The reports presented during the last meeting of
the Commission on the Status of Women in March this year regarding the
Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration
and Platform shows that overall progress in gender equality in the last
20 years has been unacceptably slow, with stagnation and even regression
in some contexts. It is argued that change towards gender equality has
not been deep enough, nor has it been irreversible.
While discussing some of the factors that hold gender equality
back, Laeticia Mukurasi noted the slow change in the attitudes of men -
the main implementers of gender mainstreaming and its implications to
gender equality; the tendency to conflate “gender” with “women” and to
ignore the“men”part of the gender equation; misconception and limited
understanding over what feminism and feminists are about and the way
many organisations structure gender for organisational inequality and
position staff membersat the coal face of pro-equality policy
implementation for ineffectiveness.
This week she examines how “gender” is treated and women visualised
in many development projects thus leading to female disadvantage and
posing serious challenges to gender equality.
It is estimated that women comprise 60 per cent of informal sector
operators, contribute about 70 per cent of total agricultural labour and
produce 90 per cent of the continent’s food. However, they own less
than 1 per cent of the African continent’s landmass, receive less than
10 per cent of the credit to small farmers and 1 per cent of the total
credit to agriculture. The question is why gender inequality persists in
spite of concerted development interventions and why do women continue
to lag behind men in every development sector for which data is
available?
In today’s column I intend to discuss, based on my own work
experience in the last 20 years as well as findings from numerous
reports, the way gender is treated and women as a gender category
visualised in project design. I will then discuss how development
projects can induce bureaucratic imposed female disadvantage.
Development projects are important for two reasons. First, they
constitute important mechanisms through which considerable financial
investments are channeled with the objective of effecting changes in
particular sectors or area. Secondly, project activities impact on
gender equality. The question is how have women and men been structured
as participants and beneficiaries of development projects?
The evidence available suggests that the design of many projects
tend to ignore gender analysis.Gender Analysis is the systematic
assessment of the project impact on women and men respectively. It
entails the application of a gender perspective to a development issue
including the gender division of labour; the needs and priorities of
women and men and opportunities and constraints to the achievement of
development objectives.
In many project documents, women appear to come in by accident or
as an afterthought. It is not uncommon that in a 50-100 project
document, the so called gender analysis is enclaved in one token
paragraph which,as discussed in an earlier column, is normally devoted
to simply describing the problems confronting women. Lacking, however,
is a corresponding analysis of the situation, position and
responsibility of men vis-à-vis the identified problems. When gender
analysis is not carried out, gender-difference is not captured and
project documents do not reflect real experience of women and men.
It follows that there is little possibility for these issues to be
addressed during project implementation. Since the human dimension is
central to development, the lack of gender analysis not only jeopardises
putting in place measures that would lead to gender equality but the
development effectiveness of projects is also compromised.
Experience also shows gender disaggregated baseline data is not
always available. Baseline information is important for clarifying
assumptions about social structure, gender relations, culture, the
sector or the project area. Gender is contextual and the gender aspects
of particular communities cannot be assumed. Without proper diagnosis
of gender relations and how these impact or are impacted by project
activities, the basis for investment decisions can only be shaky.
Many projects fail to generate the requisite development impact
because they are based on assumptions and stereotypes and not on real
experiences of men and women. The lack of gender disaggregated data
undermines the project’s relevance, strategic importance and weakens its
capacity for policy advocacy. In any event, unless base line studies
are conducted prior to project implementation, it is impossible progress
cannot be established or comparisons made between the pre- and
post-project situation - the results. Thus baseline information is again
a strong foundation on which the effectiveness of the project can be
gauged.
The absence of Gender Analysis and gender disaggregated data often
result in projects that have little bearing on women’s and men’s needs,
priorities and livelihood strategies. For example, it is well known that
women in rural Africa are the major producers of food and significant
contributors to cash crop production. In addition to production, women
shoulder the work burden of unpaid labour. They cook, clean, wash
clothes, provide care to sick children and elderly relatives, provide
homecare of the chronically sick members of the household, perform
sanitation activities, grind food and fetch water and firewood.
