choosing words with care? shifting meanings of women’s ...€¦ · multiple meanings that...

Choosing Words with Care? Shiftingmeanings of women’s empowermentin international development

ROSALIND EYBEN & REBECCA NAPIER-MOORE

ABSTRACT ‘Women’s empowerment’, as used by international developmentorganisations, is a fuzzy concept. Historical textual analysis and interviews witho!cials in development agencies reveal its adaptability and capacity to carrymultiple meanings that variously wax and wane in their discursive influence.Today a privileging of instrumentalist meanings of empowerment associatedwith e!ciency and growth are crowding out more socially transformativemeanings associated with rights and collective action. In their e"orts to makeheadway in what has become an unfavourable policy environment, o!cials indevelopment agencies with a commitment to a broader social change agendajuggle these di"erent meanings, strategically exploiting the concept’s polysemicnature to keep that agenda alive. We argue for a politics of solidarity betweensuch o!cials and feminist activists. We encourage the latter to challenge theprevailing instrumentalist discourse of empowerment with a clear, wellarticulated call for social transformation, while alerting them to how thosewith the same agenda within international development agencies may well bechoosing their words with care, even if what they say appears fuzzy.

This article is about why words matter for feminists struggling to make theinternational development machinery become a pathway for social transfor-mation and the realisation of women’s rights. Taking a historical perspectivestarting from what many now see as the highpoint of this struggle, the 1995United Nations Women’s Conference in Beijing, we examine the meaningsgiven to women’s empowerment. Findings from semi-structured interviewswith those working on global policy issues in international development areanalysed, along with a selection of policy documents published since Beijing.For many feminists working in the field of international development, the

Beijing Conference marked the apex of 20 years of sustained endeavour tosecure women’s empowerment as a central element in internationaldevelopment discourse, helped by the international climate being morefavourable than before to women organising. The end of the Cold War led to

Rosalind Eyben is with the Participation, Power and Social Change Team, Institute of Development Studies,University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, UK. Email: [email protected]. Rebecca Napier-Moore iscurrently working for the Global Alliance Against Tra!c of Women in Bangkok.Email: [email protected].

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2009, pp 285–300

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/09/020285–16 ! 2009 Third World Quarterly

DOI: 10.1080/01436590802681066 285

the return of parliamentary democracy in many countries and an increasedinternational emphasis on human rights. The macroeconomics of theWashington Consensus and the associated structural adjustment policies ofthe 1980s did not disappear, but they ceased being a unique preoccupation.Apparently, people and their participation also mattered.Today the international development environment is very di!erent. The

post-cold war enthusiasm for the multiple voices of civil society isdisappearing. At best diversity and debate are judged ine"cient in a contextwhere harmonisation of diagnosis and e!ort is seen as the most e!ectiveroute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At worstdissent by social movements may be seen as incipient terrorism.1 Interna-tional NGOs, once seen as a vanguard for social justice, are today beingaccused of converging their agendas with the o"cial development commu-nity.2 The Paris Declaration on E!ective Aid and all the processesaccompanying it are already proving successful in their most importantprinciple, that of recipient country ownership (at least if this is determined interms of government ownership). OECD countries are responding to the viewsof recipient government leaders, particularly those in highly aid-dependentsub-Saharan Africa, who may be less interested in the MDGs and more indeveloping economic infrastructure, expanding the private sector andencouraging foreign direct investment. A strong driver for revival of theeconomic growth agenda is China’s arrival in aid-dependent countries as asignificant donor, providing aid for economic investment as part of tradedeals without any strings relating to human rights issues. The seemingtriumph of the 1990s was that women’s empowerment became a matter ofjustice rather than something necessary for development. Ten years afterBeijing Molyneux and Razavi noted the ‘more sombre and cautious zeitgeistthat has come to dominate world a!airs in recent times’.3

In such a context, enquiring into the meanings of words may prove useful.Words are construct visions of development. As Cornwall and Brock put it: ‘Ifwords make worlds, struggles over meaning are not just about semantics: theygain a very real material dimension’.4 A clear turn of phrase shapes how weimagine and seek to realise societal futures. As was the case with the BeijingPlatform for Action, a strong, largely coherent text provides language thatactivists use as a discursive tool for strategy in national as well as global policyspaces.5 Yet the speech and texts examined in this article are rarely so clear. Aswe discuss, fuzziness may o!er strategic advantages to feminists struggling inan unfavourable global policy environment. Ambiguity is a defensivemechanism that holds the ground rather than advances the cause. Is this isall that can be done in the present circumstances, or has the time come for anew rallying slogan? In our conclusion we discuss opportunities for imbuingwomen’s empowerment with a clearer and more transformative intention.

Fuzzy words and their usage: context and consciousness

‘Women’s empowerment’ frames the opening paragraph of the BeijingPlatform for Action. For many policy activists working within and across


286

state and civil society institutions, ‘empowerment’ and the meaningsassociated with it in that paragraph—‘participation’, ‘power’, ‘equality’,‘social justice—were resources they could draw upon for making changehappen.6

Most policy texts, not just those from international conferences but alsothose of a single organisation, are drafted by many individuals. They are aneclectic mixture of old and new cliches, assembled together through acomplex process of political negotiations, compromises and strategising,idiosyncratic whim and an almost unconscious collective response to theZeitgeist. Long-established notions may have to be jealously defended,while new ones introduced at the committee stage may sometimes travelunchallenged into the final text, as, if memory is correct, was the case of‘transformed partnerships between women and men’, a notion in theopening paragraph of the Beijing document introduced by one of theauthors of this article. Early one morning in a hotel bedroom in New Yorkin 1994, before a meeting of the small informal group drafting thepreliminary Beijing document, wide awake from jet lag and thinkingcontentedly about her own relatively new partnership that was proving sopositively di!erent from her first marriage, the phrase popped into her headfrom she knew not where.Because policy documents are not sole-authored, oddities, contradictions

and ambiguities are common, including the meanings given to abstractconcepts within them such as empowerment. Nevertheless, broad trends ofshifts in meaning can be traced. Looking at empowerment as a development‘fuzzword’, Batliwala shows how its meaning in India has shifted from whenfirst employed by feminist activists in the 1980s to transformation in societalrelations as the core of empowerment, to becoming a technical magic bulletof micro-credit programmes and political quotas for women. As a neoliberaltool, she argues, empowerment is now conceptualised to subvert the politicsthat the concept was created to symbolise.7

The shift of the kind traced by Batliwala may, however, be context-specific.Asked by us what women’s empowerment in developing countries meant forher, Clare Short (former UK Secretary of State for International Develop-ment) replied: ‘micro-credit, political quotas and girls’ education’, thusconfirming Batliwala’s ‘magic bullet’ argument. Yet earlier in the interview,when reflecting on what empowerment meant to her personally, Short camecloser to Batliwala’s meaning of relational transformation as the core ofempowerment and talked of the need for a democratic conversation to takefurther such an understanding.In the course of a single interview, Short had shifted her meanings of

empowerment in relation to context and positionality; it meant one thing inBritain and something else in developing countries. In the former, shepositioned herself in relation to her own direct experience in her family andconstituency. In the latter, she reflected as a former development minister, acontext in which the urgency of reducing poverty argues for rolling outpolicy initiatives to a!ect as many people as possible in the shortest timepossible. Very practically, it may have proved to be a useful tool in getting

CHOOSING WORDS WITH CARE?

287

more girls into school and more women into politics. Thus the meanings wegive to a concept not only shift over time, they can also shift in the contextof a single interview or text. This is one aspect of fuzziness; other facets wenow go on to discuss.

Why fuzziness?

We o!er four further explanations for the fuzziness of a concept such asempowerment. The first is intellectual laziness and time pressure. Amuddled text or an incoherent speech may simply be the result of peoplepaying insu"cient attention to their words. Second, fuzziness is used tocreate and sustain a broad-based policy constituency and to manageconflicts therein. An interviewee at the OECD Development CooperationDepartment—which has the task of co-ordinating and seeking consensusamong multiple political actors—provided the biggest range of meaningsfrom among all our respondents, having developed the skills of coininglanguage to accommodate a broad range of views. The fuzziness creates a‘normative resonance’ that makes everyone feel good.8 It aims to please asmany people as possible without revealing which meaning they personallyfavour.The third explanation is that of ‘strategic ambiguity’. In conditions of

recognisable discursive di!erences a conscious political choice may betaken to remain vague so as to enrol those who might shy away shouldthe concept be given too much clarity.9 Such ‘strategic ambiguity’ ispractised by feminist o"cials within development agencies, providing roomfor manoeuvre in circumstances where there is little chance of securingcollective agreement on their own desired meaning. It may also help enrolothers in supporting policy actions that the feminists hope will lead tobroader rights-based outcomes, irrespective of whether those they hadenrolled had intended such a result. The alternative of a clear and radicalrights-based agenda would gain less support and may risk creating abacklash.Fuzziness may be thought to be necessary, but it is rarely popular.

Accordingly, the need for greater clarity gets written into texts. TheDepartment For International Development (DFID) Action Plan on genderequality asks for ‘A clear vision on gender equality supported by consistentpolicy and practice’.10 Yet in commenting on their own Action Plan, someDFID interviewees thought that such clarity had not been achieved, believingthat the fuzziness constrained e!ective action and made it di"cult for DFID

to be held to account. Yet the desired clarity could not be realised. Thus ourfourth explanation is that fuzziness of policy concepts does not result fromthe conscious choice of any individual or group, but is a collective response toorganisational tensions. Good intentions are foiled by organisationalrequirements to keep all parties on board.In the next section we explore how all these reasons for ambiguity and

inconsistency play out in the construction of women’s empowerment and itsstable mate, gender equality.


288

Women’s empowerment and/or gender equality?

In the Beijing Platform for Action ‘gender’ tends to be used as an analyticalqualifier. As an aspiration rather than a descriptor, ‘equality between womenand men’ seemed more sensible and down to earth than the more jargon-laden ‘gender equality’. Indeed, within the whole text of the Platform forAction ‘gender equality’ appears only 12 times, compared with 30appearances of ‘empowerment’. The appearance of ‘gender equality’ indevelopment policy texts has become much more common since then, eithertwinned with women’s empowerment as the third MDG or, increasingly,standing alone. DFID twins the terms in its Action Plan, but in its glossybooklet published at the same time ‘women’s empowerment’ disappears.11

Di!erent texts for di!erent audiences. The glossy has a domestic audienceand is intended to demonstrate DFID’s response to the recent UK ‘genderequality duty’ legislation. The Action Plan is primarily for DFID sta! anduses the MDGs as its justification. Thus there is logic in the apparentinconsistency between the two documents.While some of our interviewees used the two concepts synonymously,

others had clear preferences. Short disliked ‘gender equality’ because it doesnot of itself tackle the disempowerment of poor people. A SIDA intervieweeagreed: ‘a poor woman can have gender equality and still be powerless’.Others preferred any phrase that included ‘women’—because women can getlost in ‘gender’—while others preferred ‘women’s empowerment’ because itimplies action, whereas ‘gender equality’ is more static. On the other hand,one person saw the utility of ‘gender equality’ because equality is an outcomeand economists—the most influential people in development policy—preferoutcomes. ‘Women’s empowerment’ may be less attractive to them, becauseit is a process. Also, said someone, ‘women’s empowerment’ can be scary,with connotations of being feminist and left-wing; it draws attention topower. ‘Power is an aggressive word’. And women’s empowerment is evenworse, creating a ‘visceral response’.Some interviewees may personally like ‘empowerment’ because it

resonates with power and transformation, but for strategic reasons theypreferred ‘gender equality’. Others disliked ‘empowerment’ because theyconceptualised power as a scarce resource such that, if women have more ofit, men will have less. For others, however, ‘empowerment’ was about‘power to’—as in women’s power to make decisions over their own bodies.Some equated ‘empowerment’ with ‘power within’ and felt that one couldnot empower someone else—‘women are active agents of their ownempowerment’.Only one interviewee, from a global civil society network, perceived

‘empowerment’ as relational, in the sense of ‘power with’. The emphasisamong all other interviewees on the individual nature of ‘empowerment’ wasexaggerated by some to such an extent that they found it di"cult to thinkabout the term other than with reference to their own personal sense ofcontrol, or in terms of matters such as gender balances and equalopportunities at their place of work.


289

How does empowerment happen? Some interviewees spoke of how theiragencies were trying to ‘empower women’, but when we followed up byasking if it were possible for one actor to empower another, they shiedaway. It sounds pompous and self-important to say that you can bestowsomeone with power. ‘It’s saying, ‘‘I’m going to help you’’ . . . it is self-righteous . . . there’s a relation of power between those using the term andthose who are its object’, one person said; ‘women should take control, theyshould empower themselves’.A DFID text refers to women ‘lifting themselves out of poverty’.12 The

Swedish development agency, SIDA, talks strongly about women empoweringthemselves: ‘Individuals and organisations develop their own capacity topromote gender equality’;13 SIDA’s aim is to ‘help create conditions that willenable the poor to improve their lives’.14 The World Bank mentions doingthings on behalf of women, but also talks about ‘the ability of women’sorganizations to reach a scale and sophistication where they are capable ofarticulating and advocating policies to promote women’s economicempowerment’.15

Yet also present is the developmental ‘passive evasive’ voice.16 There is nosubject (neither women themselves nor a development agent/agency) thatdoes the empowering. ‘Women should be empowered’, says the DevelopmentAssistance Committee17—but by whom? ‘They may be empowered’, sayOakley and Clayton,18 but by whom?

One organisation: diversity of views

In DFID we explored how six of the gender champions understoodempowerment. Gender champions are not specialists but senior sta! assignedthis additional task as part of DFID’s recent Gender Equality Action Plan.They ‘are responsible for ensuring implementation of the actions agreed intheir Divisions, making sure that sta! get the help they need, promotinglesson learning and identifying what more needs to be done’.19 They told usthey saw empowerment as the removal of constraints, the achievement ofautonomy and the ability to make choices. Empowerment as a means topoverty reduction was understood as the clearest element in DFID’s corporatefuzzy message on gender. It has ‘first and second round e!ects’ andcontributes to achieving the MDGs.One champion could not see any di!erence between ‘women’s empower-

ment’ and ‘gender equality’, although when pressed thought the latter mightbe more about equal opportunities. Views varied among the others. Twointerviewees made their preference in relation to context—‘women’sempowerment’ was more useful in countries where women are reallydisempowered and ‘gender equality’ more appropriate where the issue isenforcing legislation. Another preferred ‘gender equality’ as being lessthreatening, while a fourth preferred ‘empowerment’ because ‘genderequality’ seemed overly technocratic: ‘If DFID really believes it is a politicalissue—as it states in its brochure—then we should be upfront about it’. Foranother ‘women’s empowerment . . . smacks of special pleading’. She was


290

pragmatic, willing to use whichever term best supported what they wanted toachieve. This, she decided, was probably ‘gender equality’ because ‘it pandersto the beleaguered sensibilities of males’.Overall we found that preference for ‘women’s empowerment’ or ‘gender

equality’ accords with the meaning each term is given, the associationalcontext and the judgements made about the strategic utility of thetwo concepts. People’s views are a complex reflection of feelings andthought—a combination they take with them into drafting negotiations.What practical challenges and opportunities does such an intra-organisa-tional diversity present? And what are the strategic implications whenmeanings of empowerment are not only diverse among individuals, but alsosubject to organisational shifts over time?

Sifting the shifting meanings

The Achilles heel of empowerment is that it implies that you don’t have power.Subordination is built in20

Analysis of our material revealed layers or threads of overlapping meanings,combining and recombining rather frequently over time within broaderdevelopment discourses. In this section we first briefly examine how texts andinterviewees understand what empowerment is about, and we then look athow empowerment is commonly qualified, as political and economic. Weconclude by looking at how empowerment is articulated as a matter of justiceand/or e"ciency, noting the recent return of long-standing instrumentalistarguments.

Empowerment is about . . .

Today, most frequently, empowerment is about choice, decision making,realising opportunities and potential, and community action. Choice evokesagency and individualism, often connected to women’s sexual andreproductive lives.21 ‘Free’ further qualifies ‘choice’, as in the World Bank’sremoving ‘unfreedoms’ that constrain ‘individual choice’.23 For SIDA, choiceis a right.25 Older SIDA and OECD documents talk about ‘women andmen . . . shaping the social and economic choices of the future’,24 and about‘women and men hav[ing] equal opportunities to make choices about whatgender equality means and work in partnership to achieve it’.25 This olderstrain evokes ideas of people collectively shaping structures, whereas morerecent interpretations of choice are more individualistic. One interviewee saidthat empowerment is ‘the ability to get things done without being dependenton others’.Decision making is about women making decisions, ones that a!ect their

lives.26 UNDP noted that women still lacked access to economic and politicaldecision-making power in grassroots communities, as well as well as in themacroeconomic policy arena.27 Interviewees were especially individualisticwhen talking about decision making. One person defined empowerment as


291

the ‘ability to live your life as you want it’. Another said it is ‘being able tomake decisions and being able to act on these’.Opportunities and potential are frequent descriptors of ‘empowerment’,

although ‘equal opportunity’ tends to be connected more often to ‘genderequality’ than with empowerment. Both is 1998 and 2005 SIDA talks aboutequal opportunity for men and women.28 The OECD DAC Guidelines forGender Equality and Women’s Empowerment say that ‘gender equality’ doesnot mean sameness between men and women but that ‘their opportunitiesand life chances are equal’.29 The World Bank comments in its video that‘restricting economic opportunity for women is unfair. Life’s chances shouldnot be preordained at birth.’30 But the older documents argue for equality ofoutcomes as well as equality of opportunity.31

Linked to opportunity is the potential of women that needs to be‘unleashed’, says BMZ, the German Ministry of Development.32 Quoted onthe BMZ website, the then World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz says thatcountries ‘pay a high price for not allowing women to live up to their fulleconomic potential’.33 DFID laments the ine"cient ‘loss of humanpotential’,34 while speaking of women ‘fulfil[ing] their potential as fulland equal members of society’.35

Finally, despite resonances of the ‘power within’ in some interviews, such ameaning of empowerment is largely absent from the texts, and when presentit is in the earlier set of texts from the years after Beijing. Similarly notions of‘power with’, in terms of power through community, are present in the DAC

1999 Guidelines. In SIDA’s 1998 text, community features as ‘regional andglobal networks’ and ‘increased visibility’ of ‘the women’s movement’.36

While collective empowerment is still mentioned and fought for at DAC

Gender Network meetings,38 SIDA’s 2005 document dropped it. DFID followsthe same trend: the only community mentioned in 2007 is the internationalcommunity.38

However, while other organisations have been dropping the idea of thecollective, the World Bank seemingly has picked it up, referring tostrengthening women’s groups to facilitate the formation of farmers’ co-operatives, water user associations, or export business associations.39

Whether this has the same discursive meaning as in the earlier SIDA

document is a matter we return to later. Among interviewees only a fewmentioned communities, the collective and women’s movements.

