CIAO DATE: 02/03

Feminist Perspective's and Gender Link in Development: the Critical Role of Women's Organisations

Malika Basu
December 2000

The Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations

 

Preface

Glorified as they are, the terms industrialisation, modernisation, the so-called computers have become synonymous with our existence. We regale in our victories – the way we have "developed" – at times exploiting quite brutally earth’s limited resources. Caught now in a permanent web of destruction and development, countries have "progressed" given their will and resources. And also, by setting parameters, we have divided nations into developed and/or underdeveloped. The latter the hallmark of the "Third World". Against this juggling of developed or underdeveloped or developing, I have no hesitation in contesting that when one zeroes in on a topic as sensitive as Gender, the whole world is probably Underdeveloped.

Recently working on a paper, Male bias(es) in a development process, a thorough desk review drew my attention to a lot of interesting literature on feminism and feminist perspectives. Several writers, philosophers and thinkers have tried to unravel the mystery of inequality of sexes that has disadvantaged women and forced them to remain backstage in all walks of life. To my readers, in the very beginning, let me reveal that I was not surprised to find that much of the disadvantaged position of women owes itself to the male biases that rests upon solid economic and social foundations that has all along shaped the destiny of women.

 

My paper is not a thesis on Patriarchalism (or the masculine epistemology as the feminist discourses pronounce) nor is it a call for defying traditional familial roles, which has been ascribed to women as gendered/feminine roles.

Gender has been one of my prime concerns and if statistics provide any foresight, then the maddening quest for technological advancement, symbolic of growth and progress, is systematically marginalising or pushing women to the periphery. This symbolic quest is a result of thoughtful and planned decisions of our policy makers. The question is then, why such thoughtful decisions lead a category of people – WOMEN, to a state of vulnerability and marginalisation. This however is not to say that women have not made it at all. Times are changing and I am sure they are changing for good. But if any quantitative or qualitative comparison is drawn the inequalities are clearly discernible.

My paper also concerns itself with the nature of many women’s organisations that have sprouted across the world espousing the cause of the women. Have they been able to effectively challenge the patriarchal set up that is deeply rooted in the minds of the people and which binds women’s existence in limited roles? For unless one is able to strike at the root, propagating policy changes to uplift women would remain superficial.

Without the active encouragement and financial support from the Global Network, this paper would have remained a daunting task. Global Network, an initiative of the Center for the Study of Philanthropy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, dedicates itself to the cause and advocacy of gender issues. Thank you Global Network!

Needless to say the paper owes in abundance to the several women – old or middle aged or young - with whom I have had the opportunity to interact, discuss and share their views. It is they (I included) – as WOMEN, without whom, this paper has no significance. NONE AT ALL.

As ever, like any of my endeavours, this paper too is dedicated to my mother, whom I lost forever several years back. She remains an inspiration.

Introduction

Missing the ‘Gender Link’ in Development

For more than seven years now, I have been travelling to different parts of India, a country known for its multicultural symbiosis. Research being my interest, my deliberate association with research organisations in India has allowed me to delve into critical issues pertaining to developmental paradigms and trends in the country.

One such critical issue has been the absence of gender awareness in development policy and planning. Strangely enough, five decades of development has not helped us to set as to what the clear-cut priorities for gender aware policy should be and how they should be operationalised. And here I can not but state that perhaps women’s organisations too ought to ask as to whether they have been able to facilitate a clear vision themselves.

There is a strong tendency to understand gender analysis simply as a way of disaggregating society into male and female individuals; and a tendency to overlook gender as a social relation, a set of interactions between more powerful and less powerful social agents, buttressed by social institutions imbued with male bias (Elson, 1995). Gender relations are asymmetrical relations of power that are male-biased and disadvantage women, though different women are subordinated in different ways, and the form of male bias differ from place to place, are mediated by class and ethnicity and nationality, and change over time (ibid.).

Androcentrism thus has so far guided society and Patriarchalism symptomatic (and evidence) of unjustified male-gender power and privilege over women have surreptitiously crept into development policies. It has overlooked and under-utilised a human resource (women) which can be effectively mobilised and channelled given its potentialities.

Historically, the process of development has been strongly influenced by men. This gender bias has affected the role of women in the development process and in many cases has led to the introduction of technologies that are beneficial and suited to men, but much less so to women. Sometimes technological development has had a clear detrimental effect on the position of women (Everts 1994). A good amount of literature that exists on impact of industrialistion on women acknowledges the great importance of technological change in development along with the enormous, often negative influence of such change on women, and the potential positive role it could play for them.

Lack of explicit consideration of gender relations has visibly led economic strategies for national development designed to be in favour of men. What encourages such male bias in development policy: A sheer blindness to the gendered nature of economic structures and processes? A failure to take into account existing gender inequalities? Is it a result of prejudice and discrimination at a conscious level or is it reflective of the deeply embedded perceptions, attitudes and theoretical reasoning? Questions abound.

Civil Society, for me, as I have understood it, is then not egalitarian, it does not promote welfarism, and it is gender biased. Civil society merely reflects the male biases. The masculine epistemology that categorises women with gendered and feminine roles is too entrenched to be easily warded off. And, my paper, Feminist Perspective/s and Gender Link in Development: The Critical Role of Women’s Organisations, is to bring into sharp focus the way the women’s organisations have dealt with masculine phallocracy or androcentrism that has built society through ages.

Women’s organisations are now centrestage. For me, the role of women’s organisations is critical for they ought to act as a catalyst in transforming the existing hierarchies and enable women to play the role of active agents of social change rather than remain passive and hapless victims. It is here that their role in deconstructing theories (which implicitly assumes women as an ‘object’ rather than ‘subjects’) comes to the fore. Question is whether they have been able to play this role of a catalyst. Or, their vision is blurred by their not-so-clear thoughts i.e. what actually are they fighting for. Or, have divisions within women’s organisations impeded them from playing a more constructive role. What are these differences, if any, that confound women’s organisations and despite surmounting some common agendas for women, development policies (or society at large) has remained gender blind.

The objectives of the paper are clear, the guiding principle being, to see women not as passive victims but active partners in the developmental process. And how women’s organisations enforce this into a reality.

My paper is guided by three objectives:

• To argue for a need to (re)-define civil society, that does not emanate from an androcentric view;
• To pinpoint how the male biases have moulded development policies and once implemented these policies generate social inequalities; and
• To gear (more sensitise) our planners towards a gender perspective in development process and the strategies that women’s organisation ought to develop to enforce a move from gender inequality to gender justice.

Keeping the stated objectives in mind, this paper has been presented through five chapters, inclusive of the introduction and conclusion. Introduction presents the background to the paper, noting the failure to take into account existing gender inequalities and to build into policy design measures to counteract those inequalities. This failure has marred the success of development projects in benefiting different sections of society, least of which could have been providing equal opportunities. Introduction briefly brings to the fore ‘the missing gender link’ in development.

Chapter two, three and four form the core of this paper. Chapter two draws attention to the problem of objectification of women that impedes feminisation of (development) processes. Feminisation in an authentic sense here means to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination and oppression (Hooks, 1981:195). This chapter selectively draws upon the various writers, philosophers and thinkers who have tried to unravel the mystery of inequality of sexes that has disadvantaged women and forced them to remain backstage in all walks of life.

Chapter three is a chapter on Gender and Development. The ascribed status specific to women, personifying subordination, exploitation leaves little scope for empowering themselves. So conveniently in the name of tradition and other synonyms, the women find themselves conceived and bound by their familial roles; hence there is an outright refusal to consider them as persons in their own right. They belong they do not exist. Discriminatory societal norms and values perpetuated by customs and traditions, people’s perceptions and attitudes explain a great deal the reluctance to incorporate more iconoclastic modes of thought in development strategies/interventions.

Chapter four is about women’s organisations – to see how far women’s organisations have been able to comprehend the existing gender biases in society and able to strike at the root cause rather than asking for changes at a superficial level. This is imperative if at all gender relations need to undergo changes. No doubt, the society as a whole should/ought to fight for the cause of women. And the problem of status of women and violence against them has to be reviewed both by men and women alike. The focus then is on the nature and role of women’s organisations and how far have they been able to mobilise both men and women to develop gender perspectives. (If not, then they, like their male counterpart, would be bringing the same biases that androcentrism propagated).

Finally, the Conclusion that recommends a gender perspective in development and the critical role of women’s organisations in this regard – what it is and what it ought to be. Among other things, it reasserts the need for women to have a greater share in decision making and implementation processes. A gender perspective, no doubt, may read as an indispensable challenge; it is also a precondition for social change.

The paper provides no straight jacket solution but raises critical questions along with some recommendations, which if addressed may lead to confronting the paradoxes in the existing development model. By bringing gender into focus and emphasising various aspects related to women - so far unaddressed, overlooked and even as a resource under-utilised, the paper hopes to bring the attention of all those concerned, particularly the policy makers and planners, and sensitise them towards gender based planning and programming, if development is to bear its true meaning.

