Development with women

Dorienne Rowan-Campbell

I would like to feel that when history counts the votes as to which of the 'isms' has had the most impact on twentieth century lives, feminism will be judged as the most important human movement. By feminism I mean that women's movement which speaks to the most profound yet basic of changes in the roles, the rights, and the relations which govern connections, commerce, and intimacy between women and men. This movement offers a vision of equality in society, equity in partnership, and freedom from gender stereotyping — freeing each person to pursue the roles best suited to their needs and talents. The movement has been dynamic because the struggle for change takes place not on the world's battlefields but at home and in the most intimate space, the human heart. Feminism has had the potential to touch every man, woman, and child because its basic tenets remain relevant whatever the conditions under which people live, regardless of the dictates of totalitarianism, globalism, communism, or capitalism, or whether they suffer racism, ageism, or sexism.

In the middle of this century the women's movement, largely quiescent in public consciousness since the Suffragettes, staged a comeback. In true twentieth-century style, feminism — North American and European feminism — became a media event. While coverage tended to emphasise radicalism, describing women as 'libbers' and thus perhaps alienating many women and men, there was an unprecedented exposure and level of public debate of feminist issues and concerns. This debate moved the matter of women's equality beyond domestic boundaries to the global stage; again at a remarkable level, inspiring the First World Conference for Women held in Mexico 1974. After four UN World Conferences and one year devoted to women, the world seems to agree that women should have equality and equity and that gender issues are of some importance.

Why, then, are these changes that the world appears to agree are necessary so slow in coming? Why, all around the globe, are women still working longer hours and earning less than men? Why haven't laws which allow discrimination against women been changed and their implementation ensured? Why are so many women still illiterate? Why are so many women still chattels of their spouse and his family? Why is violence against women and children, particularly young girls, so prevalent? The third millennium approaches, yet practitioners still struggle to bring to development work a consciousness of gender issues that will change lives — and hearts — and bring about a world where women and men equally determine how to enhance their own lives and their communities and societies.

Sadly, history is likely to judge that although feminism had the potential for tremendous reach, its scope was never fully realised in the twentieth century. Perhaps we are still too close to judge accurately either our shortcomings or our successes. This essay reflects on the segregation and isolation which confront those who seek to breach the ramparts of male hegemony and bring down the walls of gender inequality. It examines the strategies of the women's movement as applied to development work with women (primarily gender training and mainstreaming) and assesses the barriers to change which have been erected to counter its challenge to patriarchy. It also looks forward to some of the areas of positive change, and to the urgent need to anchor these early in the next millennium.

Male hegemony corrupts development initiatives which are designed to make a positive difference in women's lives and, by extension, the lives of their families and their men. This is especially visible in the way development has been directed towards and channelled through women, particularly with the concept of income generation, in the handling of violence against women and domestic violence, and in the question of participatory approaches for sustainable development. Particularly disheartening is the manner in which men tend to avoid attending to or participating in discussion of issues that relate primarily to the concerns of women. Development with women has therefore largely been development for women by women with women; and therein lies some of the seeds of its under-achievement.

The Adinkra symbol Sankofa, a stylised bird moving forward yet ever looking backward, reminds us that it is impossible to understand the present without being aware of and understanding the past. To understand the present situation let us glance over our shoulders at the end of the seventeenth century in Europe, when the structures of male dominance begin to be institutionalised and gender discrimination codified. We then need to consider the emergence of the international development enterprise and, lastly, the role and impact of global corporations.

Sankofa

'Nature', wrote Dr Samuel Johnson, 'has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little'. His aphorism might be said to sum up the thinking of his age.

[D]uring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries western society began to find solutions to the problems of organisation brought by the changes that occurred in technology, agriculture, industry, commerce. ... Discrimination against women as opposed to prejudice against women and injustice dealt women by particular legal practices became part of the new structures that emerged, and as these new structures emerged and as they affected the lives of more and more people in more an more ways, so discrimination against women became more and more widespread, more and more accepted and more and more difficult to combat ... The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century see the construction of a particular culture through western society, and this results in new and particularly damaging levels of...