However, their portrayal in many project documents is usually not
that of vibrant economic actors, movers and shakers in the rural scene.
Nor is it of women as powerful, resourceful, industrious,
entrepreneurial and innovative. Rather, the imagery that prevails is of
women as the oppressed, battered, vulnerable, victims, dispossessed,
poor, wards or dependants of men and passive beneficiaries of
development assistance. It is very difficult for any rational investor
to squander his resources on such a pathetic or tragic group.
While women may in some contexts also be responsible for paying for
some household expenditure such as school fees and kerosene, resources
targeted to women are usually miniscule and executed in pilot projects.
The most important role for women that endures is that of mothers with
child rearing depicted as the most effective contribution women make to
economic development. Many of the projects with sizeable resources focus
on family planning services, health measures against malnutrition and
lately education with minimal resources targeted towards economic
sectors.
Development projects can therefore be tools for imposing what is
termed as bureaucratic imposed gender disadvantage, defined as forms of
disadvantage that have nothing to do with the actual reality of women
and men’s lives but are a product of biases, prejudices or ignorance of
officials delivering development resources.
Regrettably, theconceptualization of women in most projects is
changing only very slowly in the post-Beijing era. Rarely do projects
mention the redistribution of power and resources between women and men
as the main goal or objective. The understanding of gender mainstreaming
as an agenda setting strategy in which a women’s perspective is
required to be integral part of the design, implementation, monitoring
and evaluation of all activities is only permeating very slowly. As such
women and women issues continue to be handled within the existing male
biased paradigms.
Gender mainstreaming has not in the last 20 years significantly
impacted on the waythe development interventions are conceived, planned
and executed. Projects by their very nature focus on a limited number of
activities aimed at bringing about clearly specified objectives within a
defined time-period and with defined material, financial and human
resources. Women’s work tends to be multi-dimensional and the needs
arising thereof are not best addressed from a conventional project
perspective.
To benefit women, the design of a project to promote food security,
for example, would require taking into account that woman’s work
burdens and that their time is not elastic. It should address the
complexity of women's lives arising out of their multiple activities in
production, reproduction and community management.
Important activities such as gender sensitisation of men to adopt a
more equitable division of labour, appointment of culturally
appropriate extension personnel, day-care facilities, time-saving
technology, appropriate infrastructure such as feeder roads and
footpaths as well as marketing structures would have to be taken on
board. Thus promoting gender equality requires a more creative way of
developing projects. It cannot be business as usual.
The failure to put such measures in place results in projects that
strain an already overloaded capacity on the part of women. This has
been identified as instrumentisation of women. It depicts a situation
where in the interest of development women have to contort themselves to
fit into stereotypical and unequal life positions. This is often to the
detriment of their health and well-being. In her article, “Does Aid
Work? Can it Work Better? Crucial Questions on the Road to Accra and
Doha,” Molly Kane narrates her experience of her first visit to West
Africa a little over ten years ago and comments on how women perceive
their instumentalisation for development:
“I was with a colleague from Canada visiting projects for women in
northern Mali. One afternoon, we were touring a market garden run by the
local women’s association. The community leaders explained the benefits
of the project, how the women had some additional income to look after
family needs and family nutrition had improved. After admiring the
vegetable plots, I asked one of the women what the project meant to her.
She said, with a somewhat ironic smile, “We are working an even longer
day now. We don’t need any more of these gender and development
projects. We women need a break.”
Next week I will conclude the section on the visualisation of women
in development projects and how development projects lead to female
disadvantage. I will then move on to examine the centrality of the state
and its laws and policies as force for and as posing a challenge to
gender equality.
Laeticia Mukurasi gained recognition as the first woman to fight
and win the first labour case against discrimination in Tanzania. From
1993 to 1998 she worked as the Assistant Resident Representative in
charge of Gender/Women issues in UNDP Tanzania Country Office. She
attended the Beijing Conference and later joined the African Development
Bank and attained the position of Chief Gender Specialist. She is now
retired but actively working with the women’s movement in Tanzania and
recently sponsored two meetings to discuss the future of gender.
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