Chapter Two

Feminist Perspective/s:

The New Order of Things

There exists no such thing as ‘a single feminism’ much less ‘a feminist perspective’, uniting all feminists. Feminism is a diverse movement. Within it are the radicals, Marxist-revolutionary, cultural feminism and so forth. No attempt here is to distinguish between these varied approaches; instead the chapter selectively draws upon feminist views or perspectives as they critically interpret the predicament confronting women. A conscious effort is to see how far the views can unwind the logic that has so far governed the development process.

 

Women constitute numerically atleast half of the human race. Yet on the basis of three recognised dimensions of inequality - class (economic situation), status (social position) and political power, women in general occupy a secondary place in the world in relation to men, a position comparable in many respects with that of minorities.

To understand the situation and especially the disadvantaging position of women, we have to understand gender. It is not entirely clear what focussing in gender means (Mayward & Purvis, 1994:15). Some have argued that it entails a pre-eminent concern with women alone; others suggest that gender implies women’s relationship to men and also understanding, from a woman’s perspective, how women’s experiences in a male world are structured. For Elson (1995), gender specifically directs attention to the interaction and power relations between men and women. It brings into picture all the factors that together form and sustain gender relations, such as men, women, institutions, law, religion, art and education.

Throughout history women have always been subordinated to men. Legislators, priests, writers and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of women is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth (Beauvoir, 1989:xxviii). The humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as autonomous being. "Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other" (ibid.: xxxv).

Simon de Beauvoir’s work, The Second Sex, is a classic statement of how woman is constituted as object. Beauvoir’s attempt is to accomplish a goal: bringing women into the realm of the subject. A goal that has seemed to many feminists both then and now as the obvious solution to the problem of the exclusion of women from the realm of the subject (Hekman, 1990:74).

Beginning her analysis with what becomes the central thesis of her book: woman is always the other to man’s absolute; Beauvoir’s point is, the fundamental distinction between self and other is not symmetrical. The absolute human type is man; he is both positive and neutral. Thus woman is always defined as a peculiarity; she is ‘not man’. Beauvoir then asserts the two central themes of her book: first, that "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself" (Beauvoir, op.cit.:xxii), that "Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought" (ibid.: xxiii) and, second, that woman is compelled to assume the status of the Other in man’s world. For Beauvoir, the fundamental condition of woman is that she is locked into an Otherness that is central to human life.

What is defined as the Otherness of woman takes a number of different forms, which Beauvoir describes in the course of her analysis. She asserts that women are incapable of action and are thus condemned to passivity. Woman’s incapacity to act and her inherent passivity are rooted in what Beauvoir sees to be the fundamental difference between men and women; men are capable of transcendence while women are mired in immanence. In this discussion of how women are "made" in our society she emphasises that women must transcend their Otherness in order to become fully human. Her discussion of myths summarises both this hope and its chances for fulfilment: "Perhaps the myth of woman will some day be extinguished; the more women assert themselves as human beings, the more the marvellous quality of the Other will die out in them. But today it still exists in the heart of every man" (ibid.:142).

One can not just ignore the problem of objectification of women. To objectify is to depersonalise, to depersonalise is to make the woman not quite human. It is a way of defining her in terms of anatomical and physical attributes. In the minds of men this view of women arouses a strong undercurrent of sexuality. The explosive mixture of object and sexuality makes the woman easy target for male violence. Unless these conditions change, women remain deprived of the possibility of being independent persons (Shamala, 1993:89).

The exploration of what lies beyond a philosophy of the subject has been one of the major concerns of the work of a number of French feminists in the last several decades. Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman (1985) is one of the most noted works in this regard. One of the central theses of this work is that any epistemology that is rooted in the subject is inherently phallocratic. Her intention is clear: to move beyond Beauvoir’s analysis of the woman as Other. Irigaray argues that simply appropriating the myths of men fail to transform the phallocratic epistemology that oppresses women. Irigaray’s position transcends Beauvoir’s analysis in significant ways. Beauvoir recognised the inferior status that women were forced to assume as man’s Other, but she was unwilling to reject the Enlightenment epistemology of subjects and objects that relegates women to this position. Irigaray moves beyond Beauvoir’s analysis, first by asserting that all theories of the subject are phallocratic and that in these theories women are denied all but a ‘quasi-subjectivity’. Second, she challenges Beauvoir’s position by arguing that the subject/object dualism itself must be rejected.

Following the post-modern lead Irigaray rejects the Enlightenment dualism, subject/object, in favour of an epistemology that is pluralistic rather than hierarchical. Beauvoir saw that the subject/object dualism defined woman as inferior. Irigaray goes beyond this to see that all dichotomies are both hierarchical and gendered and on these grounds rejects epistemology that produces them.

Many contemporary feminists claim the need for a feminist epistemology to replace the masculinist one that has dominated so long. Oppression of women is rooted in male-dominated language and a male definition of reality (Hekman, op.cit.:33). Language establishes and maintains the basic gender identity that creates female inferiority. It effectively erases the distinction between female and feminine that is central to an understanding of the nature of the oppression of women. The language that we speak creates a situation in which the qualities that women possess as a result of their biological sex become indistinguishable from those that they are told they should possess in order to be "feminine;" sex and gender, in other words, become intertwined (ibid.:31).

The feminine gender identity covers a broad range of qualities but central to that identity is irrationality. Men, who are identified as the "natural" occupants of the sphere of rationality, are contrasted to women whose sphere is that of emotion and feeling, the irrational. This dichotomy leaves women two unacceptable options: either they can talk like women and be "feminine" but irrational or they can talk like men and be rational but "unfeminine" (Lakoff, 1975:6). Phallocratic language thus offers women two options: either speak as women, and hence, speak irrationally, or enter the masculine sphere of rationality and speak not as women but as men.

Concepts formed from the male point of view create a male reality. This male definition of reality has been particularly problematic in history and the social sciences whose task is to analyse and make sense of the experience of "mankind". One consequence of the male definition of reality is that women’s experiences become invisible. Dorothy Smith argued, for instance, that sociology was not just the study of men in society, it was also a male science of society because its whole approach to the study of social world was coloured by masculinist bias. We know the world sociologically through male categories. The categories of sociology are conceived in terms of man’s experiences and leave women’s reality "outside the frame" (Smith, 1979:148). For Smith, a sociology for women discloses how women’s own social situation, their everyday world is organised and determined by social processes which are not knowable through the ordinary means through which we find our everyday world.

Catharine Mackinnon refers to male epistemological stance, which she defines as men’s power to create the world from their point of view, which then becomes the truth to be described. For Mackinnon, although the objectivity and science represent supposedly neutral positions, they are in fact gendered and partial. Feminism not only challenges the partiality, it also critiques the purported generality, disinterestedness and universality of male accounts (Mackinnon, 1982: 23-4). There is now a parallel move in developing a woman’s language, a ‘feminine writing’ that deconstructs and destabilises phallocratic language.

The theme of feminine writing and its effect is developed most extensively in the work of Helene Cixous. The central theme of Cixous’ work is her attack on the dualisms which, she argues, are always both oppositional and hierarchical, never neutral and secondly, they stem from the opposition to woman, the man/woman opposition. "Man/woman automatically means great/small, superior/inferior—means high or low, means Nature/History, means transformation/inertia. In fact, every theory of culture—of society, the whole conglomeration of symbolic systems – everything that is, that’s spoken—that’s organised as discourse, art, religion, the family, language, everything that seizes us, everything that acts upon us – it is all ordered around hierarchical oppositions that come back to the man/woman opposition" (Cixous, quoted in Hekman, 1990:43).

Although Cixous continues to use the words man and woman, masculine and feminine, she makes it clear that these words do not refer exclusively to one gender; she does not equate the feminine with woman, the masculine with man. She is not attempting to replace an essentially masculine writing with an essentially feminine writing. Nor is she attempting to define the essentially feminine; she rejects all such essentialist moves. Rather, she is trying to displace the opposition and, thus, bring about a new inscription of the feminine (Hekman, op.cit.: 44).

Sandra Harding (1986) views three stages in the development of feminist epistemology. The first of these, feminist empiricism, argues that it is possible to remove sexist and other biases from the processes of research, particularly when problems for study are initially being identified and defined, in the belief that once these have been eliminated value neutral work will be produced. The second stage and the one, in which we are currently located, according to Harding, is that of the feminist standpoint. Here the argument is that understanding women’s lives from a committed feminist exploration of their experiences of oppression produces more complete and less distorted knowledge than that produced by men. Women lead lives that have significantly different contours and patterns to those of men. Their subjugated position provides the possibility of more complete and less perverse understandings. Thus, adopting a feminist standpoint can reveal the existence of forms of human relationships which may not be visible from the position of the ‘ruling gender. In addition to feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint Harding suggests that there is a third epistemological position, that of feminist postmodernism.