Forms of empowerment

The most common qualifiers for empowerment are political and economic.Political empowerment is largely understood as being active in formalpolitics. Are there representative numbers of women politicians?40 And,more generally, do women have a voice? One interviewee said that ‘anempowered woman must negotiate on other women’s behalf’. DFID’s 2000target strategy paper, ‘Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment ofWomen’, says women should have ‘an equal voice in civil and politicallife’.41 The picture on the front cover of that document, powerfully, shows


292

two women with their fists raised in the air. The message is that of a women’smovement. In 2007 the picture on the cover of ‘Gender Equality at theHeart of Development’ showed women queuing up to vote. In a shifttowards instrumentalism, the later document notes that evidence shows that,when women participate in politics, ‘their access to services, jobs andeducation—and rights more generally—improve[s]’.42 One of the sta!members interviewed noted that DFID is less interested in issues of voicethan before.Talking about women and equality in economic terms has, however,

become increasingly popular. Mention of economic empowerment, especiallyrelated to growth, has increased since Beijing. While the World Bank’s olderdocument had three foci—education, health and employment—the newdocument claims that the World Bank has had su"cient success in thefirst two, and that now it needs to focus on the last—economicempowerment of women. The Bank wants to ‘recapture the Beijingmomentum and reenergize the gender agenda’.43 Two years later the WorldBank president said, ‘The empowerment of women is smart economics . . .studies show that investments in women yield large social and economicreturns’.44

The Bank’s slogan is catchy and incontestable: women’s empowermentand/or gender equality as smart economics. Who wants to be labelled ‘stupid’for not supporting it? The word ‘smart’, especially when attached toeconomics, is a conversation stopper. One interviewee, on hearing from usthe slogan for the first time, liked it so much that he wrote it down.International aid ministries and UN organisations are adopting the WorldBank’s argument. The Director General of UNESCO, in a message on thisyear’s International Women’s Day, wrote: ‘Gender equality is smart and justeconomics for many compelling reasons. It can act as a force for economicdevelopment and for improving the quality of life of society as a whole.’ 45

The Director of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women noted thatgender inequality is ‘bad economics’, citing the billions of dollars lost becauseof women’s inequitable access to employment.46

Of course, the economics and growth language is not new. Both in itsearlier documents and today DFID mentions that women can improve growthrates, referring to the e!ects of education.47 The shift may be more apparentin SIDA, which in its later document emphasises more the need to includewomen in the economy and make them more productive by removingdiscriminatory barriers.48

At a conference where an earlier version of this article was discussed,participants noted how development agencies have separated political andeconomic empowerment into di!erent programmes and budget lines, thusmarginalising a political economy approach to the structural changesrequired for women’s empowerment. The split has led to privileging ameaning of empowerment associated with formal institutions and individualautonomy. Even with autonomy the emphasis is more on the economic actorcontributing to growth, and less on, say, decent work and the unpaid careeconomy—and even less on issues of bodily autonomy and the power within.


293

More broadly, meanings of empowerment associated with solidarity andcollective action are being crowded out.As we now go on to discuss, linking economic empowerment to growth

reflects a broader discursive shift back to women working for development,rather than development working for women.

Instrumentalism strikes back

Some texts we examined state that women’s empowerment is an end in itself,and others say that it is also a means to a complementary end, such aseconomic growth, poverty reduction, democracy, human rights, peace,conflict prevention, HIV/AIDS reduction and the MDGs. One intervieweeexplained that ‘women’s empowerment was functionally necessary foreconomic development and functionally necessary for fast development’.‘Gender equality is a goal in its own right’, the recent DFID document says.49

Then it continues to build instrumentalist chains; for example, missing theMDG target on women ‘could lower a country’s annual per capita growthrates by 0.1–0.3 percentage points’.50 Already in 2000 DFID noted that‘Countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not sent enough girls to schoolover the past 30 years now have GNPs 25% lower than if they had giventhem a better chance’.51

Not supporting women’s empowerment is framed as ine"cient. For theBMZ limiting women’s economic progress ‘wastes resources and as suchundermines development e!ectiveness’.52 The 2006 World Bank documentnotes that its ‘Results-Based Initiatives (RBIs) are interventions that canincrease women’s economic empowerment within a reasonable time frameand at relatively low cost’.53 Launching in 2008 a campaign to reinvigoratee!orts for achieving the MDG on gender equality, the Danish aid ministersaid, ‘Women’s opportunities to contribute to the development ofsocieties need to be improved significantly. Otherwise, economic growth indeveloping countries will be constrained and the ability to care for theenvironment . . . reduced’.54

Several interviewees were very concerned that more evidence of this kindbe available to justify investing in women. One lamented the death of‘Women in Development’ because for him it ‘had been an evidence-basedagenda’. But he mentioned that ‘women’s empowerment’ could do this aswell. ‘It is a key driver of development to have the energies of women toconstruct economy and society. There are multipliers . . . It is evidence-based.’Is social justice surviving? The Unifem definition of ‘women’s empower-

ment’ that the older 2000 DFID document quotes talks about social justice interms of women ‘developing the ability to organise and influence thedirection of social change to create a more just social and economic order’.55

‘Justice’ is found in older documents more than in current ones. In 1998 SIDA

observed that ‘One of the di"culties of implementing policies on women anddevelopment in the past was the tendency to approach developmentinitiatives in a technical or output-oriented way’.56 However, today


294

development agencies appear to be returning to that ‘past’ way of doingthings. SIDA, for instance, though not introducing e"ciency or e!ectivenesswords, has dropped ‘justice’ and focuses on ‘pro-poor growth’ and ‘povertyreduction’.57

Yet, just as the World Bank picked up the lost words about collectiveempowerment, it picks up a moral argument in a powerful statement in itspromotional video. ‘Restricting economic opportunity for women is unfair’.Women’s empowerment is ‘not only the right thing to do, it is also thesmart thing to do’.58 A dying flame is brought back to life, combiningeconomic e"ciency with a moral must.However, one interviewee was strong in saying that ‘[w]e shouldn’t

emphasise the moral and political crusade in women’s equality. We have theGender Equality police checking documents, and people get put o! by this.’Some interviewees appeared genuinely to believe in the e"ciency argument,whereas others frankly saw it as a strategic ploy. A participant at theconference where an earlier version of this article was discussed noted thatshe had to use instrumentalist arguments in her development policy work toget her foot in the door and be taken seriously. An interviewee emphasised, ‘Iam willing to go down the instrumentalist road because people understandit’. Another argued that ‘What is required is to present a gender equality casethat is based on development e!ectiveness’. And another, ‘I compromise toget the word [gender] in, but then I/we need to quickly reinterpret it’.A DAC document from its Gender Network concluded optimistically that

more policies have ‘equity or equality rationales’ than ‘an e"ciencyapproach’.59 However, we have found the opposite to be the case. Growth,e"ciency and e!ectiveness are getting stronger, while moral, justice andpolitical arguments are weakening. Our concern is that an over-emphasis ongrowth has led to too much silence on justice. One interviewee said, ‘Ourdialogue is not values-based. It’s about systems and e!ectiveness.’ Clare Shortremarked that the 1990s were a window for new historical possibility withtheir central focus on equity and rights. Women’s empowerment was abouttransforming society, but this is not the current development aid agenda. Aidis no longer about transformation, she said. It has become technocratic.The seeming triumph of the 1990s was that women’s empowerment became

a matter of justice rather than something necessary for development. Forthose seeking to support women’s empowerment through internationaldevelopment aid, does it make sense to pursue an instrumentalist agenda in apolicy environment that focuses on growth and security, while waiting for thewinds of change blow round again? Or can we find new words to help bringthat change around faster?To answer this question we take a brief look at the wider policy

environment and then conclude by proposing some pointers to a way forward.

Conclusion: words and strategic choices

I have a problem with throwing [empowerment] away even though it has beende-ca!einated. The word comes out of the women’s movement and has been


295

simplified. We shouldn’t throw empowerment away, but I want my meaning tobe there.60

The seeming triumph of the 1990s had been that social justice was seenas a su"cient reason for e!orts to secure gender equality. Women’s and girls’well-being was an end in itself. Although the argument for equality based onjustice and fairness is not entirely neglected, the past few years have seen astrong shift back to the arguments of 25 years ago. This trend is indicative ofa wider movement in development policies, away from the visions of globalsocial justice articulate at the great United Nations conferences of the pastdecade towards a revival of market-led growth as the main engine ofdevelopment.Ten years ago, with a poverty reduction agenda, women were important

because ‘two thirds of those living in abject poverty’ are women’.61 Today,with a growth agenda, the importance of women is argued by a DFID ministeron the basis that ‘[in] the state of Karnataka in India a small rise in the ratioof female to male workers would increase per capita output by up to 37%’.62

The growth trend has both permitted and resulted from a resurgence oflanguage traditionally at the discursive heart of international aid economists’positivist thinking, which can be represented as ‘Observation!Correlation !Explanation!Prediction’.63 It underlies results-based management, anotherelement of the Paris Declaration, which encourages cross-county regressionanalysis to support instrumentalist arguments showing how empowermentdelivers results for whatever development outcome is desired.This particular discourse, re-energised by the Paris agenda, emphasises the

individualistic thread in ‘empowerment’ that has become more dominant inrecent years. Is there an alternative? Or are those jumping on the smarteconomics bandwagon making a sound decision in di"cult circumstances, tofind room for manoeuvre? Or are they perhaps making a discursive sacrifice,one that crowds out other agendas while failing to deliver in return anybenefits in terms of international aid shifting to a stronger focus on women?So far there is little evidence that the instrumentalist arguments are making

much headway in the wider global policy world. For example, although theWorld Bank’s Gender Action Plan emphasises the importance of women’saccess to land, in its 2007 World Development Report—on agriculture—theOverview contains not the least mention of women’s inequitable access toland.64 And in each of her two policy speeches on the centrality of growth fordevelopment, the DFID minister, Shriti Vadera gave women/gender just onemention. It is in Sweden that the gender/growth link appears to have gainedmost discursive prominence, as one of the five themes in the finance minister’sspeech at the 2007 World Bank annual meeting. Possibly as a result of this, itis mentioned in the communique from that meeting.65 However, a quick websearch of recent speeches by other finance ministers revealed no other suchmentions. There was, for example, no mention of women or gender in a longspeech by the finance Minister of Ghana in Frankfurt in December 2007,setting out all the development challenges facing his country, nor in theannual 2007/08 budget speech of the Finance Minister for Uganda. Neither


296

was there any reference to gender equality in two speeches one of us heard inDecember 2007, when two presidents of sub-Saharan African countries weresetting out their development agenda to audiences in the North. So, are wefinding the social transformation agenda being thrown away while theinstrumentalist strategy is failing to deliver?The growth/gender link, which harks back to the 1970s and 1980s, may

well prove to be a pathway to nowhere. We believe it is political pressure thatbrings policy change, not technical positivist arguments about evidence, evenwhen such arguments are couched as a catchy slogan. That investing inwomen creates more wealth is hardly a rallying call for civil society action.International NGOs have been criticised for becoming co-opted into aninternational aid system by signing up to the Millennium commitment topoverty reduction. As the unifying MDGs fade into the background, shall wefind emerging a sharper discursive distinction between o"cial aid agenciesand those non-governmental organisations? Does this o!er one possibilityfor reviving in international development policy spaces a more transforma-tive agenda?

Bringing social transformation back in?

Any such agenda has to take into account the relative power and significanceof di!erent international development organisations in shaping women’sempowerment, compared, say, with the global corporate sector or religiousmovements. As noted by one of our interviewees, a feminist and formerminister in an African country, development organisations indisputablyremain extraordinarily influential in many aid dependent countries. And,while we can hardly imagine their full-hearted adoption of a feminist agenda,these organisations’ individual and collective heterogeneity o!ers opportu-nities and resources for creating transformative agendas that other actors candevelop, adapt and use as they see fit in their own specific policyenvironments. The e!ort is worthwhile.Empowerment is increasingly imbued with a theory of change based on

rational choice and methodological individualism. Other meanings remainextant, carrying connotations of ‘power within’ and ‘power with’. Empower-ment through women organising in associations and groups, as it appears inWorld Bank texts, starts from the premise of the individual as distinct andseparate from society—or at its crudest, that society is nothing more than theaggregate of individuals. Thus collective action is about working with othersfor one’s own personal benefit, without a concern for ‘any real changes to theexisting oppressive structures (class or patriarchy)’.66

Distinct from this rational-choice notion of collective action, anothermeaning of collective empowerment survives and is expressed throughnotions of solidarity and ‘power with’, articulated by some of ourinterviewees. Such notions derive from another intellectual tradition thanmethodological individualism, namely relational notions of empowermentlinked to the idea of our inseparability from social processes.67 It puts backinto ‘women’s empowerment’ that very scariness that frightened some of our


297

interviewees. It means that women’s empowerment is more about transform-ing society, and less about making women more e!ective wealth producers.We have argued that the fuzziness of the concept of women’s empower-

ment can carry strategic advantages for savvy politically active feministsworking in global policy spaces. Yet there are risks. That same fuzziness canpermit a more coherent agenda—that gender equality is smart economics—tocapture the discursive heights while feminist development workers eithercapitulate or flounder around lamenting the golden days of Beijing.International development organisations will never formally get rid of the

language of gender and women. They will continue to produce new policystatements and glossy booklets that, like DFID’s latest, once again announce:‘We must ensure that all our policies and programmes consider the impactsthey have on women and girls’.68 Yet today, as one of our intervieweescommented, ‘There’s no heat out there’. To help create the heat, the time maywell be ripe for a diverse coalition to breath new life into ‘women’sempowerment’. Although another interviewee nostalgically harked back tothe 1990s, looking backwards to what now looks like a heroic age is not thepathway forward.An initial step might be to avoid that kind of fuzziness that comes from

intellectual laziness and carelessness with words. One must be carefullydeliberate about making words fuzzy. A second step might be to study whatone could term ‘discursive judo’, looking for means to use the opposition’sstrengths for one’s own transformative ends. This includes assessing what ison the mainstream policy agenda at the moment. Climate change, forexample, presents creative possibilities when couched in terms of climatejustice. The third most important step is to create new discursive futuresthrough a politics of solidarity.69 International NGOs, feminist academics andcivil society activists need to work at developing and communicating clearmessages—such as women’s collective empowerment requiring a people-centred economics. A strong voice from the radical margins gives strength tothose feminists inside development organisations who can covertly encourageactivists while choosing their own words with care, even if these appearambiguous.

Notes

The research on which this article is based was carried out in 2007–08 as a project of the ResearchProgramme Consortium, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, a five-year programme of work funded bythe UK Department for International Development (DFID). We are most grateful to Andrea Cornwall,Director of the Pathways Programme, for her encouragement and feedback. We are also grateful toMaxine Molyneux and Laura Turquet for their helpful comments on a longer version of this paper. Wechose texts primarily from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), DFID, the SwedishInternational Development Agency (SIDA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and theWorld Bank. We also interviewed two dozen people, including some from four of the above organisations.Apart from those of Clare Short, their comments are non-attributable.1 J Howell, A Ishkanian, E Obadare, H Seckinelgin & M Glasius, ‘The backlash against civil society inthe wake of the Long War on Terror’, Development in Practice, 18 (2), 2008, pp 82–93.

2 J Murphy, ‘The World Bank, INGOs, and civil society: converging agendas? The case of universal basiceducation in Niger’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 16 (4),2005, pp 353–374.


298

3 M Molyneux & S Razavi, ‘Beijing plus ten: an ambivalent record on gender justice’, Development andChange, 36 (6), 2005, p 984.

4 A Cornwall & K Brock, ‘What do buzzwords do for development policy? A critical look at‘‘participation’’, ‘‘empowerment’’ and ‘‘poverty reduction’’, Third World Quarterly, 26 (7), 2005, pp1043– 1060.

5 VM Moghadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks, Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press, 2005.

6 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995, athttp://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/.

7 S Batliwala, ‘Taking the power out of empowerment—an experiential account’, Development inPractice, 17 (4), 2007, pp 557–565.

8 A Cornwall, ‘Buzzwords and fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse’, Development inPractice, 17 (4–5), 2007, pp 471–484.

9 S Leitch & S Davenport, ‘Strategic ambiguity as a discourse practice: the role of keywords in thediscourse on ‘‘sustainable’’ biotechnology’, Discourse Studies, 9 (1), 2007, pp 43–61.

10 DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan 2007–2009: Making Faster Progress Toward Gender Equality,London: DFID, 2007, p 9, emphasis added.

11 DFID, Gender Equality at the Heart of Development, London: DFID, 2007.12 DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan, p 2.13 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality: Policy in Development Cooperation, Stockholm: SIDA, 2005, p 9.14 Ibid, p 5.15 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan (Fiscal

years 2007–10), Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006, p 6.16 A term coined by Robert Chambers.17 OECD DAC Gendernet, Gender Equality and Aid Delivery: What has Changed in Development

Cooperation Agencies since 1999?, Paris: OECD, 2007.18 P Oakley & A Clayton, ‘The monitoring and evaluation of empowerment: a resource document’,

Occasional Papers 26, Oxford: INTRAC, 2000.19 DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan, p 5.20 A participant at a conference where an earlier version of this article was presented.21 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality; and DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan.22 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics, p 4.23 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality, p 4.24 SIDA, Making a Di"erence: Gender Equality in Bilateral Development Cooperation, Stockholm: SIDA,

1998, p 13.25 OECD DAC, Guidelines for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Development Co-operation,

Paris: OECD, 1999, p 13.26 SIDA, Making a Di"erence.27 UNDP, Global Umbrella Programme for Gender Equality and the Advancement of Women, New York:

UNDP, 1997, at http://sdnhq.undp.org/gender/programmes/ggp.html.28 SIDA, Making a Di"erence; and SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality.29 OECD DAC, Guidelines for Gender Equality, p 13.30 World Bank, ‘Why is women’s economic empowerment important for development?’, video,

Washington, DC: World Bank 2007. Our emphasis.31 UNDP, Global Umbrella Programme for Gender Equality and the Advancement of Women; and DFID,

Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women: Strategies for Achieving the InternationalDevelopment Targets, Target Strategy Paper, London: DFID, 2000.

32 German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), ‘Women’s economicempowerment as smart economics’, preface and summary pages of website, at www.inwent.org/ef/events/gap/index.en.shtml.

33 Ibid.34 DFID, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women, p 8.35 Ibid, p 11.36 SIDA, Making a Di"erence, p 22.37 OECD DAC, summary record of the fourth meeting of the DAC Network on Gender Equality, Paris, 5–7

July 2006; and OECD DAC and World Bank, ‘Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policies inDevelopment Co-operation: lessons learned and innovative approaches for the future’, summaryrecord of meeting, 29 November 2006.

38 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality; and DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan.39 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics, p 13.40 UNDP, Gender Equality: Making Progress, Meeting New Challenges, New York: UNDP, 2005, pp 3, 7.41 DFID, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women, p 12.


299

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/

http://sdnhq.undp.org/gender/programmes/ggp.html

http://www.inwent.org/ef/events/gap/index.en.shtml

http://www.inwent.org/ef/events/gap/index.en.shtml

42 Ibid, p 3.43 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics, p 1.44 http://worldbank.wmsvc.vitalstreamcdn.com/worldbank_vitalstream_com/091907gender.wmv.45 K Matsuura, ‘Message on the occasion of International Women’s Day’, 2008, p 2, at http://

unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001583/158360e.pdf.46 C Hannan Andersen, Opening remarks at Third International Helvi Sipila Seminar, ‘Financing for

gender equality and empowerment of women’, United Nations, New York, 29 February 2008, p 1, atwww.un.org/womenwatch/daw/news/speech2008/2008%20Helvi%20Sipila%20seminar%2020%April.pdf.

