IDRC-MR137e WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE NAIROBI CONFERENCE Material contained in this report is produced as submitted and has not been subjected to rigorous editing by IDRC Communications Division staff. Mention of proprietary names does not constitute en­ dorsement of the product and is given only for information. TABLE OF CONTENTS Authority Relationships among Women: Lower Class Women and Female Researchers in the Field Beatriz Schmukler and Marta Savigliano . 1 - 39 The Sexual Division of Labour in Brazilian Industry Elizabeth souza-Lobo . • . • . 40 - 52 Integration of Zambian Women in National Develop­ ment: Analysis of Constraints and Prospects Raj Bardouille . • . 53 - 92 Female Participation and Industrial Development in Thailand Amara Pongsapich . 93 - 115 Reproduction, Production and Women's Labour Activities in the Home Suzana Prates . 116 - 135 Methodologies for Doing Research on Women and Development Pat Ellis • . 136 - 165 Measurement Issues in the Study of Working Women: A Review of the Philippine Experience Marilou Palabrica-Costello . 166 - 185 Women's Participation in Two Irrigation Projects in the Philippines Jeanne Frances I. Illa . • . • . 186 - 244 Contributors Raj Bardouille is an economist appointed to the Manpower Research Unit and the Department of African Studies at the University of Lusaka in Zambia. Pat Ellis is a Barbadian sociologist of education currently completing doctoral studies at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. Jeanne Frances Illo is an economist appointed to the Institute of Philippine Culture, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Marilou Palabrica-Costello , a sociologist, is in the Mindanao Centre for Population Studies at Xavier University, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. Amara Pongsapich , a sociologist, is the Deputy Director of the Social Research Institute at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. Suzana Prates, a sociologist, is general coordinator of GRECMU (Grupo de Estudios sobre la Condicion de la Mujer en el Uruguay) in Montevideo, Uruguay. Beatriz Schmukler and Marta Savigliano are sociologists working in the Women's Studies Program at FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Elizabeth Souza-Lobo is attached to the Department of Sociology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. INTRODUCTION This volume brings together a collection of papers presented by participants in two panels at the NGO Forum marking the End-of-the-U.N. Decade for Women which was held in Nairobi, Kenya in July 1985. The two panels, both sponsored by the Research Related to Women Advisory Group of the Social Sciences Division of the International Development Research Centre, were entitled "Women and the Economy" and "Research Methods on Women." While IDRC does not have a specific program focus on issues in gender and development, there has existed a considerable degree of informal support to research looking at the special problems of women and to the participation of women as researchers and as grant recipients. The eight papers reproduced here reflect perspectives of researchers currently engaged in work on gender and development in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Eva M. Rathgeber Social Sciences Division Authority Relationships among Women: Lower Class Women and Female Researchers in the Field Beatriz Schmukler and Marta Savigliano FOREWORD In this paper we are dealing with the relationships_ that female researchers establish with women of lower classes through the use of qualitative methodologies and in participatory research. We are trying to underscore the danger of establishing relations of domination where researchers do not take into account the women they are studying as intelligent subjects able to make sense of their own reality. This danger is more evident in those studies where the researcher is interested in observing the modes in which women themselves participate in the reproduction of their own subordination. Women's lack of consciousness of their own subordination is considered an essential factor in its reproduction, together with other socioeconomic and cultural·factors. Feminist researchers often suppose, although not explicitly that their own consciousness of their subordination, as women with a feminist perspective, allows them to see "further" than the other women and to help these women in the diagnosis of their passive or neurotic adjustment to social situations which oppress them. In qualitative research we define the other women as objects of analysis and try to put ourselves in a "supposedly" objective standpoint from which to analyse the modes of subordination through which they may fall into the trap of the conventional gender morality, thereby unconsciously themselves reproducing their domination. In participatory research methodologies we work with these women trying to analyze with them their subordinate modes of life and trying to discuss those issues that we think are key in the understanding of their subordination and - 2 - in its automatic reproduction. Feminist researchers in Latin America have seen participatory research as a way to overcome the "objectivation" of other women implicit in most research methodologies, including the qualitative ones. "Objectivation" is seen here as a way of reproducing the subordination of women in research and, moreover, as a way of ensuring the further devaluation of lower class women by feminist researchers. Participatory research proposes a method of modifying the bond between the researcher and the individuals being studied, which moves away from the idea of subordination or devaluation. Both the researchers and the respondents discuss the situation of the women who are interviewed, on the basis of different kinds of expertise which are not considered to be hierarchically ordered. The research subjects can examine their own experience in a more conscious manner when they expose themselves in front of other women. They put names and labels to experiences they had thought were personal and did not happen to other women. The researchers are able to help in the process of labelling and translating the personal into the social and collective. The women who are studied become subjects who actively participate in the description of their own realities. We think, however, that neither participatory nor qualitative research can be considered per se, methodologies which reproduce or do not reproduce domination. Qualitative research may try to avoid "objectivation" by listening to the other women's voices when they tell the stories of their lives, trying not to project the researcher's realities onto the others. Participatory research, similarly, may fall into the trap of objectivating the other women if researchers unconsciously impose their own labels in their interaction. In both types of research we think it is necessary to be aware of the ways we are re-constructing our own female identity during the research process. It is often the case that when feminist researchers take the decision to study the position of - 3 - subordination of other women, they are simultaneously trying to deal with their own personal struggle. Feminist theory has particularly focussed on the self-other dilemma and has helped us to view our personal liberation as related to our consciousness of this dilemma and to the possibility of respecting our own desires within the context of relationships with others. In our research we have often defined other women's sense of autonany according to their capacity to discriminate their own desires and to pursue their goals in the middle of oppressive structures. In this sense it has been an important issue in feminist theory to study the capacity of women to verbalize their desires and to study the degree to which women have been able to participate in the construction of language structures or, in other approaches, the degree to which women's voices are taken into account. As we are trained to be alert to these symptoms of subordination in our own lives, i.e., lack of awareness of our own desires and lack of a distinct and legitimate feminine voice in our societies, we usually use the same parameters to analyze other women's subordination and to imagine the strategies they should develop for achieving personal autonomy. However, it seems necessary to discover more specific dimensions to analyze the modes of subordination of lower class women who participate in a specific subculture with particular rules of connnunication which rely less heavily on direct and verbal expression of personal desires; and also, whose lives are oppressed not only by gender but also by class domination. This double domination helps women to establish strong relations of alliance with their husbands or companeros vis-a-vis their "patrones", alliances which help the family groups to survive or surmount poverty together, as well as relations of subordination where they often feel betrayed by the "machismo" of their companeros. The analysis of subordination is not separated from the discovery of the personal strategies that women developed within - 4 - the family throughout their life history to overcome their personal dependence. The concept of subordination is for us a dynamic one which not only describes women entrapped in oppressive structures but also women who are conscious or "practically conscious" of their personal subjugation and able to accumulate a historical experience in their daily struggle against domination.* This theoretical