In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in the question of the relationship between feminism and postmodernism among feminist theorists. It may be of interest to some to note that, the two movements are by no means identical. The two movements are and will remain separate. They spring from different theoretical and political sources. The similarities between the two are however striking. Feminism and postmodernism are the only contemporary theories that present a truly radical critique of the Enlightenment legacy of modernism. No other approaches on the contemporary intellectual scene offer a means of displacing and transforming the masculinist epistemology of modernity. This fact alone creates a bond between the two approaches (Hekman, op.cit.:189).

Those advocating a feminist epistemology appeal to the uniqueness of women’s experience or perspective, arguing that this uniqueness provides women with a privileged epistemological standpoint vis-à-vis the masculine. In her works, Mary Daly argues, women have been unable to express themselves in the masculine language that has dominated western thought. Daly’s strategy against this domination is to advance a critique of ‘dispassion’ that prevails in patriarchy, a critique that strives for the ‘cosmic harmony’ of women who choose to escape patriarchy. This goal is to be accomplished by breaking the power of masculine-dominated language. What Daly attempts is to redefine masculinist words and create what she calls, New Words (Daly, 1984:262), which allows one to see the world in a new light and to experience oneself as women in ways that are impossible using masculine language.

Ariel K. Salleh (1984) writes, what women (and men) need to do is to recognise the value of women’s experiences, something which patriarchal societies fail to do. While Salleh does not elaborate upon the traditional feminine role, she does imply that women under patriarchy are socialised into it. It is a role assigned to women under conditions of sexual oppression or patriarchy. Patriarchy is the systematic, structural unjustified domination of women by men. At the heart of Patriarchy is the maintenance and justification of male gender privilege and power (Warren, 1994:181).

Patriarchy consists of those institutions (including those policies, practices, positions, offices, roles and expectations) and behaviours which give privilege (higher status, value, prestige) and power (power over power) to males or to what historically is male-gender identified, as well as a sexist conceptual framework needed to sustain and legitimise it (Ibid.).

Karen J. Warren (1994) explores some major conceptual connections between the domination of women and the domination of nature by humans, which she refers to as "an oppressive conceptual framework". There are five interrelated characteristics of an oppressive, including patriarchal, conceptual framework: 1) value-hierarchical (‘Up-Down’) thinking, which places higher value, prestige, or status on what is ‘Up’ (e.g. men) than on what is ‘Down’ (e.g. women); 2) value dualisms (‘either – or’ thinking) which organise reality into oppositional (rather than complementary) and exclusive (rather than inclusive) pairs, and which place higher value, prestige or status on one member of the pair (e.g. dualisms which give higher status to ‘mind’, ‘reason’, and ‘male’ in alleged contrast and opposition to that which is ‘body’, ‘emotion’, and ‘female’, respectively); 3) power-over conceptions of power which function to maintain relations of dominance and subordination; 4) conceptions of privilege which systematically advantage Ups in Up-Down relationships; and most importantly, 5) a logic of domination, that is a structure of argumentation which justifies relations of dominance and subordination on the grounds that superiority (or being ‘Up’) justifies subordination (or being ‘Down’) (Ibid.: 184).

Oppressive conceptual frameworks identify characteristics of individuals which are either above or below each other in moral hierarchies, and assume that whatever characteristic is above another characteristic in the moral hierarchy (the ‘Ups’) is morally justified in dominating that which is below it. Such a framework creates a "logic of domination" that justifies human domination of nature.

Warren maintains that the same logic allows for the sexist domination of women under patriarchy. It is the logic of domination, which justifies power-over power relations within patriarchy. A logic of domination legitimates the unequal distribution of power in ways which serve to reinforce and maintain systems of oppression: who or what is ‘Up’ is who or what has power over others. A logic of domination is necessary to maintain and justify patriarchy. Since all feminists oppose patriarchy, all feminists must oppose a logic of domination (Ibid.:10-11, 181).

Domination of nature by humans, and the sexist domination of women by men thus rely on the same general framework. This important insight shows that environmentalists and feminists should and must be allies. Thus, those fighting to save the environment should, as a matter of consistency, be working to overthrow patriarchy and those working to overthrow patriarchy should be fighting to save the environment. At a conceptual level these fights are inextricably interconnected.

Ecological feminism or ecofeminism is an umbrella term which captures a variety of multicultural perspectives on the nature of the connections within social systems of domination between those humans in subdominant or subordinate positions, particularly women, and the domination of nonhuman nature (Ibid.:1). First introduced by Francoise d’Eaubonne in 1984, ecofeminism has come to refer to a variety of so-called ‘women-nature connections’ – historical, empirical, conceptual, religious, literary, political, ethical, epistemological, methodological and theoretical connections on how one treats women and the earth (Ibid.).

Although there are a variety of different ecofeminist positions, ecofeminists agree that there is an important link between the domination of women and the domination of nature, and that an understanding of one is aided by an understanding of the other. Theories of ecological feminism see the patriarchal dominations of women and other social groups as parallel to man’s exploitation of ‘nonhuman nature’. Ecofeminist philosophers such as Warren and Val Plumwood have shown how the logic of domination is at work in both the domination of nature by humans and the domination of women by men under various forms of patriarchy. In so doing, they have shown that the fights to end both are linked conceptually and therefore politically. And thus feminists and environmentalists ought to ally in a greater fight to end the logic of domination. Ecofeminists believe that environmental politics and philosophy are enriched by using gender as a focus, while also appreciating the necessity of an ecological dimension to any form of feminism.

Susan Griffin (1978), tracing the history of what she calls western patriarchal thought regarding women and nature, powerfully demonstrates how women have been associated with nature, the material, the emotional and the particular, while men have been associated with culture, the nonmaterial, the rational and the abstract. Griffin also documents how the traits associated with men have been systematically privileged over the traits associated with both women and nature.

Although she praises the association of women and nature, Griffin documents how the masculine, cultural knowledge has led to the rape of nature in the modern world. Denouncing the culture of men that leads to the domination of both women and nature, Griffin claims that women are, infact, closer to the earth than men, but what this means is that, for men, women are something to be penetrated by the power of reason (Griffin, 1978:7-14).

Griffin’s work reveals a number of themes important for an understanding of the association between women and nature. She articulates three assumptions that inform not only the eco-feminist movement but also the position of those feminists who want to define woman’s nature as more closely tied to the natural world than that of men. First, women have an essential nature; second, that it is defined in terms of a closeness to the natural world; and, third, it is vastly superior to that of men because men are associated with culture and culture entails domination. For Griffin, men, who created culture and excluded women from it, use cultural tools to dominate both women and nature. She concludes, in the name of culture men have attempted and largely succeeded in the rape of both women and nature (Hekman, op.cit.:113)

In pre-modern thought, woman’s association with nature was conceptualised in terms of a nature that was a mysterious but nurturing mother. With the rise of modern science this conceptualisation of nature has changed to that of a wild force that must be subordinated to a dominant mankind. This new conception of nature fostered by the rise of science entailed a new conception of the relationship between the man of culture and the natural world he sought to dominate. As Carolyn Merchant (1980) points out, this transformation of nature from a living, nurturing mother to inert, dead and manipulable matter was eminently suited to the exploitation imperative of growing capitalism.

Modern science was a consciously gendered, patriarchal activity. Science as a male venture, based on the subjugation of female nature and female sex provided support for the polarisation of gender. Patriarchy as the new scientific and technological power was a political need of emerging industrial capitalism. While on one hand the ideology of science sanctioned the denudation of nature, on the other it legitimised the dependency of women and the authority of men. Science and masculinity were associated in domination over nature and feminity, and the ideologies of science and gender reinforced each other (Shiva, 1989:17-18).

From being the creators and sustainers of life, nature and women are reduced to being ‘resources’ in the fragmented, and what Vandana Shiva calls the anti-life model of maldevelopment. Maldevelopment is the violation of the integrity of organic, interconnected and interdependent systems, that sets in motion a process of exploitation, inequality, injustice and violence. It is blind to the fact that a recognition of nature’s harmony and action to maintain it are preconditions for distributive justice (Ibid.:5-6).

It is more than two decades that the global community affirmed gender equality as a central developmental concern, following it with the adoption of Forward Looking Strategies (FLS) to accelerate women’s advancement. "Women in Development’ (WID) thus emerged as a visible field of policy and action. Deliberations later led the nomenclature – WID - change to Gender and Development (GAD). The argument being, while WID focused primarily on women, a gender approach by focussing on the socially constructed roles of both women and men, looks at women in the context of society and was better suited to cross-sectoral analysis (Moser, 1993). A gender approach has greater flexibility than a WID approach. For instance, an emphasis on gender relations tends to permit greater awareness of the different ways that different women experience gender (Elson, op.cit.:2).

A gender aware perspective on development facilitates the design of more human centred development strategies. To talk about (women’s) ‘gender needs’ rather than just ‘women’s needs’ emphasises how women and their needs are viewed; it reminds that these needs arise out of the social positioning of women in the gender structure: a culturally constructed inequality between men and women. The need for more egalitarian gender relations underlies many of women’s gender needs. The fulfilment of gender needs in fact contributes to changes in the gender structure. To illustrate this, Moser distinguishes between practical gender needs, the needs identified to help women in their existing subordinate position, and strategic gender needs, the needs identified to transform existing subordinate relationship between men and women (Moser, op.cit.:94).