47 DFID, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women; and DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan.48 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality, p 9.49 DFID, Gender Equality Action Plan, p 2.50 Ibid, p 3.51 DFID, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women, p 16.52 German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Call for Action:

Women’s Economic Empowerment as Smart Economics—A Dialogue on Policy Options, Bonn: BMZ,2007, at www.inwent.org/ef/events/gap/08152/index.en.shtml.

53 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics, p 13.54 www.ambbrasilia.um.dk/en/servicemenu/News/JoinTheGlobalCallToActionOnEmpowermentOf

Women.htm, accessed 22 December 2008.55 DFID, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women, p 13.56 SIDA, Making a Di"erence, p 42.57 SIDA, Promoting Gender Equality, esp pp 4–6.58 World Bank, ‘Why is women’s economic empowerment important for development?’ Our emphasis.59 OECD DAC Gendernet, Gender Equality and Aid Delivery, p 18.60 Participant at conference to discuss earlier draft of this article, February 2008.61 DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor, London: HMSO, 2000.62 Speech by a DFID minister, Shriti Vadera, at the Growth Commission’s European consultation,

December 2007, at www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/Speeches/growth-commission-shriti.asp.63 M Archer, ‘Realism in the social sciences’, in M Archer, R Bhaskar & T Lawson (eds), Critical

Realism, London: Routledge, 1998, p 190.64 World Bank, World Development Report, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007.65 Bretton Woods Project Annual Meetings 2007, communiques coverage, at http://www.brettonwood-

sproject.org/art-557851.66 ST Rozario, Building Solidarity Against Patriarchy, Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh, 2004, p 2.67 R Eyben, ‘Power, mutual accountability and responsibility in the practice of international aid: a

relational approach’, IDS Working Paper 305, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2008.68 DFID, Gender Equality at the Heart of Development, p 24.69 A Rao & D Kelleher, ‘Is there life after gender mainstreaming?’, Gender and Development, 13 (2), 2005,

pp 57–69.

Notes on Contributors

Rosalind Eyben is Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and SocialChange Team at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.Rebecca Napier-Moore is currently working for the Global Alliance AgainstTra"c of Women in Bangkok.


300

http://worldbank.wmsvc.vitalstreamcdn.com/worldbank_vitalstream_com/091907gender.wmv

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001583/158360e.pdf

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001583/158360e.pdf

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-557851

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-557851

Dele Braimoh, Rebecca Lekoko and Eunice B. Alade

EMPOWERING WOMEN FORDEVELOPMENT THf

COMMUNITY-DRIVEN SU^MMES: A RESPONSE TO3NAL PATRIAJRCHAL POWER

IN THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN REGION

Introduction

Patriarchy in many African countries can be viewed as a social theory in thesense that it attempts to define 'reality' for some people. For example, itexplains on a rather general level why some societies "position women as sexualobjects to be overpowered in a man's efforts to assert his masculinity"(Kincheloe, 1999, p. 287). According to the deep-rooted African traditionalbelief, women are "not to be heard, but only to be seen". Thus men's claim toknowledge, its production and validation carries more weight than women's(Kincheloe, 1999). This patriarchal reasoning is illustrated daily in differentsocial contexts, with men occupying leadership and influential positions andtaking charge over what women have to say or do. The male definition of realityin this context is inseparable from the various forms of aggression directedtowards the few women who make it to the top. The supporters of patriarchy, forexample, accuse women who are conscious of the injustices of "destroyingfamily unit, abandoning children, and subverting intimate relationships withmen" (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 285). While it is a fact that "women's lives areintimately involved with caring for others; that they devote much time to child

Convergence, Volume XXXVII, Number 2, 2004

79

care; to taking care of men, aged parents, grandchildren, friends and distantrelatives", this does not place them as inferior to men in as far as their potentialto contribute to national development is concerned.

When women demonstrate their power to stand for their rights, asexemplified by the 'Emang Basadi' (Stand-up Women! - literal translation)organisation in Botswana, they are often met by sneering remarks - "'cheeky-girls', 'troublemakers', 'fmstrated women'", and so on. (Youngman andNtseane, 2001). There is a lot of resistance from some men because patriarchalthinking fails to understand the talents of women - as 'weavers ofthe fabric'that connect the nations. We believe women should be granted this respect in allspheres of their lives. Men who are unable to deal with the fact that women toohave potential find solace in some emotional conflicts, aggression and abuse ofwomen. Their attitudes with an array of negative emotional displays can createsevere social dysfiinctionality such as the lack of interpersonal connection orcollaboration between them and their female counterparts. Furthermore,patriarchal thinking and attitude can lead to what Kincheloe (1999) calls 'socialdeath' on the part of the affected women. This entails the loss of dignity andself-worth and the loss of hope for any way out ofthe grips of patriarchal power.Such an emotional repression on the part of men robs women of their legitimateright to participate meaningfully and actively in the process of nationaldevelopment. We emphatically believe that as long as women's contributioncontinues to be seen through this traditional patriarchal lens as 'home-tools,'development in African nations would be stunted.

Patriarchal Power and its Impact on Women inSouthern Africa

Despite the efforts to free women from oppression, such as the Beijingconference which was considered a global fight against women's oppression,women continue to suffer at the hands of some ill-conceived theories andpolicies. In the Southem Africa region, for example, the act of prejudice againstwomen mostly occurs where patriarchal power reigns. This type of power is feltin areas such as inheritance right, division of labour, access to political andeconomic resources and legal and social matters. Other areas of discriminationagainst women include access to educational and employment opportunities,agricultural practice, land ownership and socio-economic and nationaldevelopment programmes.

The home or the family is one ofthe significant patriarchal macrostructurein which patriarchal power reigns. Patriarchy power, as with most power, has itsown definition ofthe 'powerful' and the 'powerless'. The 'powerless' in thiscontext are the women. They are considered subordinates to men, irrespectiveof their varying potentials. This 'male pose' is cultivated at a very young age.


80

For example, when young males are in the presence of their female counterparts"crying is forbidden, and even smiling and displays of enthusiasm arerestricted" (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 270). The patriarchal societies present them asthe 'strong', the 'brave' and the 'tough'. Consequently, when some men fail tolive up to this patriarchal image, they become devastated. We know of somemen who flew their home responsibilities because they are unable to deal withemotional conflict and the interpersonal dynamics of marriage and familialrelationships. Such men

... are unable to deal with the 'breadwinner-loser' male character whoforfeits his patriarchy power. Thus, the male escape from commitmenthas become the order of the era, with its penology of negativeconsequences for women. The majority of the men who flew the familyrefuse to offer assistance to the wife and children left behind. Childsupport has become an important women's issue in the last decade ofthetwentieth century because of the dramatic increase in female-headedfamilies. (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 270)

In a traditional patriarchal culture depicted above, the only 'approved' ways ofdealing with men's failure and emotional stress is being defensive, boastful,lying and other forms of aggression.

A woman is presented as dependent on a man. She is considered a social andeconomic burden when it suits the man's patriarchal attitude and yet in mostcases women bear a disproportionate burden of injustices as a result of somemen's irresponsibility. Ironically, a man may impregnate a woman and run awayfrom his responsibility, and a burden of raising the child is left in the hands ofa woman. Despite the man's irresponsibility, it is still the woman who facesscorn and humiliation if the society perceives the upbringing as a failure toconform to society's expectation. To be noted here is the recent highlycelebrated case of a divorced Nigerian woman from the Northern State ofNigeria who was to be publicly stoned to death according to the provision ofSharia Law, ostensibly for committing adultery. The paradox ofthe case is thatthe man who impregnated this woman was to go unpunished. This storyshowcases the suffering that women are exposed to while their malecounterparts who have been active partners go free. If it were not for the outcryof women at the international community level, that barbaric act would havebeen carried out. We believe that in this case, justice was done. As Bunch et al.(1998) observed, there are situations where a man can kill an allegedlyunfaithful, disobedient or wilful wife and be absolved on the grounds of honour.The legal defence based on 'honour' and 'provocation by the victim' oftenrequires little or no evidence and it results in unduly short prison terms for wife-murder or a fine of less than one hundred dollars, even in cases involvingpremeditation. In some cultures in the Southern African region, it seems awelcome gesture for domestic battery to occur and some people consider it a

Convergence, Volume XXXVIl, Number 2, 2004

81

show of love from the husband to the wife. This situation has been allowed torecur because of the laxity in the States' laws and policies in the SouthernAfrican countries.

Everyone needs to have access to justice. As the above exampledemonstrates, in the Southern African region, it is not unusual to find laws thatare discriminatory to women. Many examples can be cited here. Perhaps the onethat captured intemational spectators was the 'Unity Dow' case in Botswana,early 1990s. Unity Dow, a Motswana woman married to an American man,successfully challenged the legitimacy of the Citizenship Act which deniedBotswana citizenship to her children on the basis that her husband is a foreigner,even though she herself is a citizen of Botswana. The law conveys upon aforeign woman marrying a Motswana husband the right to apply for citizenshipafter two and a half years residence. This right is not conferred upon a foreignman who marries a Motswana wife. He must have ten years residence(www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/diana/fulltext/dowl.htm). In her mitigating statementshe stated that

/ am desirous of being afforded the same protection of law as a maleBotswana citizen and in this regard 1 am desirous that my children beaccorded with Botswana citizenship and that my spouse be in a positionto make application for Botswana citizenship, should he so wish asprovided for under Section 13 of the said Citizenship Act.

As this case demonstrates, when patriarchal power plays itself out on the terrainof law, women suffer a lot. These patriarchal power dynamics must be foughtseverely, as in this case. Unity Dow forcefully challenged the flagrant contemptfor the rule of law to reveal the arrogance of patriarchal power. Although Unitywon in this case, we do not know whether the Botswana government has takenthe necessary action to amend the Citizenship Act to provide gender equality inaccess to citizenship.

When describing the situation above, we are counting the millions of womenin the global population, mostly in the Southem Africa region, who do not haveaccess to education and employment. The literature of adult education,especially that dealing with access and equity, reveals wide and significantdisparities between male and female workers in terms of access to and benefitsfrom the present educational systems (Briceno, 1988; Davison, 1992; Liamzon,1997). In the past "girls were being streamed to subjects with little relevance tothe labour market" (Malimquist, 1997; Sheldon, 1994) an4 to date, women'saccess is still restricted. However, we all know that women's access toemployment, no matter how small their wage, constitutes a crucial means forthem to become less dependent on their husbands and it increases theirassertiveness in domestic decision making (Stromquist, 1998). The situation inthe Southem African region, where women outnumber men, is that men are in


82

the majority as far as employment opportunities are concerned. Women are stillmandated by tradition to take care of the family, including the unemployedhusbands. Our planet's most urgent problems cannot be addressed effectively ifwe fail to tap the energy and creativity of half of its population; the women.There is a need to find and implement effective means of increasing women inthe formal employment sector.

In concluding this section, we want to emphasise that patriarchy has thepower to define how women are treated and it becomes more pervasive when itis intertwined compatibly with the political, economic and legal aspects of acountry. People should not deny the fact that in the Southern African region andbeyond, women have greater responsibilities of being household heads. Theytake care of the children and other important family chores and decisions. Inaddition, they also engage in productive venture as the majority of theirhusbands work in the mines, leaving all other social, marital and agriculturalactivities to women. Despite the onerous responsibilities that they shoulder,women are, from a patriarchal traditional belief system, unproductive as far asthe development of their nations is concerned. Thus, we believe that attitudes ortraditions that perpetuate women's problems can be addressed throughsystematic and regionally planned community-driven sustainable programmes.We stress the importance of building adequate women's capacity through localcommunity organisations. These organisations have the potential torevolutionise the ways in which we think about women, their potential andcapabilities.

Community-Driven Sustainable Programmes

The solution proposed is that women's inequality could be "obliteratedsystematically through some systematic regionally planned communityeducation programmes, both formal and non-formal. By community educationis meant an education for the community and hence for citizenship" (Mallerin,1992). The term denotes a process of community empowerment and, in theAfrican sense, this type of education is as old as the creation of Africa.Traditional African societies have had a special education in and for thecommunities' ways of life. Traces of this traditional education are found in thecolonial administrations where some individuals or groups were selected forempowerment through community education.

In its broad terms, community education for Africans remains a philosophythat provides for the educational needs of all community members (Anyanwu,1993). It is a process by which members of a community leam to work togetherto identify problems and to seek solutions to such problems. It is through thisprocess that an ongoing procedure can be established for people to worktogether on women's issues. The crux of this philosophy lies in its recognition


83

of the importance of citizen involvement, the sharing of decision-making andtotal community participation. In the real sense, we believe that for any tmedevelopment to happen in the Southem African region, it must involve theactive participation of all. Women must become active partners. That is, forwomen to be empowered they have to be active partners in such anempowerment. Bopp (1994), for example, opines that development is notsomething that can be delivered to people. Rather, it is a phenomenon thatcomes from within. Thus when women are made active participants in their ownempowerment processes, they get opportunities to reflect on conditions of theirlives. It is this reflection that becomes a foundation on which to developprogrammes that are meant to empower them. This could be the strongeststarting point to stir changes.

It is worth noting that an individual's efforts can do very little or nothing tochange the way patriarchal power works in the Southem African region. Rather,a collective effort, as proposed by Kabeer (1994), is needed. Such an effort willincrease the numbers of the individuals involved in this type of socialtransformation. More voices can provide diverse ideas and actions in whichwomen's empowerment is actively and energetically pursued. Collective actionshave the potential to create stronger voices against the discriminatorystructures. Thus, a wide range of community-driven programmes ororganisations are envisioned as a way to fight the patriarchal power that standsas a barrier for women's advancement and access to a number of opportunitiesin their Southern African region. Regional networking, formation of morewomen's organisations, women-oriented NGOs, the development of culturalawareness programmes and entrepreneurships are given as examples that canprovide strong voices against patriarchal power and its forms. Theseprogrammes will enable the development of a wide range of skills andcompetencies. They should stress the importance of building adequate capacityfor all women, single, married, divorced, widowed, disserted, marginalised andotherwise. There is greater need to address the educational imbalances in oursocieties in order to accord women their rightful contributions in thedevelopment of their countries.

Women's Organisations

Women need more power to fight the patriarchal power that oppresses them.This can be realistically achieved if women embark on advocacy roles andinfluence both the social and government stmctures that stand to supportpatriarchy and its forms of oppression. Women's organisations, for example, canlook into different constitutions ofthe Southern African countries to see if theyaccord women equal opportunities with their male counterparts. The case ofUnity Dow in Botswana has already been cited, which demonstrates that indeedsome legal documents do exist that discriminate against women. Also, there is


84

need for the proposed women's organisations to look into employment policiesto ensure that they reflect equal employment opportunities and conditions ofservice. In addition, some women are still disadvantaged as far as inheritancerights are concemed. Equality in inheritance and property laws should beensured. Equal responsibilities with regard to the raising of and caring forchildren must become a critical agenda of these women's organisations.

We are aware that some women's organisations already exist in the regionand these are nationally or regionally mn. In Botswana, for example, a well-known women's organisation is the Emang Basadi ('Stand-Up Women') whichstarted in 1983 as an informal meeting of some academic and professionalwomen around a common interest on the status of women in the Botswanasociety (Youngman and Ntseane, 2001). It was formally registered in 1986.Since then, the organisation has grown - it has moved from discussion group toactivism and its activities diversified. Its main goal is to achieve social equitythrough changing the socio-economic and legal position of women in Botswana(Youngman and Ntseane, 2001). To pursue its goals, it has embarked on anumber of programmes. Among these are "the 1984 public debate overlegislation which discriminated against women; Commercial Sex WorkersProject 1993-1995; Women's Economic Empowerment Project which started in1999; and the legal Aid and Counselling Center which started in 2000"(Youngman and Ntseane, 2001, p. 3). The organisation continues to raise thepublic awareness of the discrimination that women are subjected to and the needto change this situation so as to let the women's potential unfold withoutinterference by unfair treatments. The organisation is operating "within thespace provided by the liberal democratic context of Botswana" (Youngman andNtseane, 2001, p. 3). Thus we believe there are minimal interferences from thenon-supporters. It therefore has the potential to extend democracy in Botswanabecause "democracy is not complete till women are equal to men" (Youngmanand Ntseane, 2001, p. 4).

More women's organisations should be formed in the region to help unleashthe talents of women and to make people acknowledge women's true potential.Programmes should be implemented to connect women with access toinformation and other opportunities for lifelong learning. It is equally importantto foster a favourable political relationship with the national governments sothat they can help financially and otherwise in creating sustainable communitysupport and in building local capacity.

National organisations such as the Emang Basadi can grow to have regionalinfluence. For these organisations to exert the desired power and influence, theyneed to be strengthened through a number of activities such as: (i) media withsubsidised advertisement on women's issues; (ii) sponsored talk shows on thetelevision such as the Mabusa's talk show in South Africa; and (iii) debates atall levels of education, from primary to tertiary. Through these debates young


85

people can be conscientised and made aware of gender equality and thenecessity of bringing in equality so that some females stop consideringthemselves as subservient and inferior to men in academic, social, political andeconomic spheres. We believe that women's organisations have the potential tomake the necessary changes in some existing patriarchal-driven developmentapproaches of the Southern African region.

Entrepreneurship Programmes

Entrepreneurship programmes could be put in place especially for women in theinformal sector. The main goal of these programmes would be to help womenearn a living for themselves and their families. This can help them to break fromtheir dependency on men as providers. This will give them economicempowerment. Vocational centres for skills acquisition should be set up indifferent areas to address the plight of illiterate and unemployed women. Forthese organisations to do well, the governments must be willing to supportthem. Government support should be backed with relevant and practicalpolicies.

The formation of the proposed entrepreneurship programmes could start ata national level where programmes are specifically designed for the bettermentof women's lives. Nigeria can serve as a good example here. In the early 1990s,governmental structures labelled as 'Better Life for Rural Women' and 'MassMobilization for Social and Economic Reconstruction' (MAMSER) were put inplace. The former was legitimised by making the wife of the governor in eachof the then 32 states the chairperson who coordinated these programmes. On theother han4 the wife of the Head of State was made the overall coordinator ofthese programmes and the person to whom all the First Ladies from the 32states were responsible. This is a good example of a national networking aimedat improving the lives and conditions of women in society. These types ofprogrammes have the potential to develop into regionally-planned programmeswith the goal of reaching and impacting the lives of all women in the region.

Formation of Women-Oriented NGOs

It is pertinent for women to form women-oriented NGOs. The role of theseNGOs should be to organise some training programmes toward theempowerment of women. There is a need for women to share views and ideasaimed at mobilising one another to fight some traditional beliefs which relegatethem to some subservient status. Membership to these organisations shouldinclude lawyers, paralegal personnel or human rights advocates. They shouldunite to organise legal literacy workshops and seminars on a regular basis inorder to stimulate actions for women's liberation. We believe that regular


86

seminars and workshops to which the government officials are invited couldmake some difference in helping people to realise that patriarchal power in allits forms is detrimental not only to the progress of women but also to thedevelopment of the entire region of Southern Africa.

