resources to fight for women’s equality in the public sphere, and leverage to challenge patriarchal norms in the household (Dixon 1980). WID initiatives in multilateral and bilateral aid agencies did not challenge capital- ism, hardly surprising given that Western foreign assistance programs were designed in part to counter the appeal of communism to the Bunderdeveloped^ countries of the BThird World.^ However, many feminists in the West, often activists in the radical movements of the 1960s, saw the advances made by women in revolutionary China and Cuba as evidence that political incrementalism under liberal capitalism could never make the structural changes needed to free women from male dominance. Further, the Marxist critique that capitalism always exploits labor suggested that efforts to improve women’s incomes within a capitalist development model would inevitably fall short, and WID projects were dismissed as Btreating cancer with a bandaid^ (Benería and Sen St Comp Int Dev (2017) 52:242–260 245
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