Sustained advocacy has led to greater understanding and awareness of gender issues. But as Beauvoir categorically wrote, At the present time, when women are beginning to take part in the affairs of the world, it is still a world that belongs to men – they have no doubt of it at all and women have scarcely any (Beauvoir, op.cit.:xxvii).

Male bias in development policy is encouraged by male bias in everyday attitudes and actions. This may be the result of prejudice and discrimination at the conscious level. But this is not necessarily the case. Bias may be deeply embedded in unconscious perceptions and habits, the result of oversight, faulty assumptions, a failure to ask questions. Such unconscious bias is not unreachable and unchangeable (Elson, op.cit.:7). People can be brought to recognise it through education, consciousness-raising groups, politicisation, and social change.

But male bias is contradictory. While it preserves the subordination of women as a gender to men, it also has costs for society considered as a whole. For instance, male bias distorts resource allocation by denying women adequate access to productive inputs. This lowers women’s productivity and reduces total output in comparison with what could be achieved if resource allocation were free of gender distortion (Palmer, 1988). Palmer identifies two key forms of gender-based distortions. These are the ‘reproduction tax’ on women and the quasi-monopoly power of male heads of households over other household members. The reproduction tax is a woman’s social obligation to undertake unpaid work, caring for other family members, regardless of whatever other work she also undertakes. The quasi-monopoly power of male heads of households’ means, that the terms of exchange within households are unequal, to women’s disadvantage and men’s advantage. An implication of both types of distortion is that, the remuneration of women in the cash economy is ‘too low’ compared with what it would be in the absence of distortions. And as a result, women’s time is not efficiently allocated from the point of view of the economy as a whole.

 

Though a change in women’s economic condition has been and remains the basic factor in her evolution, we must not believe, certainly, to quote Beauvoir again, that such a change alone is enough to transform her—. until it has brought about the moral, social, cultural and other consequences that it promises and requires, the new woman can not appear (Beauvoir, op.cit.:725).

From the objectification of women to entrenched dualistic hierarchies to ecofeminism to the logic of domination in patriarchal set up – as the selected views have presented vividly – the justifications of all these are too evidently dictated by men’s interest. In the process it has logically (the masculine logic) reduced women to a position of inferiority, discrimination and even segregation, entrapped by eulogies bestowed on the "truly feminine women".

In such a context, how can one view the civil society as egalitarian, when the basis on which it is formed renders one "class" of people (here women), quite consciously subservient to the other (men). The next chapter, Feminisation of Development, shows how the implicit assumptions underlying these various feminist perspective/s, as discussed, explicitly explain the missing ‘gender aspect’ in a/any development intervention.

 

Chapter Three

Feminisation of Development:

Women as Powerless victims or Powerful social agents?

I am a feminist with no ambiguity. For me, feminisation is not ignoring men over women. It is not posing men against women. It is not gender biased. It is about gender justice. Protagonists argue that capitalist development everywhere has led to marginalisation and impoverishment of women. Despite successive decades of ‘development’ and ‘democratic rule’ we are still grappling to move from ‘gender inequality’ to ‘gender justice’. Therefore the persistency to raise the question of ‘gender’ separately in all matters – be it social, economic and political. The question is how long can women exist as powerless victims when they bear the qualities of powerful social agents.

 

Integrating women in development has long been under attack. The preceding chapter, as the paradoxes in development clearly makes their presence felt, acts as a diagnosis in explaining the disproportionate resultant benefits of ‘development projects’. Expectations are only natural, whenever a project in the name of ‘development’ descends an area. It is hoped that it will benefit in some ways people inhabiting the area. Experiences have shown that benefits do accrue but underlying the multiple benefits, there is also a common awareness (or acceptance!): A woman’s place, with the changing times may no longer be entirely in the home, but she has little or no say in the overall determination of how development policies are planned, designed and implemented (Basu, 1996). Hence resultant benefits have been disproportionate. They have perpetuated already existing inequalities, in the process leaving behind the women – gradually being marginalised, impoverished and insecure. What further perpetuates this is the lack of understanding (or sensitivity!) that women are also the shapers and makers of social change and not the passive victims. Development has become gender biased, operating in favour of men as a gender and against women as a gender.

Kabeer and Subrahmaniam (1999: 21-22) quote three forms of gender disadvantage:

1. Gender-intensified disadvantage, wherein women by and large suffer from all the disadvantages in an intensified form as a result of direct gender discrimination in the allocation of resources and responsibilities. Thus women are more likely to be assetless, illiterate and socially isolated than men because of the way in which norms and practices define their access to these resources.
2. Gender-specific forms of disadvantage. This reflects the specific ways in which gender defines women as a subordinate category within a given cultural context. Gender-specific forms of disadvantage relate to women’s primary responsibility for housework, regardless of what other forms of work they undertake, the greater constraints put on their public mobility and the polluting characteristics attributed to their bodies.
3. Imposed gender disadvantage: While gender inequality may be constructed through different norms and varying realities for different social groups in society some groups have more power than others to assume that their own norms and their own realities are universal and impose them in the way in which goods and services are distributed within society.

The three forms of gender disadvantage are a part of the patriarchal set up. Patriarchy is the concept that men hold power in all the important roles in societies – in government, the military, education, industry, business, health care, advertising, religion – and that women are in the main, deprived of access to that power. It does not imply that women are totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influences and resources, rather that the balance of power is in men’s favour (Mosse, 1994:51). The patriarchal structure, which is predominant in most societies, excludes women from the decision-making processes. It is the men who communicate with the outside world. The introduction of new technology, educational programmes, new equipment and various services are always negotiated primarily with men. In other words, women’s place in society is always that which men assign to her; at no time has she ever imposed her own law.

From humanity’s beginnings, their biological advantage has enabled the males to affirm their status as sole and sovereign subjects, they have never abdicated this position—Condemned to play the part of the Other, woman was also condemned to hold only uncertain powers: slave or idol, it was never she who chose her lot (Beauvoir, 1989:77).

Feminisation of development stands contrary to this state of existence for women. A networking body for women - the Joint Women’s Programme (JWP) active in different parts of the country, views feminisation of development as having women and men at the centrestage together for the development process which is gender sensitive. No proper development is possible until a process is generated by which men and women together function as partners (with dignity to each) in the development process.

The relationship between man and woman is actually crucial in determining the position of both. If development projects are to improve women’s position it is essential to have the different needs and interests of women and men, and the power relations between them, taken into account in the planning phase. This suggests a need for attention to ‘gender’- women and men’s socially defined roles and characteristics, which are shaped by historical, economic, religious, cultural and ethnic factors.

The organisation of family and kinship in households and extended family networks are the primary sites of gender relations but the processes by which gender inequalities are socially constituted are not confined purely to household and family relationships. They are reproduced across a range of institutions, including many of the policy-making agencies whose avowed objectives are to address the different forms of exclusion and inequality within societies.

The degree of discrimination may vary from family to family but it is widespread enough to show up in the statistics as marked gender differentials in nutrition, food allocation, health status and health expenditure, education, mortality rates and life expectancy (Kabeer, 1999:16).

Challenging gender inequality is threatening because it challenges the whole social structure. Patriarchy permeates all aspects of society and social systems. Attitudes towards the role of women are so deeply rooted in all cultures, whether in the developing world or elsewhere, that the straight forward fact that women can make an equal contribution to the development process; and that they should be entitled and enabled to do so, is not always readily understood. Further, many development planners have not considered the women’s perspective to be relevant to a project unless it was specifically designed to benefit them.

The intrinsic male bias in development policy is encouraged by male bias in everyday attitudes and actions. These are not only the result of prejudice and discrimination at the conscious level, but as I have understood, deeply embedded in unconscious perceptions and habits, the result of oversight, faulty assumptions, a failure to ask questions. No doubt then, changes in laws, civil codes, system of property rights, control over our bodies, labour codes and the social and legal institutions that underwrite male control and privilege – are all imperative, if women are to attain justice in society.

Gender analysis may be examined from four aspects:

• Gender division of labour and workload;
• Gender related access and control over resources and services including benefits derived from their use;
• Women’s participation in decision making (and their organisational capacity)
• Views and expectations of women (and men) regarding the proposed project.

Development projects can have either positive or negative effects on the division of labour and the access to and control over allocation of resources, benefits and decision making in a society. When gender differences are overlooked in the planning phase, projects are unlikely to respond to women’s needs and may even have negative consequences for women.

Gender activities in development can be divided into two forms. The first kinds are the activities that specifically target women in an effort to strengthen their position. These are women’s projects or sometimes women’s component added on to general projects. The second kind of gender activities is directed at these general projects and is called mainstreaming. The aim is to take gender issues into account in such projects, to make the project more effective and to ensure that women also benefit from it. The latter is more akin to deconstructing the former, which perhaps is more conscious of just adding on ‘women’ as an area of concern.