Cultural Awareness Programmes

Patriarchy is a long-standing cultural aspect. Thus cultural awarenessprogrammes should be put in place to make people aware that this type ofculture is obsolete in the twenty-first century in which the needs and roles ofAfrican women are shaped by the changes and demands of this century. Goneare the days when men used to be the only 'bread-winners' in the family. We arewitnessing an era in which more female-headed families are becoming thenorm; where divorce has become the order of the day; and where more andmore women are receiving education that makes them legitimate 'heads' or'bread-winners' of the family. The same education has conferred on women theright to be leaders in societies and organisations; to be heads of state; to beorganisers of development activities; and to be in other influential positionswhere their potential and educational achievements lead them. We, therefore,suggest that there is a need for the Southem African region to activelyparticipate in gender- awareness activities and change processes in which bothmen and women are made aware that 'sex' is a discriminating criterion injudging women's potential contributions in the home, community, nation andthe world at large.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we would like to emphasise that regional networking is necessaryif the Southern African region is to successfully change the attitudes thatdiscriminate against women. For example, women are considered useful andproductive only in childbirth or home life issues and highly unwanted andunproductive in the wider community participation or the development of theirnations. Such patriarchal reasoning has robbed the region of the talents andcreativity that women could have brought to its development. We believe whenthey unite through regionally planned programmes, women may stand for theirrights an4 when divide4 they will remain in the grip of powerful anddestructive patriarchal stmctures and powers that exist in the region. Regionalnetworking is central to their success because to push for reform, women needgreater political power (Davison, 1998). One way of gaining and sustaining thistype of power is to regionalise, so that they can compose a very strong voice tobe heard across the region.


87

Dele Braimoh is a Professor of Adult and Distance Education at the Institute of Extra-Mural Studies of the National University of Lesotho. He is the founding Coordinator ofthe Part-time B.Ed, degree programme in adult education and the M.Ed, in adult anddistance education, both of which are offered on a distance learning basis. His specialresearch areas include: adult, distance and continuing education, higher educationpolicy and management, community education and mral development, research designand methodology including media education. He can be reached at: Institute of Extra-Mural Studies, National University of Lesotho, P.O. Roma 180, Lesotho, Southern Africa.Email <[email protected]>

Dr Rebecca Nthogo Lekoko is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Department ofAdult Education of the University of Botswana. She holds a Doctor of Education (D. Ed.)from Pennsylvania State University, USA. Although DrLekoko's research and publicationfoci have been in the areas of human resource development, programme planning,implementation and evaluation of adult and extension education programmes, herinterest in gender-related issues are unfaltering. She is currently a member of theDepartmental Gender Committee. She can be reached at: Department of AdultEducation, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone, Botswana. Email<nthogo@hotmail. com>

Eunice B. Alade is an Associate Professor of Special Education. Her focus is primarilyon the education of persons with hearing impairment. She has worked extensively withrehabilitation programmes for persons with disabilities. She is currently in theDepartment of Special Education, Kenyatta University P.O. Box 43844, Nairobi, Kenya.Email <[email protected]>

References

Anyanvm, C. N. 1993. The Human Commonwealth for Humane Society. Aninaugural lecture delivered at the University of Ibadan. Nigeria: IbadanUniversity Press.

Bopp, M. 1994. "The elusive essential: Evaluation participation in non-formaleducation and community development process". Convergence, XXVII: 23-44.

Briceno, R. 1998. "Reclaiming women's human rights". In N. P. Stromquist andK. Monkman (eds) Women in the Third World: An Encyclopcedia ofContemporary Issues, pp. 49-58. New York: Garland.

Bunch, C , Carrillo, R. and Shore, R. 1998. "Violence against women". In N. P.Stromquist and K. Monkman (eds) Women in the Third World: AnEncyclopaedia of Contemporary Issues, pp. 59-68. New York: Garland.


Davison, J. 1992. "Changing relations of production in southern Malawi:Implications for involving rural women in development". Journal ofContemporary African Studies 11(1): 72-84.

Davison, J. 1998. "Women in Southern Africa, excluding South Africa". In N.P. Stromquist and K. Monkman (eds) Women in the Third World: AnEncyclopaedia of Contemporary? Issues, pp. 553—65. New York: Garland.

Kabeer, N. 1994. Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in DevelopmentThought.JLondon: Verso.

Kincheloe, J. L. 1999. How Do They Tell the Workers? The SocioeconomicFoundations of Work and Vocational Education. Colorado: Westview Press.Liamzon, C. 1997. "An overview ofthe concept of empowerment". In IREDNorth, People's Empowerment: Grassroots Experiences in Africa, Asia andLatin America. Rome.

Mallerin, R. 1992. "For an active citizenship integration spaces". TheInternational Journal of Community Education 1(2): 10.

Malimquist, E. 1993. "Women and literacy development in the Third World".The InternationalJournal of Contemporary African Studies 11(1): 72-84.

Sheldon, K. 1994. "Women and revolution in Mozambique: A Luta Continua".In: A. Tetreault (ed.). Woman and Revolution in Africa, Asia and the New World,pp. 33-61. Columbia: University of Carolina Press.

Stromquist, N. P. 1998. "Roles and statuses of women". In: N.P. Stromquist andK. Monkman (eds) Women in the Third World: An Encyclopaedia ofContemporary^ Issues, pp. 3-12. New York: Garland Publishing.

Youngman, F. and Ntseane, G. 2001. Research on Civil Society and Leadershipin Southern Africa: Country Case Study Paper on Botswana. A paper preparedfor the Development Policy Management Forum (DPMF). Unpublished.


89

a r t i c l e s

Introduct ion: Comparat ive GenderMainstreaming in a Global Era

SYLVIA WALBYLancaster University, UK

Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This article analyses gender mainstreaming as a new and essentially contested form offeminist politics and policy. The article addresses the different forms that gender main-streaming takes, in different countries and different policy domains, in order to pushforward the theoretical debates. Gender mainstreaming often draws on transnationalprocesses, involving transnational networks and agencies and transformations of thediscourse of universal human rights, challenging the traditional focus on nationalprocesses. These developments are facilitated by the rise of global processes and insti-tutions, such as the UN. Tensions can arise as a result of actors seeking to mainstreamquite different models of gender equality: based on equality through sameness; throughequal valuation of difference; and through transformation. The intersection of genderwith other complex forms of inequality has challenging implications for a primaryfocus on gender within gender mainstreaming. Nevertheless, certain forms of gendermainstreaming have, despite their evident weaknesses, provided a new basis for femin-ist solidarity and action at a global level. Gender mainstreaming is a leading-edgeexample of the potential implications of globalisation for gender politics.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywordsgender mainstreaming, equality, comparative gender relations, gender theory, genderpolitics

INTRODUCTION

Gender mainstreaming is a new form of gendered political and policy practice.It is an international phenomenon, originating in development policies, andadopted by the UN at the 1995 conference on women in Beijing, and takenup by the European Union (EU) and its member states. Gender mainstreaming

International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7:4 December 2005, 453–470

ISSN 1461-6742 print=ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2005 Taylor & Francis

http:==www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080=14616740500284383

is a process that seeks to advance gender equality by revising all mainstreampolicy arenas. It is simultaneously intended as a way of improving the effec-tiveness of mainline policies by making visible the gendered nature of assump-tions, processes and outcomes. During its development there has been asignificant two-way traffic between feminist theories of gender relations andgender equality practitioners (Beveridge et al. 2000; Mazey 2000; Behningand Pascual 2001; Verloo 2001; Walby 2001; Woodward 2003).

The principle of gender mainstreaming was initially developed by feministdevelopment practitioners in the 1970s and launched at the UN conference onwomen in Beijing in 1995 (Meyer and Prugl 1999). Its origins lie especially inthe context of feminist work within development, where different ways ofincluding gender equity within development processes and goals had longbeen explored (Moser 1993; Jahan 1995; Kabeer 2003). Since the UN confer-ence, gender mainstreaming has been adopted by the European Union as thebasis of its gender policy, which has been deepening and become morewide-ranging since the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997).

Gender mainstreaming is a global initiative but is not evenly developedglobally. The implementation of gender mainstreaming is uneven evenwhen led by a common transnational political entity, such as the EU. Thus,the understanding of gender mainstreaming raises complex questions as tothe relationship between global, regional and national levels of governance.Unlike some more conventional forms of politics and policy, gender main-streaming is not primarily situated within a national or country framework,but rather has been transnational from the start. This poses particular chal-lenges to the understanding of the processes of policy development, sincethey include issues of international regimes, globalisation, transnationalpolities and practices of political and policy transfer from one location toanother.

So, what is the relationship between developing countries, the US, the EU,the global and the national, as sites in the development of different types ofgender equality policies? Which polities are takers and which are makers ofgender mainstreaming policy and why is this (Behning and Pascual 2001;Mosesdottir and Thorbergsdottir 2004)? Do the policies remain the same orare they hybridised as they interact with different local conditions (Barry2004; Ferreira 2004; Laas 2004)? How important are developing institutionsof global governance and the political spaces that are associated with them,for example those of the UN and UNIFEM (Pietila 1996; Elson 1998; Meyerand Prugl 1999; Rai 2003; True 2003)? How important is the developingdiscourse on universal human rights (Peters and Wolper 1995; Kelly 2005)and is this a western, globally hybridised, or locally varied tradition(Woodiwiss 1998; Ferree 2004)?

This special issue of International Feminist Journal of Politics has a focus oncomparative gender mainstreaming. How and why do gender mainstreamingpractices between different countries vary? There is a range of differentmodels of ‘gender equality’ being mainstreamed (Eveline and Bacchi; Rees)

454 International Feminist Journal of Pol it ics ------------------------------------------------------------

into a variety of policy domains (Grosser and Moon; Kelly; Veitch), in thecontext of divergent economic, political and social circumstances in differentcountries (Mosesdottir and Erlingsdottir), especially between North and South(Moser; Pillinger), all of which shape the process. A discussion section led byviews from practitioners (Moser; Pillinger; Veitch) follows the main articles ongender mainstreaming.

WHAT IS THE ‘GENDER EQUALITY’ THAT IS BEING ‘MAINSTREAMED’?

The variety of definitions and practices of gender mainstreaming may beunderstood either as a result of confusion that can be resolved by attendingto the difficult task of the development of an appropriate definition, or it maybe understood as the result of essentially contested processes that inevitablyproduce varying outcomes in different contexts. One analytic strategy is toseek out underlying principles in an effort to abstract the essential character-istics of the phenomenon. For example, Rees (this issue) identifies three under-lying areas of principle: regarding the individual as a whole person; democracyand participation; and justice, fairness and equity. Further, she suggests thatthere are sets of tools that can be identified with each of these principles, includ-ing work/life balance, gender disaggregated statistics and gender budgeting.This has similarities with Nussbaum’s (2000) neo-Aristotelian approach to gen-dered well-being, which is grounded in notions of human needs and capacitiesand invokes a universalistic perspective. In a contrasting analytic strategy,gender mainstreaming is seen as an ‘empty signifier’ (Council of Europe1998), which can be filled by an almost limitless variety of content as a resultof the social construction (Bacchi 1999; Verloo 2001, 2005) of this phenomenon.Eveline and Bacchi (this issue) focus on the processes by which the genderequality content of gender mainstreaming is socially constructed in varyingways according to the underlying theory of gender relations and the nationalpolitical context. They show the links between the various forms of theorisingof gender and the ways of doing and creating gender that are implied in thediverse ways that gender mainstreaming constructs its project.

Although all accounts of gender mainstreaming imply significant changesto gendered institutions, a range of different visions or models of genderequality have been invoked. Three models of gender equality have oftenbeen identified as key (Rees 1998). The first model is one in which equalitybased on sameness is fostered, especially where women enter previouslymale domains, and the existing male norm remains the standard. Thesecond is one in which there is a move towards the equal valuation of existingand different contributions of women and men in a gender segregated society.The third is one where there is a new standard for both men and women, that is,the transformation of gender relations. Rees (1998) describes the first as‘tinkering’ with gender inequality; the second as ‘tailoring’ situations to fitthe needs of women; the third is ‘transformation’, in which there are new

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Sylvia Walby/Comparat ive Gender Mainstreaming 455

standards for everyone, replacing the segregated institutions and standardsassociated with masculinity and femininity. There is question as to whetherthe first two models actually constitute gender mainstreaming, because theyretain the gender standards of the status quo. For Rees (1998), only the thirdstrategy constitutes gender mainstreaming and has the potential to delivergender justice because this is the only strategy that involves the transform-ation of the institutions and the standards necessary for effective equality.

Eveline and Bacchi (this issue) and Rees (this issue) provide contrastingapproaches to the theorisation of gender equality and to the various strategiesdevised within the framework of gender mainstreaming to move towards it.

BROADENING THE ARENA FOR GENDER EQUALITY POLICIES

Traditionally gender equality policies and politics have focused on areas whereit is possible to compare the disadvantaged position of women with the privi-leged position of men. Gender mainstreaming goes beyond this, with the ambi-tion of subjecting all policy areas to gender equality practices. Thus theadvancement of gender mainstreaming has entailed the broadening of thearenas of gender equality actions.

Employment is the field where the most development of gender equalitypractices has occurred. This has proceeded furthest where it is clearly possibleto see the disadvantages of women as compared to men. However, recentdevelopments have attempted to take gender equality principles beyondsuch obvious areas, to those where there are indirect as well as directimpacts. For example, in the UK this has entailed going beyond straightfor-ward issues such as direct discrimination against women in matters of pay(Pillinger 1992), to policies to reconcile more effectively working and familylife (Dex 2004), the investigation and remedying of gender inequities in thegovernment’s budget (Women’s Budget Group 2004), and the considerationof the implications of the position of women in the labour market for the main-stream agenda of productivity (Walby and Olsen 2002).

Employment is key to many EU interventions for gender equality becauseof the centrality of economic development to its core remit and the consequentdevelopment of the European Employment Strategy. This area has seen moreadvanced application of the principles of gender mainstreaming than manyother policy areas (Pollack and Hafner-Burton 2000; Behning and Pascual2001; Mosesdottir and Thorbergsdottir 2004; Mosesdottir and Erlingsdottirthis issue).

While employment has been a major economic arena in which gender main-streaming has occurred, this is not the only one. The mainstreaming of genderinto governmental finance decisions through gender budgeting has beenanother major focus of activity. Gender budgeting is a gender mainstreamingtool that includes a gender equality perspective in financial decision making atthe highest levels. It is a process of disaggregating budgets by gender in order


to discover the extent to which policies that have gendered implications aredifferentially funded. It is a process that has developed globally, not least inthe South (Sen 2000; Budlender et al. 2002; Sharp and Broomhill 2002;IDRC 2005).

Grosser and Moon (this issue) further extend the field of gender mainstream-ing in the economy with their argument that the mainstreaming of genderbenefits the corporate social responsibility agenda, which is simultaneouslygood for both business and the wider society. They argue that the value of acompany can be affected by its treatment of a wider range of stakeholdersthan is usually included. This is work that goes beyond the domains of theeconomy to that of governance. In a similar manner, Vinnicombe (2004)makes the business case for women directors in terms of the benefits of diver-sity in the Boardroom for competitiveness and productivity.

In the area of violence against women, there is a more complex move, invol-ving the mainstreaming of violence against women into human rightsdiscourse and thereby to a range of policy arenas (Walby 2004a; Kelly thisissue). This is a field which developed later than employment policy andwhich has not drawn so strongly upon the powers of the EU, not leastbecause the competence of the EU in this area is more limited (Hanmer1996; Walby 2004b). Rather, much development has occurred as a result ofthe creation of global feminist networks which have changed the ostensiblytimeless universal discourse of human rights so that women’s rights havebecome recognised as human rights (Peters and Wolper 1995; Kelly thisissue). This is mainstreaming, in the sense that gender has entered mainstreampolicy and political domains, and involves far-reaching changes to globalconceptions of human rights.

INTERNATIONAL REGIMES, HUMAN RIGHTS AND GENDERMAINSTREAMING?

Policy developments have traditionally been considered within the context ofspecific countries. However, the development of gender mainstreaming hasnot been centred in nationally based processes, but from the start has involvedtransnational processes.

In the analysis of globalisation there is a question as to how exactly politicsand policies are transferred from one location to another. As Chabot andDuyvendak (2002) note, many contributors to this field are more interestedin the political, economic and cultural implications of global developmentsthan in the empirical processes by which transnational transfers of politicalpractices develop. The focus here is on the way in which political processesare involved in globalisation. It has been suggested that new ideas andsocial movements usually develop first in the West, especially the US, thenare transferred to the rest of the world though this notion of one-directional


transfer has been heavily criticised and other directions of movementsuggested (Chabot and Duyvendak 2002; Snyder 2003).

The process of policy and politics transfer has sometimes been described as aprocess of diffusion. However, the concept of diffusion has connotations thatlimit the range of ways in which this transfer can take place. In particular,some processes involve unequal power so that changes may involve degreesof coercion or compulsion. Gender mainstreaming is an example of a policydevelopment that is not a simple process of diffusion from core countries tothe periphery (Chabot and Duyvendak 2002), but rather one in which thereis complex hybridisation and the development of variations in its forms indifferent locations. The process of gender mainstreaming is associated witha range of processes. These include: advocacy by civil society groups andmovements within a country; transnational advocacy networks (Keck andSikkink 1998; True and Mintrom 2001; Zippel 2004); epistemic communitiesand expert networks (Hoskyns 1996), perhaps drawing on the legitimationof universal human rights (Peters and Wolper 1995; Kelly 2005); isomorphicdevelopment within the European organisational field (Wobbe 2003); legalcompulsion from a trans-national polity such as the EU (Pillinger 1992);legal necessity following other political decisions, such as joining the EU(Barry 2004); a mix of forms of soft law and targets, as in the EU openmethod of policy coordination (Behning and Pascual 2001; Rubery et al.2001; Mosesdottir and Thorbergsdottir 2004). The process may involve amix of processes, for example, pressure from national civil society groups indialogue with transnational experts (Women’s Budget Group 2004; Pillinger2005; Veitch 2005).

Gender mainstreaming is a practice that is at least as well developed (if notbetter) in the South as in the North (Moser this issue). It has often involvedtransnational actors, such as international aid agencies in interaction withboth northern funders and southern planners. Further, there are importantinternational political networks that support activities in ways that defy con-ventional notions of nation and state (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Moghadam2005; Pillinger this volume).

The development of a discourse of universal human rights (Nussbaum 2000),associated with the development of international organisations (Berkovitch1999), forums and political spaces connected with UN developments, suchas conferences for women has been an important contribution to these pro-cesses (Meyer and Prugl 1999; Walby 2002). The human rights approach hasover the past decade been extended to violence against women (Peters andWolper 1995; Kelly this issue). The UN Human Rights conference in Viennain 1993 made a declaration that women’s rights were human rights and thatgender-based violence was a violation of these rights and must be eliminated.This UN declaration defined violence against women as a form of discrimi-nation in order to establish a link to the UN Convention on the Eliminationof All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The processleading up to this declaration as well as since has been a global development,


utilising political spaces opened up by the UN and global communications.The declaration resulted from a global coalition of women from every conti-nent who created a new interpretation of human rights and lobbied for it. Inthis way it contrasts with the development of gender mainstreaming inemployment and related economic domains, which, in European countries,at least, have been far more dependent upon developments within the EUthan at the global level. Kelly (this issue) addresses the development of ahuman rights discourse and its implications for the mainstreaming of concernswith violence against women into social policy.

