View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by IDS OpenDocs 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