How we characterise women’s consciousness and perceptions is of considerable importance, since it impinges critically on how we assess the prospects for change in women’s situation and identify what the most effective forms of action would be. Also important is to know what are women's perceptions about themselves and their economic and social situations within and outside their families. Granted that the coming of development projects broaden the perspectives of women and help them to look beyond their homes (and villages), but are the avenues generated by such projects opening up new vistas for the women? Do the projects (and also the government) on their part believe that the resultant benefits of focussing on gender will be many - a more skilled workforce, stabilised population growth, healthier children and more prosperous households?

By and large, law or custom or both, have excluded women in India (and/or elsewhere) from owning, inheriting land and property. Men have mostly determined the control over land in terms of its management, use and disposal. Also, women seldom enjoy resources generated from the productive use of these assets such as income accruing from land or rent from property. So deep is the association of the notion of male superiority with male control over land, that even women do not perceive the absence of claims vis-à-vis such assets as the denial of a right (NIAS, 1998:21). The lack of ownership has however made women innocuously vulnerable, forever dependent and a greater risk of being excluded from their homes and livelihoods.

Women’s traditional control over land is not in terms of ownership but rights to land use (Shiva, 1989:115). Although women are generally not found to own the land, traditionally they have been engaged in operations of sowing, weeding, a major part of harvesting and practically entire threshing. Analyses of secondary sources reveal that with industrialisation, women are forced to move out of the agrarian workforce. In simple words, destruction of an agrarian economy hit women first. Moving out of the agrarian sector has often meant relegating to domestic chores alone.

While women are increasingly being confined to their homes, this is not to suggest that agricultural activity alone is a great boon for women or that it should be preserved, if women are to have some kind of employment. The question is also not that women are solely into household activity or that they should not be working at home, the question is whether they are provided with any alternative/s at all. The need to orient them, towards the in-coming change due to industrialisation or "development", does not seem to have arisen.

Beneria and Feldman (1992:5) have written, following an emerging trend of a new system of economy, new patterns of intra-household divisions of labour emerge, they alter the norms and values that guide everyday life in both the private domain of the household and the public domain of the workplace. In both the household and the workplace a new gender division of labour may generate contradictory outcomes. On the one hand, these outcomes may entail new relations of inequity, subordination and exploitation for women. On the other hand, they may provide opportunities for greater independence and resource control for all household members.

Development today is highly capital-intensive. Being so, they require the worker to possess a considerable degree of technical education. Technological changes call for acquisition of new skills and specialisation, which are very different from the traditional division of labour. And women, handicapped by lack of opportunities for acquisition of these new skills, find their traditional productive skills unwanted by the new economy. And if skills do exist, in the face of competition between family members, the women tend to lose out, often almost voluntarily.

Evidences prove that coming of ‘development projects’ tend to reduce the relative value of women’s economic contributions. The new opportunities, which a project claims, the area witnesses should encourage women to direct their productive efforts into the new system. Instead with the changes that has descended on the villages, due to coming of projects, even if women have preferred to disentangle themselves from matters purely at home there seem to be no scope of its getting implemented. Jobs being scarce with the projects, the first casualty are the women. Moreso, because they lack skills. The point is, while women are being displaced from their traditional occupation, they have not been allowed access to the new sources of employment that come up in the area.

As a society moves from the traditional agricultural to organised industry and services, the traditional division of labour is bound to cease to operate. The complementary relationship of the family (it would be a mistake to regard this complementary relationship being equal. For women, they gave their labour but remained subservient to the values of a patriarchal society), more often than not tends to get substituted by a competitive one between the units of labour. In this competition, women tend to lose out.

Quantitatively, a reason for low proportion of women in the workforce is definitely owing to the fact that fewer of them get employed. There is also another, and perhaps an important, reason. A lot of work done by women is not counted as 'work' (in its economic sense) by women themselves. Women (and also men) tend to consider women’s work as a part of household work alone. Therefore, the employment statistics are far from reality. Women have always been at work, only the definitions of ‘work’ and workplace have not been realistic enough to include their contributions to the economy and society. Questions relating to the size, nature and value of women’s work have often been left to ‘sociological speculation emanating in myths and legends which have derailed systematic inquiry’ (Ahooja-Patel, 1995:46). Elson (1995:10) has added that ignoring women’s unpaid domestic work obscures both the burdens women bear and the constraints this work places upon women’s capacity to respond to opportunities for productive work.

It would always be interesting therefore to draw a comparison between - 'Employment Status of Women' and 'Work done by Women throughout the day'. The comparison brings to focus that most women despite their physical labour outside the house do not add value to it. Most often, the work is undertaken as a duty towards the household. Under-valuation of women’s work results in categorising women as primarily ‘domestic workers’ and hence only as supplementary earners in the labour market (Shamala, 1995: 85).

It has been argued that prejudice against women is in-built in our society, which is precisely why women have less access to education and training. Therefore, even if the projects were to have no personal bias, they would be unable to give women jobs that require special skills. Even if it be pointed out that in our society, most male workers also do not have formal training and acquire skills on the job, it is countered by the sort of arguments given to explain the biases of colour, gender or race elsewhere: That, as far as an individual employer is concerned, he has more evidence of men-working in responsible jobs, he has no evidence from the past of others (meaning women) doing so (Banerjee, 1991:18).

The reasons for occupational segregation are varied: women’s low level of education and training, of skills and commitment, their preference for undemanding jobs and dislike of management or supervisory positions are all suggested. Most of these reasons when subjected to careful analysis have been found to reflect stereotypes rather than reality.

Glucksmann (1994) talks of inequality of knowledge between people. Inequality of knowledge derives from socially determined structural divisions in knowledge between people formed in society at large. These divisions in knowledge (amount of formal education, qualifications and credentials, skills possessed, type of vocational or professional training, etc.) are integral to the division of labour of industrial societies. Some people have much greater access than others to knowledge and the economic and social power that accompanies it. Some people specialise in producing knowledge, others in disseminating and reproducing it, others in consuming it, while many do not engage in any of these activities. Divisions of knowledge exist alongside the other social divisions of class, gender and race, overlaying and criss-crossing them (Glucksmann, 1994:156).

The low literacy rate that women have can be explained by their own attitudes as well. There are villages in India where despite a primary school, the number of girls going to school is lower as compared to the boys. The general opinion of the women to this is (apart from the compulsive reason of a poor household), once a girl gets educated she finds it difficult to adjust in her "in-laws" house. It is a general feeling that educated girls can not do household work well. The crux is, by not sending the child to school in her formative years, she is being taught the household work earlier in her life, which would be useful to her later.

Low literacy level is one of the major reasons why women working in the projects/ project areas are mostly contract labourers. If the job content becomes more complex, women are usually edged out. If it is simplified, women are recruited more extensively (Baud & de Bruijne, 1993:9). Those belonging to lower strata and the landless, owing to their poor economic status, are the ones who work as contract labourers carrying out unskilled work with low wages or as domestic servants in the projects’ townships. It may further be noted that even when women are engaged out-door in gainful work along with men, they are discriminated against by payment of low wages. This deprivation of equal wages for equal work appears more as a rule than an exception whenever and wherever women work.

In rural India, the fundamental crises relate to fuel, water, health care and delivery, housing, sanitation and nutrition. The inadequacies of these resources, owing to land acquisition for development purposes, affect women severely mainly because women have been primary providers of basic needs. Low access to or shortage of cooking fuel and water has meant that now women have to walk longer to fetch water and collect fodder and fuelwood. Non availability of fuel has repercussions on the household such as consumption of fewer cooked meals, switching over to less fuel intensive foods and loss of schooling opportunities for the girl child. The gendered outcome of such a crisis is that women consume smaller amounts since they eat after the male and children of households in most traditional cultures (NIAS, 1998:23-4).

The loss of traditional rights over common land has undoubtedly contributed to the deterioration of women’s status. In fact, the impact of deforestation is not merely fuel and fodder crisis but has meant a loss of access to forest-based economic enterprises for women. For instance, women in many villages have been known for collecting tendu patta (leaves of a tree used to make bidis or donas (plates to eat)) from the forest and selling them. Loss of forest has made a severe dent in their earnings. It has also made the reliance on coal/wood from the market greater. In some areas, one has come across women forming groups to travel far to the nearest forest, once a week, to collect fuelwood. Increasingly, this - travelling far - becomes difficult and there is no choice but to buy coal/wood in the market for higher prices.

A problem highlighted by women, time and again, which has not received much attention is the problem of bathing, defecating etc., in the absence of a pond or forest in the village due to acquisition. Women have often complained that the project has rarely kept these problems of women in mind while acquiring the land or even when planning to resettle communities in a different place. The silence of project authorities on such matters is perhaps an indication as to the ignorance or indifference of projects towards specific problems of women.