However, it is important to distinguish between different kinds of rightstraditions, in particular between human rights, civil rights, and equalrights, since they make different kinds of claims with differing levels oflegitimacy in different domains (Ferree 2004). The human rights discoursemight appear to allow for the expression of many of the equality concernsacross a range of forms of structured social inequality simultaneously,while still claiming the possibility of universally relevant standards. Yet,historically the human rights approach has been more concerned withminimum standards than with full equality. So it is to be expected thatthere will be considerable variation in the implications of ‘rights’ discourse,according to the form of this discourse and the domain and location of itsapplication.

There has been a rapid development of national machineries for theadvancement of women in over 100 countries between 1995 and 1997(True and Mintrom 2001). However, the form and resources of these nationalgender machineries is highly uneven, as can be seen in the country reports onthese matters to the 2005 review of the UN Platform for Action, Beijing!10(Beijing! 10 2005). They vary in the positioning of these machineries inrelation to other government departments (for example whether attached tothe Prime Minister’s Office or some other ministry), whether there are associ-ated dedicated ministers or not, whether there are established consultativerelations with civil society organisations, whether tools such as genderimpact assessment and gender budgeting are developed and routinely inuse, and the extent to which they have specially trained personnel andresources of their own (EU Presidency 2005).

The EU has become an important actor in the development of gender main-streaming in the contemporary period. It has used a range of instruments topursue its gender equality agenda, from the hard law of legally binding direc-tives (Pillinger 1992; Hoskyns 1996) to the softer process of the open methodof policy coordination (Behning and Pascual 2001; Mosesdottir andThorbergsdottir 2004; Mosesdottir and Erlingsdottir this issue). These powersrest in the Treaties that constitute the legal basis of the powers of the EU,starting from Article 119 on equal pay in the 1957 Treaty of Rome and devel-oped most especially in the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). Whether or not theywill become further deepened in a European Constitution is yet to be known(Shaw 2002; Lombardo 2005).


Gender mainstreaming has been especially associated with the Open Methodof Coordination in which member states draw up National Action Plans (NAPs)for presentation to the European Commission on the European EmploymentStrategy (EES). The EES is a wide-ranging strategy that has undergoneseveral rounds of revision and now includes issues of social inclusion. In theearliest version equal opportunities for women and men was one of fourpillars. Currently gender equality is one of ten guidelines and includes bothgender mainstreaming and specific equality measures (European Commission2003). The Open Method of Coordination involves member states submittingplans as to how they will reach common agreed targets concerning, forexample, the closing of gender gaps in employment and the raising of the pro-vision of child care. It is intended that member states reach these targets in away consistent with their national contexts. There is considerable discussion asto whether the open method of policy coordination is effective and the extentto which its impact is uneven (Behning and Pascual 2001; Rubery et al. 2001;Zeitlin and Trubeck 2003; Mosesdottir and Thorbergsdottir 2004; Mosesdottirand Erlingsdottir this issue; Rees this issue). Mosesdottir and Thorbergsdottir(2004) in their analysis of the policies within the member states of the EUtowards gender equality and towards the knowledge based society note thatthere exist several country-specific social models, rather than one Europeanmodel. They examine gender mainstreaming within the EES and assess itsimplications for gender equality, noting the importance of the distinctionbetween the hard legally binding directives and the soft nature of the EESbased on textual arguments data and persuasion, and conclude that the draft-ing of the NAPs can be merely a formal exercise of translating the EES intoalready existing employment measures and results.

While it is clear that gender mainstreaming is a major development ingender politics and policies at the discursive level, the extent of its impactin developing policies that make a difference to women’s lives is the subjectof much discussion in the papers in this issue. In addition, it is harder tomeasure impact on lived social relations than to discover the content ofpolicy texts.

There is variation in the practice of gender mainstreaming between differentpolicy domains. Pollack and Hafner-Burton (2000) find that gender main-streaming is implemented quite differently in different policy areas withinthe EU. They discover differences in the implementation of gender main-streaming between five issue areas of the European Union: Structural Funds,employment, development, competition, and science research and develop-ment. They explain these differences in terms of three factors: political oppor-tunities, mobilising structures and networks, and variations in strategicframing by advocates of gender mainstreaming.

Behning and Pascual (2001) present a series of comparative case studies ofgender mainstreaming in the European Employment Strategy, arguing inconclusion that the implementation of gender mainstreaming is significantlyshaped by the nature of the pre-existing gender regime in different countries,


which show identifiable continuities with national paths of development ofgender inequalities. Barry (2004) describes the enormous impact of the EU onIreland following its membership of the EU in 1973. This was not leastbecause the nature of the regulation of gender relations in employment inIreland was so far from the established EU model. For example, Ireland hadto remove its marriage bar that banned married women from working in thecivil service and other areas of employment, in order to comply with EUequal treatment laws. Ireland was also a major recipient of Structural Funds,which accounted for 40 per cent of National Development Plan expenditure,and a condition of this funding was compliance with EU policy on genderequality (Barry 2004). By contrast, countries that also received substantialStructural Funds but where women’s employment was already high enoughto meet EU targets, such as Portugal, were not subject to such pressures tochange their gendered employment regulations for this reason (Ferreira 2004).

This is likely to be the case also for most of the ten countries that joined theEU in May 2004, since many had established high rates of female employmentprior to 1989 (Laas 2004). The different levels of civil society activity, fromformally organised non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to looser typesof grassroots activities, are also likely to make a difference, as Ferriera (2004)argues in the case of Portugal. The EU provides much of the specific legalimpetus behind developments in gender mainstreaming in the UK (Rees1998; Walby 2001b). The UK government adopted gender mainstreaming asthe basis of its gender policy in 1998 (Cabinet Office 1998) and since thenhas been developing a series of instruments to implement this policy (Veitch,this issue), although with somewhat uneven impact (Beveridge et al. 2000).

The transnational level has been a component of the development of gendermainstreaming in almost all places and domains. There is little policy develop-ment that has remained at a national level. The origins of gender mainstream-ing were in development politics, involving transnational aid agencies.Feminists have made effective use of the emerging institutions of globalgovernance, utilising UN processes and expanding the discourse of humanrights so as to include women’s rights to the elimination of male violence.The EU has become a transnational actor that is very important for the contem-porary development of gender mainstreaming, with strengths in promoting thepolicy in abstract, but with weaknesses in implementation. The US is note-worthy for the absence of gender mainstreaming among its gender equalitypolicies. The transfer of the policy is thus not simply from the most powerfulcountries to weaker ones, but takes a more horizontal form that hybridisesaccording to local conditions.

DIVERSE INEQUALITIES

Gender equality and gender mainstreaming do not take place in isolation fromother forms of inequality. Many other forms of difference and inequality


internally divide the category ‘woman’. There has been increasing attentionpaid to the nature of the relationships between these diverse forms of inequal-ity and their implication for the theory and practice of gender mainstreaming(Hankivsky 2004; Squires 2005). On the one hand, attention to other inequal-ities may dilute the effort spent on gender mainstreaming if resources areallocated elsewhere, if there is loss of focus, if there is loss of appreciationof the specific structural causes of inequality, or if there is competition overthe priority accorded to different forms of inequalities. On the other hand,the outcome of gender mainstreaming may be strengthened if there were con-certed actions of previously separate communities and initiatives on agreedpriorities for intervention, and if it were to lead to a strengthening ofprocedures for deliberative democracy (DTI 2004; Squires 2005).

The development of EU equality policy is currently shaped by the process ofimplementation of Article 13 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, which provides alegal basis for the removal of discrimination on at least six grounds: gender,ethnicity and race, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation and age,and which comes fully into effect in 2006. This potentially repositionsgender mainstreaming within a wider mix of equality and diversity issues.The implications for gender mainstreaming appear complex. For example,there is a question as to whether these regulations will entail the creation ofmore equality commissions, one for each of the strands, or whether existingequalities bodies are to be merged into a new body that addresses them all.Would the integration of the relevant governmental agencies entail the disper-sal of expertise, loss of contact with the specific constituencies, and a dilutedapproach, or can it be an opportunity for levelling up to the best legislation forany one of the groups, more efficient deployment of resources, and a strongerapproach? Are the equality tools needed by diverse disadvantaged groupssufficiently similar that they can share institutional spaces rather than eachneeding their own?

In response to this EU initiative, the UK is revising its own equality commis-sions. The UK is creating a new single Commission for Equality and HumanRights (DTI 2004) that addresses all equalities issues together with humanrights issues. This is to replace the three existing Commissions for gender(Equal Opportunities Commission), race and ethnicity (Commission forRacial Equality) and disability (Disability Rights Commission) and additionallyaddress the inequalities associated with religion and belief, sexual orientationand age and human rights issues. Despite disparate legislation for each of theseissues, there is no proposal for a single integrative act, merely modifications toexisting acts, leaving different legal standards for complaints and interven-tions. However, there is a renewed commitment to the implementation of aduty on public bodies to promote gender equality, in a manner comparableto the existing duty in relation to race and the promise of one for disability.The implications of these proposed changes have yet to be seen.

The development of new institutions to address a wider range of inequalitieshas proceeded along with the development of complex theoretical debates


about their intersection (Scott 1988; Felski 1997; Fraser 1997; Walby 2001a).To some extent, they overlap with the debates on sameness/differencediscussed above (Young 1990; Ferree et al. 2002), though with the additionof some new concepts, such as that of ‘intersectionality’ to capture themutual constitution of gender, race, class and other inequalities (Crenshaw1991; Collins 1998). While early concerns focused on the cross-cutting ofgender inequalities by ethnicity and class, the inequalities and differencesnow considered are more numerous, extending at least to include sexuality,disability, religion, nationality and age. Indeed, class is now more oftentreated implicitly, embedded within concepts of ‘poverty’ (Kabeer 2003),‘social exclusion’ and ‘pay’, than as a focus of theoretical debate. Ferree(2004) addresses the inter-relationship of gender, race and class politicswithin the context of frame theory and comparative national institutionaldevelopments. She shows how different contexts provide different opportu-nities and obstacles for the development of gender equality projects, whichare, accordingly, shaped by these conditions.

The relationship between gender inequality and other complex inequalitiesis an important but unresolved debate in both gender mainstreaming practiceand in feminist theory. The dilemma of either abstracting and naming disad-vantaged categories or of integrating with consequent loss of visibility andfocus is common to both arenas. There is a two-way street in the exchangeof ideas and analysis that makes this a fertile area for both theory and practice.

THIS ISSUE

Gender mainstreaming is a new and essentially contested form of feministpolitics and policy, existing in the tension between the mainstream and inter-ventions to secure gender equality. The papers in this issue address the extentto which gender mainstreaming has made an impact on the world, oftenconcluding that while there has been some progress, there is much that hasnot changed. Most papers suggest that the greatest advances have takenplace in the development of the concepts and terminology and in the establish-ment of some form of gender policy. On the question of whether these changeshave yet led to substantive changes in women’s lives, the papers range fromcautious to sceptical, overall suggesting uneven development at this time.

As Kelly argues, there has been a rapid and substantial incorporation ofgender equality into human rights discourse, as a result of the activities ofthe violence against women movement with potentially far-reaching conse-quences in positioning these gendered issues on agendas of policy bodieslong thought remote from such concerns, but which has not yet delivered sub-stantive changes. Mosesdottir and Erlingsdottir, analysing what is arguablyone of the more advanced examples of gender mainstreaming in EU employ-ment policy, show how this development has been limited by its discursiveconstruction as well as the failure to empower key gendered actors. Grosser


and Moon show how gender mainstreaming might lead to the inclusion ofgender equality issues in corporate governance via the corporate socialresponsibility agenda, but report potential rather than substantive develop-ments. Rees argues that gender mainstreaming does have transformativepotential for gender inequality, but that its development has been unevenand weakened by its subordination to other policy goals. Veitch showshow signing up to the principles behind gender mainstreaming by the UKgovernment is insufficient to achieve change unless resources are alsoallocated.

The content of the ‘gender equality’ that is being mainstreamed is not auniversal given, but rather varies according to context and over time.Eveline and Bacchi explore the theoretical underpinnings of various concep-tualisations of gender equality that have been invoked by gender mainstream-ing practitioners and argue for the importance of treating gendering as aprocess of gender-as-becoming, rather than as something that is fixed. Theydemonstrate how this theoretical approach helps us to understand differencesin gendered policy development in different countries. Rees discusses theimplications of three different models of gender equality, based on equalitythrough sameness, equal valuation of difference, and transformation for theuneven development of gender mainstreaming. The intersection of genderwith other complex forms of inequality has challenging implications for aprimary focus on gender within gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming is a leading-edge example of the potential impli-cations of globalisation for gender politics. Gender mainstreaming oftendraws on transnational processes, involving transnational networks andagencies and the discourse of universal human rights. These developmentsare facilitated by the rise of global processes and institutions, such as theUN. Kelly shows how feminist activity to eliminate violence against womenbecame a transnational global movement that mainstreamed violenceagainst women into the discourse of human rights. In successfully declaringsuch women’s rights as human rights they transformed the concept ofhuman rights and created a new discursive platform for further feministaction. This new articulation of feminist demands has potential pitfalls aswell as advantages and it remains an open question as to its ultimate effect.Moser shows how transnational aid agencies have been important in innovat-ing gender mainstreaming terminology, policies and practices, though withweaknesses in implementation. Pillinger shows the importance of trans-national trade unions in gender mainstreaming around issues of the genderpay gap. Certain forms of gender mainstreaming have, despite their evidentweaknesses, provided a new basis for feminist solidarity and action at aglobal level.

Kelly’s article broadens the range of gender mainstreaming beyond the moreusual economic issues by focusing on violence against women. She examinesthe processes by which women’s concerns about violence were mainstreamedinto the discourse on universal human rights at a global level. This process was


not initially conceived as one of gender mainstreaming, although on reflectionit might be considered as an example of one. It is rather the mainstreaming ofviolence against women into human rights discourse. The use and transform-ation of the discourse of human rights is seen simultaneously as a source ofstrength in that it was a vocabulary and machinery that facilitated the trans-cending of differences between women, and provided access to the UN, yet alsoto have limitations precisely because of a shift from a focus on domination andoppression.

Eveline and Bacchi treat the content of the concept of ‘gender equality’that is being mainstreamed as an open question rather than one that canbe derived from fundamental principles. In order to identify and illuminatethe content of ‘gender equality’ in gender mainstreaming practice, theyapply insights from the history of gender theory, showing how differentdevelopments in gender theory are reflected in the diverse meanings ofgender equality found in gender mainstreaming practice in differentcountries, particularly Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands, but moderatedby the diverse political environments. They argue for the importance ofdeveloping an active sense of ‘gendering’ rather than the use of ‘gender’ asa rather static adjective.

Mosesdottir and Erlingsdottir provide a comparison of the implementationof gender mainstreaming in Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands,Spain, Hungary and Iceland, some of which were subject to the EU, somenot. They focus on the European Employment Strategy, a policy area wheregender mainstreaming has been most developed, and on the selection of theactors who motivate the process. They argue that a problem creating poorand uneven implementation has been the poor representation of women inelected bodies and among the social partners, who might be charged withleading the process. Nevertheless, they argue that the EU has played a positiverole in promoting gender mainstreaming.

Grosser and Moon widen the arena for gender mainstreaming, arguing forits extension to the agenda of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSRincludes practices such as widening the range of perceived relevant stake-holders and increasing their participation. Gender mainstreaming couldmean increasing the proportion of women on the Board as well as changingpolicies at corporate level. Gender mainstreaming here has the potential totake gender equality issues to new domains; however, the link with CSR isonly just beginning to be made.

Rees sets out a model of gender mainstreaming that draws on universalprinciples. The uneven development of gender mainstreaming is seen as aconsequence of divergent economic, social and political circumstances. Sheexamines the varied development of the concept and its application to practicein various countries of the European Union. She argues that the tensionbetween gender equality and the mainstream remains strong, with gendermainstreaming often used as a means of delivering on mainline policygoals, but nevertheless remains confident of its transformative potential.


The ‘Conversations’ section of this issue focuses on the diverse applicationsof gender mainstreaming as experienced by its practitioners around the world.Moser provides a nuanced assessment of the successes and challenges ingender mainstreaming in countries of the South, involving northern-basedinternational aid agencies, in four different stages. Stage one, the developmentof the terminology, and stage two, getting a gender policy in place, have seenthe greatest advances. However, stage three, implementing gender main-streaming, and stage four, evaluating or auditing practice, are much lessadvanced. There are problems of policy evaporation, invisibilisation ofgendered successes, as well as resistance. Yet, despite these problems, thedevelopment of robust methodologies and good practices in the South mayprovide useful insights for those in the North for whom gender mainstreamingprocesses are perhaps not quite as far advanced. Pillinger describes processesof gender mainstreaming in gender pay equity work in the campaigns bypublic service workers around the world. The international networks support-ing these interventions show immense flexibility and strength in difficultcircumstances. Veitch provides an insider’s view of gender mainstreaming inthe UK government since 1997, providing a detailed account of its successes,remaining challenges and potential for the future. Both Veitch and Pillingerconclude that building capacity is an important part of the process ofgender mainstreaming.

These papers contributed to and draw from an ESRC funded seminar serieson gender mainstreaming. Others are published as a special issue of SocialPolitics (2005).

CONCLUSIONS

Gender mainstreaming is a new development in feminist practice that seeks tonormalise policies for gender equality. While most frequently understood as aspecialised tool of the policy world, it is also a feminist strategy that draws onand can inform feminist theory. It is subject to two-way development as a resultof both theoretical analysis and policy practice, which interact in this arena.

Gender mainstreaming is essentially contested since it is constituted inthe tension between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘gender equality’. There are manydifferent forms of gender mainstreaming, not least because of the differentvisions of and theories of gender equality and of the social and politicalprocesses that might constitute routes towards such a goal. Gender main-streaming is always situated in the context of other diverse and intersectinginequalities. The practical recognition of such intersectionality is a currentmajor concern. Gender equality practitioners have gone beyond the analysisof stable categories of women and men to more subtle and complex accountsof fluid gender-inflected discourses. For both, it goes beyond the practice ofadding women as a separate topic, to the integration of gender into theheart of the practice or concept.


Gender mainstreaming has involved new forms of political practice and alli-ances. In particular, it involves elected women in parliament, the developmentof specialised gender machinery in government, as well as gender expertise incivil society from universities to grassroots organisations. Expertise is a formof power, often neglected in conventional analysis, which is increasinglydeployed by those representing gendered interests in and against the state.Practitioners report the importance of building the appropriate expert capacityin order to implement gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming is highly diverse with uneven impacts. It is situatedwithin the development of transnational global politics, of multi-lateral formsof governance such as the UN and the transnational polity of the EuropeanUnion, as well as the development of diverse global discourses of humanrights that transcend country boundaries, each of which have disparateoutcomes when in articulation with country differences.

