Engendering Development: Experiences in Gender and Development Planning

THIS BOOK COLLATES the experiences of various Latin American and Dutch consultants of incorporating the gender dimension in development project work, with an emphasis on the perspectives of NGOs, cooperation agencies and peasant women. Starting from the premise that a gender approach is one that “considers the interdependent nature of women’s and men’s positions in society”, the introduction asks how a gender approach may be promoted in development organizations, and what roles exist for external consultants in pursuing this end. The first section of the book is concerned with “autonomy” as a developmental gender strategy. Autonomy is a “...behavioural mobilizing principle in emancipatory policies” with four dimensions: the physical (control over sexuality and fertility); the economic (control over the means of production); the political (referring to basic political rights); and the socio-cultural (capacity to assert one’s own identity). This process and its associated dilemmas are explored through various case studies. The authors conclude that autonomy processes take a long time with no evident short-term yield, and that regular meetings, participatory methodologies and the establishment of a public presence are central to their development. Part II explores the extent and limits of gender strategies in the institutional development of NGOs. Efficiency, rationality and productivity are widely used criteria and indices of institutional development but are all masculine aspects of this process. Production, it is argued, should be balanced with emotional gain, just as the costs of change should be measured both in material and emotional terms. The challenge for women’s institutions, it is argued, is to break away from their isolation and take the gender perspective to other, non-female, NGOs. Wider issues relating to the necessity for respect of cultural specificity in the face of homogenization pressures are also considered. The final part of this section offers a general view of, and a methodological approach to, gender in social planning. Part III of this study is a discussion paper describing the state of affairs and current issues regarding gender at NOVIB (Netherlands Cooperation Agency). The first gender related NOVIB policy document was published in 1983, and ten years later more than one-quarter of Dutch cooperation projects had a specific gender policy. However, the authors argue that NOVIB must make a conscious effort to renew its gender policy. While external intervention can favour the assimilation and incorporation of a gender perspective in organizations, the author of the final chapter argues that new instruments of intervention should be designed, and new methodologies and concepts adopted. The paper itself examines the current practices of external intervention, from negotiation through implementation to synthesis and follow-up, and closes by raising topics that would be considered in new gender paradigms such as the analysis of demand, the delimitation of the work’s frame, information restitution and confidentiality. In the final analysis the author regards external intervention as educational work.