The proximate cause of gender bias in development outcomes can now easily be analysed in terms of male bias in everyday attitudes and actions, in theoretical reasoning and public policy. Things can change and they are changing. Women’s Organisations and networks have multiplied; women’s movement has gained in strength; women’s agendas are being more clearly articulated. Equality, empowerment and the transformation of existing development paradigms have emerged as critical issues. Governments have adopted more mandates and policies and implemented variety of actions.

But probably it is not enough to change laws, institutions, customs, public opinion and the whole social context. Women are themselves responsible in a way for their victimisation. It is beyond doubt that their efforts have to transcend symbolic agitation. So far, they are not even promiscuously herded together in a way that creates community feeling. They live dispersed among males, attached through residence, housework, economic conditions and social standing to certain men – fathers or husbands – more firmly they are to other women.

Along with this is ofcourse the conscious effort that is a polemical plea to comprehend the inherently exploitative assumptions in development, which is linked with the violation and marginalisation of women, and strive for " [a] development that not only generates economic growth but distributes its benefits equitably, that regenerates the environment rather than destroying it; that empowers people rather than marginalising them" (UNDP, 1994:iii).

It is development, in a meaningful sense, which alone can give priority to the poor, enlarge their choices and opportunities and provide for their participation in decisions that affect their lives. Again, it is development, in its truer form, that alone is pro-people, pro-nature and undoubtedly pro-women, sans male biases.

The next chapter is about the power of organised women. Because women are poorly represented in the public sphere they are less able to exercise power and influence for the well-being of their gender. How or Can women’s organisations erode the existing hierarchies and make society, as a whole, gender sensitive. There have been tremendous efforts on behalf of such organisations for which they have got their due recognition but one can not deny that there are many more steps to climb! It needs concerted and "cooperative" effort.

Chapter Four

Organised Women

Changing the Power Relations

There is power in being organised. And it is no hidden fact that over the decades women’s organisations have become clearly visible by their numbers. This is not to say that they have had no achievements. Rather, slowly and gradually these organisations have been able to bring to the fore, the plight of the silent women and the need to revolutionize the existing power relations that force women to remain backstage. The point is how effectively have they been able to strike at the root of the problem? Or have they got embroiled in adding "women" in all development policies, thereby committing the same mistake as the national planners. Further, are these organisations able to play a catalytic role in social transformation? The equations amongst these organisations also have a bearing on how the gender issue is perceived and understood.

 

The resurgence of women as actors on the world stage is one of the most potent dynamics in the struggle against an unjust social order, both within and between nations (Mosse,1994:202). Women no longer accept being treated as workhorses for development strategies planned by others, they require to be treated as partners in development practice and planning. As such, planners have a great responsibility both to listen to women and also build their vision into planning strategies.

The emphasis is on a process of empowerment in which through organisation people gain the strength to create space for themselves and to build up the material assets to support their own growth and development. The organisation process in whatever forms it takes such as struggle for justice, social organisation or for access to resources is not an end in itself, but the means to development.

Womens’ organisations offer a legitimate forum beyond the private, domestic world; membership of an organisation offers an initial substitute for lack of bureaucratic know-how and inexperience with public discourse. A successful women’s organisation encourages in its members a capacity to interact with a wide range of public systems and structures and in time, is able to transform them into participants in development – active partners in the development of goods, services and resources rather than passive recipients or targets.

It is well argued that women must form their own organisations so as to make women’s concerns intrinsic to political bargaining and negotiations. And women have become more organised: whether through grassroots groups working on specific issues, national organisations or umbrella organisations. A wide range of these groups or organisations, political or otherwise seek to influence policy makers. They are increasingly seeking to intervene in the decision making process (though the extent of their political clout is a subject of contention). True, Women of all classes and races are making demands for recognition, consultation and a greater degree of inequality in diverse aspects of their lives with increasing persuasiveness and strength. This activism is further promoted through extensive networking at national, regional and international levels.

The appearance of women’s organisations and of different forms of resistance have been contingent on five main factors: prevailing cultural configurations, family forms, political formations, the forms and degree of female solidarity and more generally on the character of civil society in the regional and national context.

The era of 1950s and 60s saw the application of a welfare approach, which viewed women as purely passive beneficiaries in the development process, emphasising their reproductive goal. The anti-poverty approach of the 70s was related to the basic needs strategy. While this approach recognised that women had an important role to play in meeting basic needs, it was mainly limited to one of producers in the context of self-sufficiency. After 1980 a third, women in development approach emerged which acknowledged the importance of integrating women into the development process to strengthen the national economy. The underlying assumption was that integrating women into the development process would make it more efficient and effective. Concern for women did not bring about significant changes in the way the development industry worked, but the United Nation’s promotion of the issue gave a considerable fillip. The endorsement of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) gave women’s organisations in many countries a framework and a justification for their activities and demands.

Women’s organisations have served three very important functions (Young, 1993:43). Mobilising low income women, monitoring and evaluating government programmes and policies; providing a space within which awareness and empowerment can develop.

In August 1984 a group of women met in Bangalore, South India, to discus development issues. They formed themselves into an organisation known as DAWN –Development Alternatives with women for a New Era. DAWN identified six different types of organisations ranging from the very traditional to those with a specifically feminist analysis and agenda.

• First, there are the traditional women’s organisations, long standing, which tend to cohere around traditional gender roles, though they have made significant achievements in the areas of women’s education, health and related services. Supported largely by middle class women they patronise welfare approach to poorer working women. Their strength lies in their access to resources and policy makers, though they may not always exploit these links.
• Secondly, there are those groups affiliated to a political party. Such organisations may have problems in asserting an agenda of their own, out of fear of being seen as divisive.
• Thirdly, there are the worker-based organisations including both trade unions of workers in the formal sector and the growing number of organisations of poor self-employed women, such as SEWA in India. They usually start by addressing issues such as conditions of employment and availability of credit, but may move on to a more explicitly feminist agenda, such as childcare, sexual harassment at work and so on.
• A fourth type of organisation has flourished in the years since the UN Decade was launched, arising from project funding, credit cooperatives, income generating projects and other initiatives for poor women. Many such organisations suffer from structural weaknesses and a top down approach.
• A stronger kind of organisation is the fifth type. These are grassroots organisations which, while again related to a specific project, tend to look at issues such as health, literacy, violence, legal issues, and broader political questions, often from a feminist perspective. The weakness of such groups lay in an inadequate resource base and in the fact that they tend to have a middle class, urban membership and perspective. On the other hand those which succeed in building genuine links with poor working women have considerable potential.
• Finally the sixth type of organisation is the research and resource organisations, which have sprung up in recent years; such groups have considerable opportunities to influence public policy debates and to feed into the work of international funding agencies and governments. At best they are committed to breaking down the traditional gulf between the researcher and the researched.

Along these six types are a whole range of other organisations not so easily classified. Groups that come together on single issues or umbrella organisation that link up women working in different sectors.

Women’s organisations bring women together in the struggle for social change confronting spheres of inequity, constraint, oppression and even violence. Formation of women’s groups in the context of development efforts is a gender specific strategy, which can have more limited integrationist or more open-ended transformatory ends in mind.

Today, the women’s organisations are posing questions related to the exercise of power whether in participatory democracy at grassroots levels, in the funding policies of donors, or in the priorities of official development funding. In the process they are proposing horizontal forms of organisation, such as networks, which break with hierarchical and authoritarian structures.

In cultures where the essence of gender inequality is the silence of women, the idea that they should begin to speak for themselves is a radical break with the past and as such constitutes a major threat to those who sense of themselves and of their places in the world is constructed around a social order in which women are silent and men speak on their behalf.

Women’s organisations have therefore been able to play a significant role. Speaking to some heads of women’s organisations, they were all unanimous in stating that yes, women’s organisations have been able to play the role of the catalyst and counter male biases to a large extent through research data and analysis; female voices and by alternate visions; awareness generation, direct media (especially visual) to promote women’s status and perspectives, legal education, reaching out to the women of all agencies (harness the energies and wisdom of older women in the activities for women); lobbying and advocacy. Strategies have thus comprised from awareness raising to capacity building to networking to emergence of role models to targeting national government policies to advocating for legal reforms to even lobbying with multi-laterals such as the United Nations.

The gender training and awareness programmes by women’s organisations and general NGOs is a strategy that has tremendous potential provided they are not misguided. Prof. Susheela Kaushik, an eminent political scientist and an advocate of gender issues categorically stated that these programmes have made some openings in men’s minds, but it is doubtful whether its impact is deep and lasting, and have made men seek deeper gender perspectives in a holistic way. Civil Society will change and cement its egalitarian and human values – but only gradually and with great effort. The patriarchal basis is only slowly cracking. It needs more pounding and constant pressure and it policies to be constantly gender audited. The point is, as the Joint Womens Programme noted, that even if we re-define civil society, centuries of socialisation of minds will not just evaporate. But there is a need to redefine civil society because civil society should look upon women as equal members and partners and not as appendages. And that is what women’s organisations should collectively strive for.