Sylvia WalbyInstitute of Women’s Studies

Faculty of Social Sciences and HumanitiesLancaster UniversityLancaster LA1 4YD

UKE-mail: [email protected]

References

Bacchi, C. L. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics: The Construction of Policy Problems.London: Sage.

Barry, U. 2004. ‘Gender Mainstreaming and National Policy: Experience from Ireland’.Paper presented to ESRC Gender Mainstreaming Seminar, Leeds, May.

Behning, U. and Pascual, A. S. (eds) 2001. Gender Mainstreaming in the EuropeanEmployment Strategy. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute.

Beijing! 10: ProgressMadeWithin the EuropeanUnion. 2005. Report of the LuxembourgPresidency of the Council of the European Union (Anne-Marie Theisen, NadineSpoden, Mieke Verloo and Sylvia Walby). Luxembourg: Luxembourg Presidency,Ministry of Equal Opportunities.

Berkovitch, N. 1999. From Motherhood to Citizenship: Women’s Rights andInternational Organizations. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

Beveridge, F., Nott, S. and Stephen, K. 2000. ‘Mainstreaming and the Engendering ofPolicy-making: A Means to an End?’, Journal of European Public Policy 7 (3):385–405.

Budlender, D., Elson, D., Hewitt, G. and Mukhopadyay, T. (eds) 2002. Gender BudgetsMake Cents: Understanding Gender Responsive Budgets. London: CommonwealthSecretariat.

Cabinet Office 1998. Policy Appraisal for Equal Treatment. Available at http://www.womens-unit.gov.uk/1999/equal.htm.


Chabot, S. and Duyvendak, J. W. 2002. ‘Globalization and TransnationalDiffusion Between Social Movements: Reconceptualizing the Dissemination ofthe Gandhian Repertoire and the “Coming Out” Routine’, Theory and Society31: 697–740.

Collins, P. H. 1998. ‘It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation’,Hypatia, 13 (3): 62–82.

Council of Europe 1998. Gender Mainstreaming: Conceptual Framework, Methodologyand Presentation of Good Practices. Council of Europe. EG-S-MS (98) 2 rev.

Crenshaw, K. W. 1991. ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, andViolence Against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–99.

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 2004. Fairness for All: A New Commission forEquality and Human Rights. Cmd 6185. Accessed at http://www.dti.gov.uk/access/equalitywhitepaper.pdf on 14 May 2004.

Dex, S. 2004. ‘The Business Case for Family Friendly Policies’. Paper presented to ESRCGender Mainstreaming Seminar, DTI London, February.

Elson, D. 1998. ‘The Economic, the Political and the Domestic: Businesses, States andHouseholds in the Organisation of Production’, New Political Economy 3 (2).

European Commission 2003. Council Decision of 22 July 2003 (2003/578/EC) onguidelines for the employment policies of the Member States. Official Journal ofthe European Union L 197/13, 05.08.2003.

Felski, R. 1997. ‘The Doxa of Difference’, Signs 23 (1): 1–22.Ferree, M. M. 2004. ‘The Frame-work of Gender Politics: Race, Class and Gender

Discourses in the Context of European Integration’. Paper presented to ESRCGender Mainstreaming Seminar, Leeds, May.

Ferree, M. Marx, Gamson, W. A., Gerhards, J. and Rucht, D. 2002. ‘Four Models of thePublic Sphere in Modern Democracies’, Theory and Society 31: 289–324.

Ferreira, V. 2004. ‘Gender Mainstreaming Against the Stream of State Reformism:An Analysis of the Equality Policies in Portugal’. Paper presented to ESRCGender Mainstreaming Seminar, Leeds, May.

Fraser, N. 1997. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition.London: Routledge.

Hankivsky, O. 2004. ‘GenderMainstreaming vs. DiversityMainstreaming: A PreliminaryExamination of the Role and Transformative Potential of Feminist Theory’. Paperprepared for the Canadian Political Science Association Meeting, 5 June.

Hanmer, J. 1996. ‘The Common Market of Violence’, in Amy Elman, R. (ed.) Sexual Poli-tics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, pp. 131–45. Oxford:Berghahn Books.

Hoskyns, C. 1996. Integrating Gender: Women, Law and Politics in the European Union.London: Verso.

IDRC 2005. ‘Gender Responsive Budgeting’. Accessed on 26 May 2005 at http://www.gender-budgets.org/en/ev-64152-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.

Jahan, R. 1995. The Elusive Agenda: Mainstreaming Women in Development. London:Zed Books.

Kabeer, N. 2003. Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the MillenniumDevelopment Goals. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.


Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. 1998.Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in Inter-national Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Laas, A. 2004. ‘Fitting Concepts, Fitting Societies’. Paper presented to ESRC GenderMainstreaming Seminar, Leeds, May 2004.

Lombardo, E. 2005. ‘Integrating or Setting the Agenda? Gender Mainstreaming in theEuropean Constitution-making Process’, Social Politics 12 (3).

Mazey, S. 2000. ‘Introduction: Integrating Gender – Intellectual and “Real World”Mainstreaming’, Journal of European Public Policy 7 (3): 333–45.

Meyer, M. K. and Prugl, E. (eds) 1999. Gender Politics in Global Governance. Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Moghadam, V. 2005. Globalising Women. John Hopkins University Press.Moser, C. 1993. Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training.

London: Routledge.Mosesdottir, L. and B. Thorbergsdottir 2004. ‘European Policies Facilitating and Mana-

ging Change Towards the Knowledge Based Society and Gender Equality’. Accessedat www.bifrost.is/wellknow.

Nussbaum, M. C. 2000. Sex and Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.Peters, J. and Wolper, A. (eds) 1995. Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International

Feminist Perspectives, London: Routledge.Pietila, H. 1996. Making Women Matter: The Role of the United Nations. London: Zed

Books.Pillinger, J. 1992. Feminising the Market: Women’s Pay and Employment in the

European Community. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Pollack, M. A. and Hafner-Burton, E. 2000. ‘Mainstreaming Gender in the European

Union’, Journal of European Public Policy 7 (3): 432–56.Rai, S.M. (ed.) 2003.Mainstreaming Gender, Democratising the State? InstitutionalMech-

anisms for the Advancement of Women. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Rees, T. 1998.Mainstreaming Equality in the European Union, Education, Training and

Labour Market Policies. London: Routledge.Rubery, J., Grimshaw, D., Smith, M. and Figueiredo, H. 2001. Gender Equality and

the European Employment Strategy: An Evaluation of the NAPs for Employment2001, European Expert Group on Gender and Employment Report to theEqual Opportunities Unit, DG Employment. Available at http://www.umist.ac.uk/management/ewerc/egge/egge.htm.

Scott, J. W. 1988. ‘Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: or, the Uses of Poststruc-turalist Theory for Feminism’, Feminist Studies 14 (1): 33–49.

Sen, G. 2000. ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Finance Ministries’,World Development 28 (7):1370–1390.

Sharp, R. and R. Broomhill 2002. ‘Budgeting for Equality: The Australian Experience’,Feminist Economics 8 (1): 25–47.

Shaw, J. 2002. ‘The European Union and Gender Mainstreaming: Consti-tutionally Embedded or Comprehensively Marginalised?’, Feminist Legal Studies10: 213–26.

Snyder, M. 2003. ‘Women Determine Development: The Unfinished Revolution’, Signs29 (2): 619–32.


Squires, J. 1999. ‘Re-thinking the Boundaries of Political Representation’, in Walby, S.(ed.) New Agendas for Women, pp. 169–89. London: Macmillan.

Squires, J. 2005. ‘Is Mainstreaming Transformative? Theorising Mainstreaming in theContext of Diversity and Deliberation’, Social Politics 12 (3).

True, J. 2003. ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy’, International FeministJournal of Politics 5 (3): 368–96.

True, J. and Mintrom, M. 2001. ‘Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Caseof Gender Mainstreaming’, International Studies Quarterly 45 (1): 27–57.

Verloo, M. 2001. Another Velvet Revolution? Gender Mainstreaming and the Politics ofImplementation. IWM working Paper No. 5/2001. Vienna: Institute for HumanSciences.

Verloo, M. 2005. ‘Reflections on the Concept and Practice of the Council of EuropeApproach to Gender Mainstreaming’, Social Politics 12 (3).

Vinnicombe, S. 2004. ‘The Business Case for Women Directors’. Paper presented toESRC Gender Mainstreaming Seminar, DTI London 2004.

Walby, S. 2001a. ‘From Community to Coalition: The Politics of Recognition asthe Handmaiden of the Politics of Redistribution’, Theory, Culture and Society 18(2-3): 113–35.

Walby, S. 2001b. ‘Gender Mainstreaming in the European Employment Strategy: theBritish Case’ in Behning, U. and Serrano Pascual, A. (eds) Gender Mainstreamingin the European Employment Strategy, pp. 221–49. Brussels: European TradeUnion Institute.

Walby, S. 2002. ‘Feminism in a Global Era’, Economy and Society 31 (4): 533–57.Walby, S. 2004a. The Cost of Domestic Violence. London: Department of Trade and

Industry Women and Equality Unit.Walby, S. 2004b. ‘The European Union and Gender Equality: Emergent Varieties of

Gender Regime’, Social Politics 11 (1): 4–29.Walby, S. and Olsen, W. 2002. The Impact of Women’s Position in the Labour Market on

Pay and Implications for UK Productivity, London: Department for Trade andIndustry Women and Equality Unit.

Wobbe, T. 2003. ‘From Protecting to Promoting: Evolving EU Sex Equality Norms in anOrganisational Field’, European Law Journal 9 (1): 88–108.

Women’s Budget Group 2004. Women’s Budget Group Response to the 2004 Budget.London: Women’s Budget Group.

Woodiwiss, A. 1998. Globalisation, Human Rights and Labour Law in Pacific Asia.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Woodward, A. 2003. ‘European Gender Mainstreaming: Promises and Pitfalls ofTransformative Policy’, Review of Policy Research 20 (1): 65–88.

Young, I. M. 1990. Justice and Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Zeitlin, J. and Trubek, D. M. (eds) 2003.Governing Work andWelfare in a New Economy:European and American Experiments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zippel, K. 2004. ‘Transnational Advocacy Networks and Policy Cycles in the EuropeanUnion: The Case of Sexual Harassment’, Social Politics 11 (1): 57–85.


Original Article

On the Thin Line Between Good Intentions and Creating Tensions: A Viewon Gender Programmes in Muslim Contexts and the (Potential) Positionof Islamic Aid Organisations

Bruno De Cordier

Conflict Research Group, Centre for Third World Studies, Ghent University, Ghent.

Abstract The relationship between religion and development remains a contentious issue,especially when it comes to the position of women in the Muslim world. Western and internationalgender approaches encounter the limits of their effectiveness and legitimacy for reasons that have asmuch to do with global political factors as well as contextual issues. Adequate gender approachesoften require engagement with social actors and with the culture ‘as they are’, including religiousactors, even if the values they espouse are often considered incompatible with international stan-dards, or they do not correspond to the kinds of partners that many Western actors and local secularelites desire. Is there an Islamic alternative in this regard? Through three case studies set in majorityMuslim contexts characterised by a high degree of social mobility, this article looks into the questionof how and to what extent Islamic faith-based aid organisations anticipate or tackle such challenges.

Le lien entre religion et developpement reste une question controversee, particulierement lorsqu’ils’agit de la situation des femmes dans le monde musulman. La legitimite et l’efficacite des approchesoccidentales et internationales quant aux questions de genres sont limitees en raison aussi bien defacteurs politiques mondiaux que de facteurs contextuels. Il est souvent necessaire d’aborder laquestion des differences de genre en collaborant avec les acteurs sociaux ‘tels qu’ils sont’ – et cecicomprend les acteurs religieux – et en prenant compte et du context culturel, meme si les valeursassociees a celui-ci sont souvent considerees comme incompatibles avec les normes internationales,et meme s’ils ne correspondent pas aux types de partenaires avec lesquels les acteurs occidentaux etelites laıques locales souhaitent s’associer. Existe-t-il une alternative islamique a cet egard? Cet articlese base sur trois etudes de cas realisees dans des contextes majoritairement musulmans caracterisespar un fort degre de mobilite sociale afin d’examiner comment et dans quelle mesure les organisa-tions musulmanes d’aide au developpement anticipent et abordent de tels defis.

European Journal of Development Research (2010) 22, 234–251. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2010.2Published online 11 February 2010

Keywords: cultural proximity; faith-based organisations; gender; Jordan; Pakistan; social change

Introduction

It has long been commonplace to state that the relationship between religion, culture anddevelopment, as well as the role of religious actors and institutions in development andhumanitarian relief, are contentious issues, particularly when it comes to the position ofwomen in the Muslim world.1 Despite this widespread awareness, whether internationaland ‘Western’ gender concepts have met their limits in the global periphery, and whetherreligion and religion-based approaches are part of the problem or part of a solution – orat least a more adequate approach – remain challenging dilemmas. This has especiallybecome clear in the polarised global climate of the late 1990s and early 2000s, during

r 2010 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811European Journal of Development Research Vol. 22, 2, 234–251

www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/

which aid actors were often accused of harbouring hidden political agendas. This occurrednot only in different parts of what is labelled for the sake of convenience ‘the Muslimworld’, but also in former Soviet Eurasia.2 Drawing on the examples of several differentMuslim contexts, this article aims to examine why dominant ‘Western’(-associated) genderapproaches have encountered their limits, and to explore the alternative approaches opento faith-based aid actors. In particular, it seeks to understand what cultural proximitythrough religious ties can mean for development.

Facade of Reality?

The global aid sector has been affected, violently at times, by a climate of geopoliticalpolarisation during the past decade (Fontaine, 2004 and De Cordier, 2009b, pp. 675–677).Even though this may change now that the current US administration seems to be optingfor a different, less conflictual approach towards ‘the Muslim world’, gender activitiesinitiated or funded by ‘Western’ and international aid actors in majority Muslim contextsremain controversial as they touch upon fundamental cultural and social issues that are, inone way or another, linked to religion and to religious actors and institutions. As the‘classical’ and dominant Western aid approaches are often secular in nature and agenda,or at least perceived to function as channels to promote secularism, these have come underincreasing scrutiny and suspicion in several contexts, from both local opinion leaders andtarget groups alike (see Wigger, 2005; Donini and Minear, 2007).

Although the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination AgainstWomen (CEDAW, 1982) enshrined gender equality and the advancement of women as adevelopmental issue, the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA, 1995) and the MillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs, 2000) are generally considered to be milestones for gendermainstreaming in development aid, at least among traditionally dominant aid donors andactors. According to Lila Abu-Lughod (2009, p. 83), ‘building on the UN conferences onwomen that started in 1975 and led to other initiatives, the appropriate arena of women’srights work has been redefined from the national to the international’. Yet, she continues,‘it is ironic that these achievements may be shoring up arguments for foreign interventionsthat have complex and sometimes dangerous consequences for women in various societiesin the Muslim world. Is there a way to make the case for the rights and empowerment ofwomen in ways that do not become ground for arguments about the ‘clash of civilizations’and their associated political, economic, and military agendas? What are the regionalconsequences of the new internationalism of women’s rights? Finally, must this transna-tionalism dictate the language in which rights are framed today?’

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assis-tance Committee (OECD–DAC) defines gender activities as activities that are ‘intended toadvance gender equality and women’s empowerment or reduce discrimination andinequalities based on sex’. More specifically, it states that these activities are to ‘reducesocial, economic or political power inequalities between women and men, ensure thatwomen benefit equally from the activity, or compensate for past discrimination’, or‘develop or strengthen gender equality or anti-discrimination policies, legislation or in-stitutions’ (OECD, 2007). According to the statistics available, the share of aid by OECD–DAC countries for activities with gender equality and women’s empowerment either astheir principal or a significant goal, amounted to an annual average of 25.5 per cent of aidbetween 2001 and 2005, and to 29 per cent in 2006 and 2007. Two-thirds of OECD–DAC

Islamic Aid Organisations and Gender Programmes

235r 2010 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811European Journal of Development Research Vol. 22, 2, 234–251

aid related to gender equality and the empowerment of women disbursed between 1999and 2003 was in the social sectors, especially basic education and basic health, includingpopulation and reproductive health, in line with the UNMDGs (OECD, 2007, 2008; IDA,2008, p. 3). In contrast, there are few overall figures on the amount of aid for genderequality and women’s empowerment from non-DAC sources, and from private and in-stitutional Islamic actors in particular. This is partly explained by the fact that a sizeableportion of activities initiated or supported by such actors are not reported to internationalinstitutions and coordination bodies, or happen on the basis of informal – or at least lessinstitutionalised – channels and networks. Yet, Islamic gender or gender-related activitiesdo exist. They range from classical charity for widows to income generation programmesand the organisation of girls’ education. Islamic aid organisations sometimes refer tointernational agendas like the MDGs, but at the same time (claim to) embody andadvocate a specific form and approach of aid presumably rooted in the Islamic tradition ofcharitable activities (Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan, 2003, pp. 82–84).

Gender as a Frontline Issue

Good Intentions, Hidden Agendas?

In the changing contemporary global aid and conflict landscape, the legitimacy of inter-national gender norms and the goals that are enshrined in gender-related UN conventionsand treaties, and which correspond to those primarily promoted by international genderorganisations and their local partners, can no longer be taken for granted. This is espe-cially – but not only – the case in majority Muslim environments (see Oxfam–UK, 2004,p. 4). What makes gender a contentious aid issue? Different factors play a role here.Perhaps most obviously, Orientalism has had a long-standing effect on Western percep-tions and approaches (Said, 1978). More recently, however, is the emergence of a globalparadigm whereby aid has become instrumental in a wider control and security agendathat involves the propagation and implantation of neo-liberal development modelsincluding nation-building in so-called failed states or in post-conflict areas. Even if theprocess was already ongoing before the current conflicts in the Balkans, Afghanistan andIraq, the latter two contexts, in particular, can be considered milestones as it was in theircontext that the idea – real or imagined – of an underlying agenda to aid began to affectthe perception of the aid sector (Donini and Minear, 2007, p. 17).

Mark Duffield (2001, p. 310) points to a post-Cold War security paradigm that isnot based on the accumulation of arms and external political alliances between states, buton changing the conduct of populations inside states through a largely privatised formof security called ‘development’. In the same vein, Olivier Roy (2007, pp. 44–47) hasdescribed how since the mid-1990s, and from 2001 onwards in particular, the developmentpolicies of major donors and international financial institutions – the United Nations, theEuropean Union and the International Financial Institutions – became soaked throughwith neo-liberal democratisation doctrines that were often developed by academics,think-tanks and foundations from the United States, whose overall aim is to create theconditions for an indigenous democratisation process, but one that has to be based onuniversal – that is, essentially American – political and ethical values.

This contributed to the particular attention given to gender issues in the Muslim world.As Roy (2007, p. 45) suggests, ‘most development programmes that emerge within this

De Cordier

236 r 2010 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811European Journal of Development Research Vol. 22, 2, 234–251

framework have a women and gender chapter, which of course privilege the individualemancipation of women: women politicians, women entrepreneurs. Many programmesstipulate that those who want to benefit must guarantee quotas of women in theirstructures and among their beneficiaries (that sometimes) are not even reached in (most)Western countries. There is an ironic parallel with Soviet policies in Central Asia in the1930s: failing (anything else), women are promoted the main agent of change’. (for a morespecific discussion of Afghanistan in this regard, see Abu-Lughod, 2002; Kandiyoti, 2007,2009 and Moghadam, 2007).