Women will have to take risks. An important part of such a process will be to discuss and analyze gender relations with men and encourage them to change their attitude towards women (Gianotten, et.al, 1994:45). Another organisation, Guild of Serivce espousing the cause of women in India feels that women’s organisations can counter the male biases moulding development policies through persistence in their representations to national machinery. In order to counter male biases and have a policy shift national mechanisms have to be apolitical and the leaders of national machineries themselves must be oriented towards women’s issues.

For Young (op.cit.:164), if women’s organisations are to play a key role in participatory planning, three things must be attended to. Firstly, women’s organisations which are concerned with working with the poor and delivering service or other benefits to them must look very stringently at their own mechanisms of participation, democratic decision making and accountability. Secondly, women’s organisations must get financial resources, training (whether in management, leadership formation or conflict resolution), and access to information which will enable men to play their part adequately. Thirdly, women’s organisations should play a prominent part in wider social movements so as to prevent gender issues from becoming marginalised.

If in the future women’s views are to be taken into serious consideration by development planners, then turning to such organisations for consultation and advice should provide planners with a wide range of information. But more than this, women’s organisations should not merely be seen as advocates and intermediaries they should be enabled to take part in creating the mechanisms for policy to be developed by those most affected by it (Ibid). Women’s organisations then are the facilitators.

The ability to influence government policies has been variable but they had some marked successes in terms of providing special services for women - credit, banking, insurance, refuge from violence, sexual education and family planning. When it comes to the broader question of transforming the status of women and raising general levels of consciousness the picture is less clear.

Grassroots organisations can be rather parochial, they may be more concerned with welfare issues than issues of structural inequalities between men and women. Some women’s organisations set up by upper and middle class women lack sensitivity to the needs of poorer women despite their desire to work for them. Organisations based on membership of political parties or movements have their own internal constraints to adopting women’s expressed concerns. And of course it has to be recognised that many more women are not within any organisation at all. How are these women’s needs and concerns to be articulated and brought to public and policy making awareness?

Women’s Political Watch, a group that strives for women’s participation in public policy and political leadership have noted at length the differences that confound women’s organisations. This needs urgent follow-up by different organisations if forceful interventions are to be made against gender subordination.

• Organisations tend to suffer from ideological differences that prevents consolidated pressure group efficacy;
• Fragmented Advocacy prevents from putting up a single thought of line while dealing with a particular gender issue;
• Too many organisations sends wrong signals to target groups;
• Lack of strong consensus is evident and often it is a battle of egos or a battle to survive as the emancipator of women!
• While there are umbrella organisations there is still a need to develop a networking culture that allows sharing of information across the country in a constructive and co-ordinated fashion.

A clear-cut micro-macro linkage should be established. The voice of the grassroots needs to be clearly understood and stated to be able to have national level impact. This calls not only for an understanding of grassroots reality but also requires a forum to communicate the problems so identified. Organisations at grassroots level and the ones operating at the national level (more in terms of advocacy and lobbying) should work out ways of co-ordination and establish channels of communication that allows them to impact upon policy makers as a collective entity.

It is a fact that even when women do organize themselves, they do not always act collectively in pursuit of their gender interests: Women’s interests can not be read off from the organisational form in which they are expressed; the mere fact of an organisation’s autonomy or internal organisational structure does not indicate that it is a privileged vehicle for the expression of women’s interests, or indeed that it is entirely free from authority, whether internally with respect to the organisation concerned or with regard to external influence.

Thousands of women are engaged in intense activity aimed at improving their situation in a variety of ways but not often do they have a central co-ordination and an agreed agenda. Nonetheless the extent of participation and its overall significance suggests that popular women’s movements often take this more diffused and decentered form.

Some independent women’s organisations with their own goals and institutional autonomy choose to form alliances with other political organisations with which they are in agreement on a range of issues. In this situation women’s associations may also choose to delegate power to outside agencies such as parties/public officials, an arrangement which if it is to work must be based on trust and established procedures of accountability. Power and authority in this model are negotiated and co-operation is conditioned on some or all of the women’s demands being incorporated into the political organisation with which the alliance is made.

Androcentrism has not been easy to do away with. Patriarchal bias is accepted as the norm in society to which all conform, even women, at times unconsciously. No doubt, women’s organisations have effectively challenged patriarchal mindsets and structures, which envision women in limited and stereotyped ways. Yet, changes have not come as they were expected. This only means intensified campaigns and pressure group tactics by generating awareness, creating action oriented programmes, continued sensitisation of mindsets of judiciary, police and bureaucrats and last but not the least the family. In short, a proactive action is imperative.

The Conclusion that follows recommends strategic guidelines to bridge (and in the ultimate sense do away) the missing gender link in development. Women’s development is thus viewed not only as an issue in social development but as an essential component in every dimension of development. The formation of women into groups is an affirmative step for the more effective integration of women in a wide variety of development interventions. Further, as the organised voices of dissent, women’s organisations can lead to the public contestation of dominant cultural meanings and values and thereby embody an alternative set of cultural meanings and values.

Chapter Five

Conclusions

Recommending a Gender Perspective

If human well-being is the desired end of all development efforts, the first question must be what constitutes human well-being for those who have largely been excluded from the policy making process? Whose priorities should count? (Palriwala, 1999:200).

 

While writing this paper I had consciously reminded myself that I belong to an era of liberation and empowerment. Yet going through the several views and writings, written over several decades, dawned the realisation that centuries’ old values and traditions that have governed (and even manipulated) women’s destiny can not be so easily warded off. The society as a whole should/ought to fight for the cause of women. And the problem of status of women and violence against them has to be reviewed both by men and women alike.

Challenges abound in all walks of life – legal, social, psychological, economic, personal and educational. Only a multi-pronged effort in all these spheres can ensure tangible solutions for the problems of women. Otherwise, as has been happening, policies would continue to add gender aspect to different projects (whenever and wherever voices of protests would rise) rather than developing a holistic understanding of gender problems and making gender issues an integral part of development process. Gender will always take a backseat, added almost as an additive, if one can be so blatant. Elson (1991) points out that one reason why male bias continues to persist in development thought and planning is because a gender approach has frequently been reduced to adding "women" on without seeking to question mainstream ways of thinking and operating.

Many of things that I have noted in the paper are things of the past. Many writers, scholars, activists have significantly stated the barriers that impede women to march forward. It is also true that I have not come across many women who shudder or outrightly defy playing their defined familial roles rather creditably, apart from playing such roles they only seek some place to lead a life that is independent of dependency. But socialisation has been such that many women do not even perceive a different role apart from the one they have been socialised into.

Androcentrism has so far guided society (Chapter Two) and that has had an indelible imprint on the way development policies have been conceived, planned and later implemented (Chapter Three). Development policies initiating ‘development projects’ have strengthened the up-coming challenges from the women’s organisations (Chapter Four) against the legitimacy of domination. The documented experiences of women’s organisations have brought out the ugly fact that women have essentially been stripped, often subtly, of their rightful place as human beings.

Development policies thus stand exposed. Planning for the people, people’s participation, people’s needs, humanisation of development, all what development had portrayed to be its essence, turn into sheer rhetoric. Moreso, as it leaves, indeed half, or more, of a nation’s human resources wasted. Women have been a missing link in development.

Last couple of decades has witnessed a remarkable surge in the women’s movement which, questioning the legitimacy of the present model of development, put forward a bold vision of social transformation. It succeeded in creating common ground among women worldwide around a set of core concerns:

• Rights, guaranteeing women equal rights under the law, enforcing these, and raising women’s consciousness about their rights.
• Entitlement, access to and control over productive resources – land, capital, information, training, technology, the market and so on – and services, like obtaining credit and becoming members of producers’ organisations.
• Investment, eliminating gender gaps in human development – that is, in education, health and nutrition and support for gender needs such as women’s health, science and technical training for women and so on.
• Voice, ensuring the presence of women’s voices in decision making but also strengthen the voice of women in articulating not merely narrow women in development concerns but also their vision of a total development agenda.
• Poverty, eliminating poverty and address the special needs of female-headed households. Women shoulder a disproportionate burden of poverty, in part because of gender inequalities in entitlement, investment and power.
• Reproductive Labour, pressing for male sharing of responsibilities and stronger social policies to ensure changes in laws and the provisioning of public and private sector services which would relieve women’s reproductive burden.
• Security, security within the household and as well as outside it.
• Empowerment, asserting their own agency to break out of gender subordination.

I do agree that there can be no unilinear path to social transformation. But women’s organisation through their constructive role can provide policy makers with a different "window on reality" (Kabeer & Subrahmaniam, 1999:4) from their accustomed one and hope that it will make a difference in the way they design and execute policy in the future.

No doubt however, sustained advocacy has managed to lead to a greater understanding and awareness of gender issues. Yet progress has been elusive for women (Jahan, 1995:3). Is it because the women’s agenda has not been clearly defined, or is it because policies and measures have not adequately addressed that agenda? Are policies and strategies on the right track, needing only time and better implementation or do they need complete reorientation?

The crux of the issue revolves around power and resources . For many, empowering women has meant giving up male power and privilege. Investment in women implied either reallocating existing resources or finding additional sources of revenue. In the absence of women’s demonstrated political power as a constituency, the national and international bureaucracies were under no pressure to choose either option (ibid.,:125).

The policy process can easily be questioned on being neutral. It is imbued at all stages by the power relations which govern the contexts in which policy is formulated and implemented; and it is characterised by struggles over meanings as well as over resources. For women who have tended to be marginalised in these struggles, their needs and priorities have always been defined on their behalf and often in terms, which help to contain them within pre-existing roles and relationships (Kabeer—op.cit.,:357).

What women need is not integration but a fundamental reorientation of existing development paradigms. An integrationist approach builds gender issues with existing development paradigms. Here, widening women and gender concerns across a broad spectrum of sectors is the key strategy. The overall agenda is not transformed, but each issue is adapted to take into account women and gender concerns.

The other approach and one which ought to be vociferously propagated is the agenda setting approach. This implies the transformation of the existing development agenda with a gender perspective. The participation of women as decision-makers in determining development priorities is the key strategy here: women participate in all development decisions, and through this process bring about a fundamental change in the existing development paradigm. Women not only become a part of the mainstream, they also reorient the nature of the mainstream.

Instead of trying to fit gender into every sector, the focus should move towards an agenda-setting approach. It will necessitate changes on many fronts – in decision making structures and processes, in articulation of objectives, in prioritisation of strategies, in the positioning of gender issues amidst competing emerging concerns and in building a mass base of support among both men and women in designing and implementing gender responsive policies and interventions (Jahan, op.cit.,:126). An agenda setting approach will involve greater attention to the substantive objectives of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

There is a need to increase gender awareness among development planners. This involves awareness of gender relations and of the needs of women arising from those gender relations. Such awareness would entail a trajectory, consisting of a number of different elements spread over a period of years. The main purpose of any gender analysis of a project is to get an answer to the following questions:

! Will women benefit from the initiated project;

! How could the project be improved, if necessary, given the knowledge and skill level of the intended beneficiaries

! Could there be any unintended negative effects for women;

! How could these negative effects, fi at all they occur, be avoided or compensated for.

A failure to get an answer would see problems remain imminent as ever. The fact is simple, you can not help a person if you do not understand how that person manages to exist at all. Change can not come from above, but from the interaction between compelling impetus of those who will directly benefit from change and those within the structures of power who have to have the capacity to share a wider vision. The relationship between planners and those struggling for change need to be characterized by co-operative conflict rather than antagonistic and adversary stances.

If planners are to meet women’s needs they must first be able to have these needs identified: then wherever possible in consultation with women or their representatives, they must assess their capacity to meet them, & again in consultation, prioritise those that are amenable to a planning or policy solution. The impact of such consultation has been shown to revolutionise more profoundly planners’ views of women than vice versa, but none the less such consultation is an important aspect both of women’s sense of empowerment, and at the project level, of project ownership.

Consultation of local people about projects/programmes is now argued to be a pre-condition for successful planning outcomes, particularly when innovation is concerned. Greater involvement of the wider society in decision making through democratic processes is also argued to be central. But consultation and involvement are not unproblematic.

First, social heterogeneity raises complex questions of how consensus is to be achieved (Young, 1993:148). All too often, infact, consultation is confined to those who are wealthier, more articulate and educated. Second, involving women is especially not easy. Some of the obstacles to women’s participation are the resistance of men, women’s reticence and acute lack of time available to them for meeting and talking; women’s lack of experience in being consulted and also religious and cultural barriers.

Planners themselves largely see women as providers of family well-being or as conduits for the well-being of others (ibid.). Thus they are more attuned to accepting material condition of the majority of women – their illiteracy, ill health, lack of training – as their priority needs. They have failed to explore the extent to which women’s social weakness (if not political disenfranchisement) has contributed to their material ill-being.

What then should development planning with women be like? Kate Young (1993) mentions three principles. First and foremost, women to be integrated into the planning process from the beginning and not at an advanced stage of planning when changes are virtually impossible to incorporate. Women of different ages, social status and involved in diverse economic activities should be able to articulate the diversity and the similarity, of their interests and needs and these should form the central part of the considerations upon which planning ought to be based. Secondly, women as farmers, traders, food processors and so on need the same access to land, credit, training and inputs as other farmers and traders. They also need to be given the same incentives to produce more efficiently and effectively. Thirdly, planning with women should look at the totality of what both men and women do in (rural) households and look to see where domestic technology is needed to lessen the burden of domestic chores for women and their daughters.

Information is knowledge and knowledge leads to empowerment. The policies, that lead to development projects personifying technical superiority, ought to ask what kind of information on technologies could be of use to women. Three possible goals of information can be distinguished, each little more comprehensive than the one before.

• Women gain acquaintance with the existence of certain tools

• Women know how to judge the usefulness of different technological options

• Women can make final choices among the options available.

A guided and conscious effort towards educating and training women to meet the new challenges of technological imposition is, as noted time and again, still a far cry. The lack of an effort has got much to do with attitudes. Although attitudes are difficult to change, it is important to force an attempt in that direction, since the desire to be effective will be helpful in achieving a behavioural change. To achieve this, as Saskia Everts (1995:62) has step by step pointed out, one has to start with:

• The problems the group (here reference is to women) themselves actually perceive with regard to the incoming changes with the coming of a pronounced development project.
• To address the effects of introduction of technology to women
• To facilitate learning through step by step training sessions
• Constant exercises that promote identification with the project affected groups.

To bring women centrestage requires profound changes in the way societies conceive relations between the genders and the dismantling of centuries old structures of thought and practice. Attempts by the state, by NGOs and by women activists to transform the conditions of women’s lives have often remained half-hearted and piecemeal or else founder in the face of age-old inequalities.

Changes surely may take a long time to come about but as has become increasingly clear over the past decades, women are a tremendous social resource, which no society can afford any longer to undervalue or underuse. Involving women at all levels of development thinking, planning and implementation will make a world of difference not merely to women but to the capacity of society to envisage and carry out planned social change which will permit human kind to live in harmony with nature and itself.

On their own, women must form their own organisations so as to make women’s concerns intrinsic to political bargaining and negotiations. But in this bargaining, it is essential for women to be "herded" together, cutting across all socio-cultural and economic diversities. Then alone their contribution towards building a civil society may bear its real fruit. It is no doubt a daunting task. A primary contribution of women’s organisation ought to be thorough research, advocacy and activism that analyzes the main barriers to gender equity and social justice in different contexts and to develop appropriate strategies for dealing with them. Also a strategy for achieving planning objectives has to be devised and a clear timeframe for achievement set out. No less important is the building of strong grassroots linkages that facilitate an in-depth understanding at a micro level to go as an input at macro level policy formulation.

A strategy for gender equity and human development needs to go well beyond a comprehensive redistribution strategy (Elson, 1995:275) to include:

• Not just the redistribution of productive assets but also development of mechanisms of social accountability for their use

• Not just the creation of local institutions which permit people to participate in grassroots development but also the creation of forms of public action which empower people to reshape development strategies at national and international levels.
• Not investment in human capital but investment in the services which sustain and develop people’s capabilities to lead satisfying lives, including unpaid as well as paid services
• Not just an employment intensive pattern of development but also a pattern that respects and enhance workers’ rights as human beings rather than treating them as mere factors of production

• Not sustained rapid growth of per capita income but sustained improvements in the quality of people’s lives.

Jahan (op.cit.:130) writes, if there truly is a want to transform the development agenda, it has to take a consistent stand in favour of fair-burden sharing at all levels – within the family, the community, the nation and the world. I add, instead of just adding on ‘women’ as an area of concern, as often has been the case, the formidable task is striking at the root - that is of deconstructing set theories and notions that have overlooked and under-utilised a human resource which can be effectively mobilised and channelled given its potentialities.

A gender aware perspective on development facilitates the design of more human-centred development strategies which recognise that human beings are not simply instruments for increasing the Gross National Product (GNP) but are valuable in and of themselves. The absence of gender relations in the conceptualisation of strategies for national development is important for women, because overall national development strategy is likely to have much wider implications for the social, economic and political position of women relative to men, than specific projects and programmes targeted at women (Elson, 1995:253).

A planning process in which causes, effects, means and ends are analysed and evaluated in collaboration with those whose voices have been traditionally excluded has the advantage not only of allowing hitherto submerged needs and constraints to emerge but also of acknowledging the incompleteness of a development process in which such groups have not been given the space to participate.

In Conclusion, I quote Beauvoir (1989:731). To emancipate women is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other as other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles – desire, possession, love, dream, adventure – worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us – giving, conquering, uniting – will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the "division" of humanity will reveal its genuine significance—and will find its true form.

 

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