Another factor that contributed to the increased attention to gender and women’s issuesin Muslim contexts is the sensationalist and emotional coverage of the real and supposedpredicament of ‘women under Islam’ in popular Western and international media. Storiesabout acid being thrown on women in Bangladesh, female circumcision in Somalia or themobile camera images of a young woman being flogged by the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swatvalley all horrified – and fascinated – Western audiences. In the context of a popularimagination and perception already conditioned by prevalent Orientalism, the predica-ment of women under the Taliban has often been generalised as ‘the situation of womenin the Muslim world’, and ‘liberating women from evil Taliban’ rapidly became a fetishcause for a number of ‘salon’ left-wingers, as well as right-wing populist opinion leaders.These, in turn, have contributed to pressure on Western governments to ‘do something’(see also Abu-Lughod, 2002).

The dominating assumption of post-colonial development strategies has long been thatthe development of societies in the global periphery ought to mean becoming ‘like theWest’ – or like the Soviet Union in certain contexts during the Cold War – throughindustrialisation, economic growth, the development of bureaucratic political-adminis-trative institutions and cultural change involving widespread secularisation, whereby re-ligion would at the very least disappear from the public sphere. The end of the Cold War,the flaws or failure of Western and Soviet development models and globalisation haveoverhauled this process and, paradoxically, expanded the space for religion (Kaiser, 2005;De Cordier, 2009b). Dominant gender approaches have long been based on the assump-tion of the superiority of liberal Western (or Socialist) gender concepts, whereby onesupposes that women in Muslim and other non-Western contexts are yearning to become‘emancipated like Western women’. Even though most women at the grassroots level andin the beneficiary communities of aid projects clearly display a desire for some of thefreedoms, knowledge and technical assets that are associated with the West – which theyoften see as meaning access to a better life, however – it can be argued that it is spurious tothink that this automatically means a desire to ‘become Western’.

The gender chapter of a global poll conducted by The Gallup Centre for Muslim Studiesbetween 2001 and 2007 (Esposito and Mogahed, 2007) identifies several relevant opinions inthis regard. First, Muslim women all over the world seem to attach great importance to bothreligion and their rights, and while (they) admire aspects of the West, they do not endorsewholesale adoption of Western values. Second, the majority of Muslim women believe thattheir most urgent needs are not gender issues, but greater political and economic develop-ment. Third, Western or Western-associated advocacy of gender issues is often seen assuspicious due to feminism’s historic role in justifying colonialism, or continuing to justifyneo-colonialism (Esposito and Mogahed, 2007, pp. 122–133).

Respondents to the global poll also pointed out that emancipation in the Western senseof the term often de facto means breaking with social codes and networks that can beoppressive and limiting to various extents, but which also offer social protection in



societies where there is no alternative social safety net. This is a choice that women areoften not willing to make, according to Esposito and Mogahed (2007, pp. 118–119).Moreover, as the director of an international Christian aid organisation working onwomen’s literacy issues in Pakistan also explained: ‘It’s a myth to think that men inMuslim communities want to keep the women subdued and ignorant. yPeople of bothsexes are more pragmatic and more aware of social changes than many think’. In the end,the question that people ask is: ‘what does it brings us when women can read and write orreceive microcredits to start their own businesses?’3

What and Who, Is ‘The Culture’?

Gender is intimately connected to culture as it is to politics and economics. There seems tobe widespread agreement in the development and relief world on the need for culturalsensitivity, that is, to avoid bluntly imposing metropolitan preconceptions when workingwith local communities (Benthall, 2009, p. 1). Certainly, the importance of cultural sensi-tivity in gender interventions is integrated into discourse almost universally nowadays, butthe question remains to what extent it serves as a fig leaf for what essentially amounts to thetransferring of extraneous cultural norms and values. This is a debate that ultimatelydepends very much on what is (meant by) ‘(the) cultural’? In common parlance, culture isoften perceived in its most narrow sense, that is, as different forms of artistic expression.Culture is, however, something wider and more fundamental. Louise Damen (1987, p. 367)defines culture as ‘the learned and shared human patterns or models for living andday-to-day living patterns which pervade all aspects of human social interaction and is, assuch, mankind’s primary adaptive mechanism’. The latter part of Damen’s definition bearsparticular relevance in the development field, for it implicates that culture is an adaptivemechanism towards social change, conflict and the impact of globalisation. As such, it becomesa space for attempts by various aid actors to influence or steer that process of adaptation.

In this regard, as Jonathan Benthall (2009, p. 1) has pointed out, cultural proximitybetween the implementers and beneficiaries of an aid project can give the implementingagency or its principal representatives a special operational advantage. It is in this regardthat secular organisations are increasingly recognising their limits in relation to engagingwith religious actors. As the gender manager of a secular Pakistani NGO explained duringan interview, the cadres of secular NGOs are increasingly torn between two approachesregarding the gender, culture and religion nexus:

Can you speak about gender and culture without touching the issue of religion? The reality is thatin many rural communities, religion and traditionalism are so closely interwoven that it is nearimpossible to untie them. Most NGOs who work through community mobilization involveopinion leaders. And here in Pakistan, these include clerics, for they are part of the communityand its social environment. How far can [a secular] NGO go in that? One group feels that the issueof religion is too controversial and that most secular NGO staff, though Muslim themselves, isinsufficiently well up on religious matters to stand ground against religious opinion leaders oractivists. Therefore, they prefer to focus on concrete achievements and on universal humanitarianvalues even if this increasingly leads to accusations by some that they are westernized and thatthey are spreading Western ideas. The other group feels that if one wants to give sustainability tothe work, religion has to be integrated and instrumentalized when working in conservative areas.If you want to work on women’s rights, for instance, then you have to show that the Quran givesrights to women. These people like to refer to scholars like Rifat Hassan, who re-interpreted theQuran from a woman-friendly perspective. Yet writings like those of Rifat Hassan do not havemuch of an impact at the grassroots level. Local opinion leaders and people say: ‘Well, thatwoman lives in America, so what can she tell us about how we live over here?’4

De Cordier


Who should be engaged with in relation to culturally loaded activities, then? Accordingto Roy (2002, pp. 142–143), building and engaging local actors and civil society ‘is going tobe more meaningful if it is predicated on the social fabric as it exists, rather than onwindow-dressing civil society based on abstract, perceptual models derived from elsewhereof what civil culture ought to be’. Driss El-Yazami adds that ‘partnerships and alliancescan be concluded with society’s actors as they are, including confessional actors andpolitical Islam, on the condition that one does not deviate from or negotiate on a numberof basic common principles about social rights and access to social services’.5 The problemwith ‘Western’ and international gender approaches is that in the contexts in which theyoccur, they often tend to engage with local individuals and organisations who have therequired skills to work in an international environment, and who share – or at least pay lipservice to – the international development discourse, but also often belong to rather‘westernised’ elite groups with a lifestyle and mentality that are remote if not outrightdisconnected from those of the bulk of their supposed beneficiaries.

Because the majority of the activities that they manage or implement, including genderequality and women’s empowerment programmes, are foreign-funded, these elite groupsare also often perceived by communities (or certain segments thereof), by opinion leadersand also by government officials to be basically carrying out foreign agendas. Even if thisshould not be generalised, it is a reality which often undermines international genderactivities, and this for several reasons. First, as has been said above – and as the authorwitnessed himself too – part of the members of the elite groups which tend to be well-represented among local staff of large NGOs, UN organisations and donor structures,often view the beneficiaries with contempt and associate them with backwardness. Theresulting behaviour is at times condescending or patronising. Second, these elite groupstend to view development priorities differently than their supposed beneficiaries (see alsoRoy, 2002, 2005). The social gaps, and resulting differences in mental frameworks andeveryday lived experiences between certain local staff members and cadres employed byinternational NGOs and UN organisations, and the local communities being intervenedin, or even wider society, sometimes form a substantial problem for the coherent im-plementation of gender – and sometimes other – development activities, especially whenthese have an inherently cultural dimension (De Cordier, 2008, 2009a).

Third, international gender policies and ideas are often monopolised by an elite groupwhile little trickles down. For example, in a case study drawing on data from two formerlySoviet Eurasian countries, Megan Simpson (2006, pp. 23–24) notes how gender activitiesthere were dominated and determined by a handful of ‘elite organisations’ in the capitalcities who, ‘compared to the bulk of women’s NGOs and certainly to women in general,wield exceptional knowledge of global platforms like CEDAW, often using these docu-ments in their own work. These organisations, most prevalent in the capital, thrive off theeconomic and political power concentrated in urban centres, where international orga-nisations maintain headquarters, formulate projects and enjoy relative logistical ease’. ForSimson, then, few women’s organisations – let alone, women in general – outside the majorcentres of power know of the BPfA, CEDAW or the MDGs, seen as key instruments forthe promotion of gender. These largely circulate only among core NGOs, the local elite,donors and to a lesser degree state ministries. As such, ‘they are not useful to ‘‘real’’women; rather, they are resources to facilitate the de facto inclusion of a select few into theinternational community’ (Simpson, 2006, p. 24).

Several of Simpson’s observations are relevant beyond the countries that she examines.To an extent, they also apply to various intellectual, women-friendly interpretations of the



Quran, which also rarely reach the ‘real’ women in, say, a suburban township inRawalpindi (Pakistan), a Palestinian refugee settlement in Jordan, or a former collectivefarm in rural Tajikistan. Although states, international NGOs, and UN agencies rightfullyargue that they have involved and consulted women from all over the world, women at thegrassroots level often do not at all feel represented by these women, who are educatedabroad and have adopted secular mindsets that are incompatible with their copingmechanisms. Therefore, women in these specific Muslim contexts often refer to gendermainstreaming and similar interventions for gender equality as ‘elitist’, ‘secular’, ‘Western’and ‘neo-colonial’, all of which foster a demonisation of Western initiatives involvingwomen’s empowerment, as well as their inherent politicisation (see Oxfam–UK, 2004, p. 4and Ronhaar, 2009, p. 72).

The ideas of ‘cultural sensitivity’ and ‘gauging or respecting local cultures and tradi-tions’ are clearly being adhered to, or at least being paid lip service to, by most aid actors,whether they be secular international NGOs, UN organisations or donor institutions. Thecrux here, however, is whether the aid actors involved define culture in terms of the cultureas it is, or whether they rather define it in terms of what they would like it to be, oralternatively in terms of a number of idealised cultural elements that are perceived to bepart of the context’s culture but are not, in reality, representative of anything. A strikinganecdotal example of the latter are the numerous international aid workers and con-sultants who set up advocacy campaigns and try to instrumentalise certain ethnic tradi-tions and folklore or remnants of Third World Socialism by which they are personallycharmed, but which are in fact stagnating or not representative of the local culture.6 Moregenerally, as Eva Ronhaar (2009, p. 70). BDC has pointed out, dominant international aidactors – and the local actors employed by or associated with them – often exclude aidbeneficiaries’ own (religious) coping mechanisms (see also Abu-Lughod, 2009, p. 96).Shirin Akiner (1997, p. 62), for example, suggests on the basis of a case study in Tajikistanthat what is seen as a mark of ‘oriental resignation’ or ‘submission’ is most often not that,but a sophisticated coping strategy connected to the will to maintain a certain stability inthe face of conflict and stark social change, ‘to protect central values of society in a timeof fluctuation and stress, and thus a crucial contribution to community life which isfundamental to maintaining community and identity’ (see also Simpson, 2006, p. 20).Although these coping mechanisms do not have to be religious or faith-connected per se,in communities where religion does occupy a more central position in the construction ofsocial identity they are often inextricably religious or at least faith-inspired.

In other words, donor priorities and political agendas, the nature of prevalent devel-opment approaches, the position and attitudes of foreign aid workers, and the westernised,secular urban elites and the NGOs led by them who are engaged in the implementation ofgender programmes, often result in a minimisation of the importance of faith, religiousactors and of women’s own faith-connected coping mechanisms. This affects the percep-tion of international gender(-related) development activities. As a UNDP–UNAIDSadvisor in Tajikistan remarked during an interview: ‘Even if Tajikistan is a former Sovietrepublic that was cut off from the mainstream Muslim world for decades, religious actorsdo have influence at the grassroots level here. yThey are crucial in fighting some of theprejudices and in advocating HIV/AIDS prevention as a religious duty. Nonetheless,we don’t really work with clerics and religious institutions at present. There’s a lot ofreluctance from both our government counterparts and key national UN staff to engagewith clerics, because they consider them as backward and troublemakers. That’s aweakness. During a recent field trip, for instance, I had a long and snappish discussion

De Cordier


with a couple of religious Muslims who felt that foreign HIV/AIDS projects were out toundermine society and impose ‘‘Western values’’. That’s the result’.7

Is There an ‘Islamic’ Alternative?

How do Islamic aid organisations and charities approach gender paradigms, and what istheir actual and potential value added as faith-based organisations in the gender field?Widows and orphans traditionally form a target group in the field of gender for Islamiccharities as they are designated as key beneficiaries of Zakat, the Islamic solidarity tax ortithe (Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan, 2003, pp. 10 and 102–103). Widows and orphans stillform an important target group for various kinds of Islamic charities and aid organisa-tions, although the former have often shifted their activities from classical charity to skillstraining, income generation and microcrediting programmes. Some Islamic charities ad-vocate their women’s and other gender activities as an Islamic way to achieve some of theMDGs; others have established specific women’s branches.

Cultural proximity between aid provider and beneficiaries through a common religionis not guaranteed. The value added of being a faith-based or religious organisation indevelopment activities largely depends on the overall role and place of religion and re-ligious actors in the given context as well as of the nature of that context (De Cordier,2009b, pp. 679–680). Yet, as we have discussed earlier in this article, development aid,especially in heavily cultural fields like gender, is essentially – and for better or worse – amechanism through which to steer the direction of social change in the global periphery.The question that this raises is whether gender programmes are more effective and sus-tainable if they respond to a concrete demand caused by social changes, more than if theyare based on idealism, extraneous ideologies and wishful thinking. Is there an alternativeIslamic approach that serves these purposes?

We will treat this question through a closer examination of three fields where differenttypes of faith-based aid actors can clearly be said to have both actual and potential valueadded to development interventions as faith-based structures: (1) dealing with harmful orburdensome traditions; (2) engaging society’s actors as they are, even if their values andapproaches do not conform to international aid standards; and (3) meeting new genderneeds caused by social change. Each of these challenges is illustrated with a specific casestudy of the activities of an Islamic charity or aid organisation. The activities which we willnow discuss are not gender programmes in the strict sense of the word, yet they do aidprojects that have been confronted at some stage by social change and its impact onthe gender situation. Although they exclusively focus on Islamic actors, some of themechanisms and factors at play may apply to Christian actors in majority Christiancommunities as well.

The Question of ‘Harmful Traditions’

A first sphere where there is, or can be, a specific niche for faith-based aid actors and thereligious actors and institutions who work with them, is taking on traditions that are felt tobe harmful or burdensome, and are often associated with or justified through the Islamicreligion, even if they are often inimical to it. Examples range from female circumcision tohonour killings to the social obligation to organise lavish and often financially cripplingfunerals and weddings. A key question, obviously, concerns who determines which



traditions or practices are harmful and burdensome, and whether they are also perceivedas such among the communities or social categories where these traditions occur. In ouropinion, this is not something that can be done by extraneous actors, whether ‘inter-national’ or ‘westernised local’, without raising questions about hidden agendas. In theircase study of the Al-Afaf Charitable Society in Jordan, Wiktorowicz and Farouki (2000,p. 692) suggest that the society ‘was formed in 1993 in reaction to national survey resultson fertility indicating that the average age of marriage was climbing. [Its] activitiespromote marriage and family formation to encourage reproduction, strengthen Islamicvalues and decrease the likelihood of extra-marital sexual activity. The organisation’smajor activities are collective weddings, a matching service, interest-free loans for marriagepurposes, and seminars and workshops on issues relating to Islam and marriage’. (see alsoWiktorowicz, 2002, pp. 235–236).

In Jordan, lavish ceremonies and heavy dowries mean that marriage costs on averagebetween $8500–10 000 (about five times the per capita income at the time of research),which can result in indebtedness, a postponement of marriage and, thus, the weakening ofthe family and society in general. According to Al-Afaf, the custom of exorbitant marriageexpenditure, which exists region wide, is a result of a convergence of non-Islamic traditionsor supposed tradition, and increasing Western consumerism and cultural imperialism.They advocate that such expenditure should be devoted to ‘proper’ Islamic practices suchas Zakat and sustaining the family (Wiktorowicz and Farouki, 2000, p. 693). The reasonswhy this case is relevant is that Al-Afaf has close ties to the Islamic Action Front party andthe Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which as Janine Clark (2004, p. 51)elaborates in a case study of the Islamic Centre Charity Association, another JordanianIslamic charity connected to the Brotherhood and the Islamic Action Front, draw asubstantial part of their support among pious segments of the middle-class, professionals,academics and prominent Islamic activists (see also Clark, 2007, pp. 157–159).

As such, ‘Al-Afaf can be understood as an institution in the cultural battle for controlof the customs and values that regulate and govern society and individual behavior’, to theextent that ‘its aim has been explicitly characterised as ‘‘a war against the alien traditionsand undesirable customs which have invaded Arab and Islamic societies’’ ’ (Wiktorowiczand Farouki, 2000, p. 692). Al-Afaf’s background and activities represent an alternative,explicitly Islamic approach to a social problem that is not only of gender but also ofeconomic nature. As charities of this kind are usually not driven by or connected to atraditional aid donor, and have a support base and engage social actors that reflect ‘real’society (or at least certain sectors thereof), they can be said to have a potential – if not anactual – advantage to advocate against harmful traditions from an Islamic perspective, atleast among more religious segments of the population.

‘Engaging Society’s Actors as They Are’

A second field where there can be a specific niche for faith-based aid actors and the localreligious actors and institutions who work with them lies in engaging institutions andsocial actors that may not be considered frequentable by international and secular parties,but who are nonetheless an important part of ‘civil society as it is’.8 In this regard, theeducation activities of Muslim Hands in Pakistan are particularly relevant. Like IslamicRelief Worldwide (IRW) which will be discussed in the next section, Muslim Hands is oneof several aid organisations that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s among establishedPakistani, Arab and Bangladeshi immigrant communities in the United Kingdom. Islamic

De Cordier


aid organisations of this category usually divorce aid from proselytism, while combiningan Islamic identity and discourse with operational approaches, communications andfundraising techniques that are directly borrowed – albeit in an adapted form – from‘classical’ Western aid organisations.

Muslim Hands supports a network of some 115 primary and lower secondary schoolsin all four provinces of Pakistan, plus the capital Islamabad and the Pakistan-administeredsector of Jammu and Kashmir. Asked about the reasons for his organisation’s emphasison education, Muslim Hands Pakistan’s education programme manager explained that‘[we] consider education to be the engine for social mobility and, as such, instrumentalagainst poverty. See, when we did the needs assessment before starting this programme, wefound out there was a clear need for technical and IT skills and, especially, financiallyaccessible education. The reality nowadays is that many families send their children toprivate schools because that is associated with quality education. Yet that is somethingthat the poorer strata of society and orphans in particular cannot afford. So that is thegoal: quality education that is accessible for more vulnerable groups’.9

According to management data, in 2006 Muslim Hands’ education network in Pakistancovered four schools of excellence, 41 model schools and 69 community schools with atotal of about 12 000 students, both girls and boys. Muslim Hands’ support consisted ofpaying the salaries of the teachers, the management and support staff, sponsoring theschools’ overhead and utility costs, providing training for teachers and sponsoring booksand uniforms for students (only 33 per cent of students in the model schools are payingstudents). The programme also handed out stipends to male and female students outsideits education network.10 The large majority of teachers in Muslim Hands’ schools ofexcellence as well as model schools are women, while in community schools most teachersare men (certainly, this was the staffing pattern that we were able to observe in thedifferent schools that we visited in suburban Islamabad, Muzaffarabad and in Karachi).The Muslim Hands programme management staff explained that the very low rate offemale teachers in the community schools was due to the lack of qualified women in thevillages, and said that the organisation planned to invest in training so that more femaleteachers could be employed at the village level.11

A relevant aspect of education programmes by faith-based organisations is thewillingness to engage with networks of non-governmental, faith-based forms of educationthat are often incompatible with internationally promoted standards and approaches, butwhich play an important role in society. This is the case, for example, with the madrassas orQuranic schools in Pakistan. There are no reliable statistics concerning the actual number ofmadrassas in Pakistan. As of late 2003, the Delhi-based Institute of Peace and ConflictStudies puts the figure at 28 000 as of late 2003, of which 8000 were officially registered.12

Figures from the Pakistani Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Religious Affairsquoted by the International Crisis Group range between 7000 in the year 2000 and 10430 in2003 (ICG, 2002, p. 2 and 2005, p. 6). The number of students attending madrassa classes atleast for short periods was estimated to vary between 200 000 and 1.7 million, just as theportion of the total number of children enroled in primary education studying at madrassasranged from less than 1 per cent to 33 per cent (Andrabi et al, 2005, pp. 4 and 21–22).Figures do seem to converge on the male-dominated composition of the students, however:43 females for every 100 male students in madrassas.

The controversy about the number of madrassas and, especially, who controls them, ispart of the sharply increased attention paid since 2001 and 2002 to sectarian radicalismand militant connections associated with Pakistan’s Quranic schools.13 The madrassas,



which usually only charge nominal fees, are often considered to be one of the fewaccessible forms of education for the poorer strata of society in Pakistan. Figures from agraduate research project quoted in a 2005 article by Tariq Rahman, for example, reportthat 49 per cent of interviewed madrassa students joined the institution primarily foreconomic reasons, and 41 per cent for social reasons.14 Rahman (2005) – supported by theInternational Crisis Group (2005, p. 6) – further indicates that 77 per cent of students and61 per cent of the teachers came from the poorer strata of Pakistani society. Other sourcesclaim that the importance of poverty in madrassa enrolment is heavily over-rated, quotingthe absence of decent alternatives to government schools and in particular of low-costprivate schools as key factors (Andrabi et al, 2005, p. 22).

Whatever the case may be, Quranic schools clearly play an important role in theabsence of state education services. This is particularly the case in rural areas andsuburban townships with a high degree of horizontal and vertical social mobility. Since2002, Muslim Hands’ Pakistan chapter has implemented a component of its educationprogramme to work with a number of madrassas such as the Idara Ma’aref-ul-Quran(IMQ or Institute for Quranic Learning) in Karachi. The IMQ was founded in mid-1989and is situated in a township with some 10 000 inhabitants in the southern part of Karachi,Pakistan’s economic capital and main port. The area where it is situated started as asettlement for migrants from the Pakistan-controlled sector of Jammu and Kashmir. Inthe 1970s and 1980s, the area also attracted many Christian families who now form overhalf of its population and have a visible presence with several churches. Many of thearea’s inhabitants work as support and household staff – cleaners, guards, cooks, drivers,technicians and so on – in the wealthy Defence Housing Authority area nearby. Eventhough it is one of the poorer areas of Karachi, it is no longer really a slum but more alower middle-class community in the making, at least in certain parts.15 At the time ofresearch, the IMQ had about 400 students. Originally for boys only, it opened to girls in1995, and 37 per cent of students were female in 2006. The majority of the students werefrom the neighbourhood and belonged to immigrant families from Jammu and Kashmir.Some 180 were boarding students, some of whom came from as far away as Wazirabad,a city situated in the northern half of Pakistan.16

Muslim Hands’ education programme paid for the salaries of two IMQ support staff,sponsored 70 orphan students, had equipped a computer class and a vocational-technicaltraining centre for girls and had also installed a water purification system. In return forthis support, the IMQ implemented Qurbani donations for Muslim Hands in the neigh-bourhood, while some of its teachers and graduates taught religion in two Muslim Hands-supported primary schools.17 A senior Muslim Hands Pakistan cadre explained therationale behind this collaboration: ‘Many students from poorer backgrounds depend onthe madrassa networks for education. yThat is a sociological reality. Primary educationis one of the UN Millennium Development Goals. We did a survey in madrassas andfound out that there was a clear demand for subjects that they get in regular schools likeIT knowledge, English and so on. Another reason why we started to work with madrassasis that we want to counter conventional perceptions about them’.18

Although the engagement of Muslim Hands’ education programme with religiousseminaries is still in its initial phase,19 and limited to a few institutions, two factors bearwider relevance for this research. First, we have an example of engagement between civilsociety and what Roy and El Yazami call social actors ‘as they are’. The cooperationbetween Muslim Hands and the IMQ is based on non-governmental religious institutionsthat occupy a niche in the education sphere in a context characterised by high social

De Cordier


mobility and a semi-absent state in the social field. Second, a transnational Islamic NGOuses local Islamic religious institutions to promote universal education for girls and boys.As such, it wants to expand its space in a field that is advocated by the Islamic religion (seeAbuarqub, 2009, pp. 6–8), and is also included in the UN MDGs to which the NGOclaims to subscribe. The limits of universality, however, are set by the highly acculturativenature of education and, as such, its important role in spreading or continuing valuesystems including religion as well as countering the influence of competing value systems.

Social and Economic Change, and its Impact on Gender

The third sphere where there is a real or potential niche for faith-based aid actors and thelocal groups and structures that work with them, is in meeting new gender-related needscaused by social change. The case that we will examine is that of IRW’s Islamic micro-finance project in Nazirabad and Bagysh, two townships in the Pakistani city ofRawalpindi. The townships have a joint population of about 45 000, three-quarters ofwhich are rural–urban migrants. They are located near the Pir Wadhai General Bus Stand,which is Rawalpindi’s first port of call for many migrants from the province. Like manytownships, they have rapidly expanded over the last two decades, and the provision ofsocial infrastructure such as water, sanitation, irrigation or electricity supply has beenunable to keep up with the pace of expansion. Employment is primarily provided by theinformal sector, day labour on construction sites and around the bus station, differenttrades and a large textile mill owned by one of Pakistan’s main land-owning families(Hussain et al, 2006, p. 195).20 Although this part of Rawalpindi is considered to be one ofthe poorer parts of the city, the construction and style of a number of walled familycompounds indicate that part of the population is upwardly mobile. The area also hassizeable Shiite and Christian communities, the latter, according to project staff, formingaround one-tenth of IRW’s beneficiaries in the area.

A substantial proportion of the population cannot obtain loans with commercial banksbecause they do not have either collateral assets, a steady income or permanent residence.In these circumstances, their main sources of credit are relatives, often extortive privateloan providers and different microcredit programmes offered by NGOs and the UnitedNations. This creates a demand niche in which IRW’s project essentially aims to proposean Islamic alternative to the various non-confessional microcredit providers. The pilotphase of IRW’s microcredit programme in Nazirabad and Bagysh began in 2001, while thesecond phase started in 2008.21 Initially, the activity was designed for widows with minororphaned children. This is a popular beneficiary group for Islamic charities, being in manyways the epitome of socially vulnerability, as well as one of the categories deemed eligiblefor Zakat funding (Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan, 2003, pp. 9–10, 102–103). In its secondyear of operation, the programme widened its beneficiary base beyond widows. As theproject manager explained: ‘When we focused on widows the client base proved toolimited after some time. yIt made the project too expensive in terms of overhead andmanagement costs. Since we used a Zakat-funded budget line for widows and orphans,which cannot be used for overhead and management costs, this was no longer justified.Now widows are still beneficiaries. But once we expanded the target group, the genderratio of our programme dramatically shifted from 100 per cent female in the beginning to89 per cent male and 11 per cent female’.22 Over the past few years, however, the project’sgender ratio has shifted again considerably. According to more recent figures provided by



IRW’s project management, in August 2009, of the project’s 242 beneficiaries, 141 or 58per cent were male and 101 or 42 per cent female.23

Besides training in enterprise management, IRW’s programme provides what it callsIslamic microfinance. This respects the fact that usury and interest on loans are generallyproscribed by Islamic Sharia Law, but purchasing goods and selling them to a third partyat a profit is not, and makes use of the latter as a form of lending benefit. This isformalised in a practice called Murabaha, an Arabic term which means ‘mark-up’. Thepractice stands for a sort of cost-plus financing based on a sales contract between thecredit institution and its client for the sale of goods at a price plus an agreed profit marginfor the credit institution.24 The programme’s budget during the pilot phase was entirelyfunded by IRW funds, part of which came from Zakat donations by private donors in theUnited Kingdom. In its current phase, which started in 2008, the project has a funding andtraining partnership with HSBC Amanah, the Islamic finance services division of HSBCGroup.25 The project is not implemented through local NGOs, religious institutions orcommunity organisations, but directly by IRW’s country office in Pakistan.26

According to project statistics and our field observations in 2006, 30–40 per cent of clientsused the credits to set up grocery shops, while the rest purchased or equipped vehicles astaxis and motor rickshaws or set up trade activities such as hairdressing or tailoring. Wevisited half a dozen beneficiaries ranging from a one-man electronic device repair shop to afurniture factory, a tailoring business and a welding workshop each employing three to fourpeople. Half of those visited belonged to more recent rural immigrant families while one wasChristian. These visits gave a good overview of the area’s social geography as well as the sortof businesses funded with IRW’s Islamic microfinance. When asked about the reasonwhy they applied for microcredit financing through IRW’s MicroCredit Offices, mostrespondents cited the opportunity, the favourable credit conditions, the availability ofmicrocredit and the physical presence of the offices in their neighbourhood rather than anyspecific commitment to Islamic banking. Several of the respondents had also tried to applyfor credit with other organisations and commercial structures.27

The heavy imbalance between male and female beneficiaries during the pilot phase,especially after it widened its beneficiary base beyond widows, is explained in part by thesocial geography of the context and by the changes in the gender landscape that took andare still taking place in Nazirabad and Bagysh: the people in need of microcredit ataccessible rates and conditions there are often relatively recent male migrants from theprovince who had left their families in their village. The client base, however, had evolvedby the second phase of the project, partly due to IRW policy and partly because new socialand economic needs created by social change pushed more women to participate in boththe formal and informal economy. What IRW’s Islamic microfinance project does in termsof income generation, however, is not by itself specifically faith-related, nor does it deriveits value added merely through its cultural proximity with its target groups. As a faith-based organisation that is active in a socially mobile context, it is both actually andpotentially well positioned to advocate a wider participation of women in the economyfrom an Islamic perspective, at least among more religious sectors of the population andamong faith-inspired opinion leaders.

Conclusion: No Easy Answers, Yety

The purpose of this article has not been to bring down everything that ‘the West’ and thatthe donors and aid actors that are associated with it are doing in the field of development

De Cordier


and gender, nor is it to over-idealise Islamic approaches in that respect. It is also notadvocating the ‘use’ or ‘co-optation’ of Islamic aid organisations by dominant donors, UNorganisations and international NGOs to maintain or to (re)gain access in predominantlyIslamic contexts, for this can affect both the operational space and perception of Islamicorganisations. Rather, it examines a reality in which classical donors and Westerndevelopment actors are dominant, and are likely to continue to remain so for some time,but whose dominance and real or supposed righteousness are being increasingly chal-lenged, not only by local grassroots realities, but also by the increasingly multi-polarcharacter of global geopolitics. Gender concepts that were intended to be ‘for the owngood of the beneficiaries’ are not always considered as such, and nor are they takenseriously by exactly those whom they seek to benefit. Indeed, in many cases, they fail torespond to the needs of a socially mobile population due to a range of different social andpolitical factors. This opens or expands a space for non-traditional aid actors such asIslamic and other faith-based structures.

There is no ‘perfect’ approach, especially not when globalisation produces sometimesparadoxical social change. Philippe Droz-Vincent (2008, pp. 62–63), for example, hasobserved a process in the Muslim world whereby technological and social westernisationcoincides with the ‘de-westernisation’ of structures and sources of authority and legiti-macy: ‘We simultaneously see ‘‘social westernisation’’, if we can call it that, in the form ofdecreasing birth rates, increasing access to education and media first by men and now alsoby women, and the appearance of an increasing number of women on the labour marketon one hand, and a distance or rejection towards a number of symbols associated with,‘‘the West’’ on the other. Secularisation and religious awakening go together. This widensthe space for faith-based social work and aid, especially where the state is absent in thesocial field or left the social field to non-governmental actors’.28 The case studies that weincluded in this contribution do not represent a model approach, nor are they necessarilyspecifically gender-oriented. Yet, they do contain a number of elements and approachesthat can offer value added when they assist target beneficiaries to adapt to social change,and more specifically, the latter process’ impact on gender relations. In the final analysis,changes in the position of women and the overall gender situation in Europe occurredwithout extraneous gender mainstreaming, consultation or gender programmes. So willthose in ‘the Muslim world’.

Notes

1. In this article, we use the term ‘Islamic’ when we refer to an institutional or ideological (f)actor(for example structures whose organisation and modus operandi is based on the Islamic religionor certain tenets and interpretations thereof), and ‘Muslim’ with reference to a more generalidentity or cultural background (for example for groups or societies who adhere to or whoidentify themselves to one or another extent with the Islamic religion).

2. For this reason, this article will refer to cases, contexts and evidence in and from both spheres.3. Interview with Jack Norman, Country Director, Catholic Relief Services, Islamabad, 17 May

2006. Similar opinions came up during interviews with other NGO cadres working on gender(-related) programmes, including Arifa Mazhar, Gender Manager, Sungi DevelopmentFoundation, Islamabad, 24 May 2006 and Hurinisso Gaffurzoda, Director, Centre for CivilSociety Development in Garm, Tajikistan, on 16 October 2006.

4. Interview with Arifa Mazhar, Gender Manager, Sungi Development Foundation, Islamabad,24 May 2006.



5. Presentation by Driss El Yazami, Federation Internationale des ligues des Droits de l’Homme,at the Medecins du Monde conference ‘Quelle politique humanitaire au Moyen-Orient?’, Paris,16 May 2008.

6. Obviously, such cultural idealisation can happen with faith-based aid organisations too – forexample when Muslim (or Christian) aid workers take for granted that a common faith withtheir beneficiaries automatically guarantees cultural proximity.

7. Interview with Dr Saleban Omar, HIV/AIDS and Malaria Advisor, UNDP Tajikistan,Dushanbe, 25 October 2006.

8. See Roy (2002, pp. 142–143), and Driss El Yazami at the Medecins du Monde conference‘Quelle politique humanitaire au Moyen-Orient?’, 2008.

9. Interview with Syed Javid Shahab Giliani, Manager, Muslim Hands Pakistan EducationProgramme, Islamabad, 10 May 2006.

10. Interview with Syed Javid Shahab Giliani, Manager, Muslim Hands Pakistan EducationProgramme, Islamabad, 10 May 2006. These activities, as well as some of the statistics, aretaken from a presentation made by Syed Javid Shahab Giliani in the Muslim Hands Pakistanoffice in Islamabad on 8 May 2006.

11. Interview with Syed Javid Shahab Giliani, Manager, Muslim Hands Pakistan EducationProgramme, Islamabad, 10 May 2006.

12. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (2003, IPCS Issue Brief 11).13. For an examination of the relations between the state and the madrassas in Pakistan, see Bano

(2007). This source puts the number of registered madrassas at 17 000 and the unregistered at30 000.

14. It is not explained what these social reasons are, though we assume that they include physicalaccess and proximity, a dysfunctional government school in the area and the influence of familyor neighbourhood networks.

15. Interviews with Mufti Alama Khalid Mahmood, Head and Wakhar Ehmat, AdministrativeWorker, Idara Ma’aref ul-Quran, Kashmir Colony, South Karachi, 8 May 2006, with AdbuShakur, Coordinator, Muslim Hands model school on Sultan Ibragim Road, Kashmir Colony,South Karachi, 8 May 2006 and observations by the author during his visits to KashmirColony, Junaid Ibragim and nearby Defence View Phase III on 6 and 8 May 2006.

16. Conversations with Mufti Alama Khalid Mahmood, Head, Idara Ma’aref ul-Quran, KashmirColony, South Karachi, 6 and 7 May 2006. The respondent is also a member of the Board ofTrustees of Muslim Hands Pakistan.

17. Conversations with Wasim Shauqat, teacher of Arabic and Mohammed Aftar, teacher ofsciences, Idara Ma’aref ul-Quran, Kashmir Colony, South Karachi, 7 May 2006. Like manyIslamic charities do, Muslim Hands organises livestock offerings (Qurban) for the poor duringEid Al-Adha, the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice.

18. Interview with Tariq Nasir, Project & Development Manager, Muslim Hands, Nottingham, 19January 2006.

19. To further reinforce this point, it is interesting to note that the connection between IMQ andMuslim Hands came about very informally, because the founder and head of the former, aswell as that of the latter, both came from Wazirabad.

20. Interview with Shazia Hassan, Senior Programme Officer and Abdul Gafar, Field Officer forNazirabad, IRW Small Enterprise Development Programme, Bagysh township, Rawalpindi, 11May 2006.

21. Denominated the Small Enterprise Development Programme–HSBC, the project’s official titleis ‘Increasing income generation and employment and reducing poverty through IslamicFinance’.

22. Interview with Shazia Hassan, Senior Programme Officer, IRW Small Enterprise DevelopmentProgramme, IRW Country Office, Islamabad, 10 May 2006 and IRW Field Office, Bagyshtownship, Rawalpindi, 11 May 2006. All beneficiaries who we visited were male apart from one.

23. E-mail communications with Ateeq Rehman, Regional Programme Coordinator, Islamic ReliefWorldwide, Birmingham, 15 and 16 September 2009 and with Saqib Farooq, Project Manager,IRW Pakistan, Rawalpindi, 25 August 2009.

24. Interview with Shazia Hassan, Senior Programme Officer and Abdul Gafar, Field Officer forNazirabad, IRW Small Enterprise Development Programme, Bagysh township, Rawalpindi, 11May 2006. For a critical examination of Murabaha, see Yousef, 2004.

De Cordier


25. CGAP Microfinance Gateway, 17 July 2008, www.microfinancegateway.org.26. E-mail exchange with Ateeq Rehman, Regional Programme Coordinator, Islamic Relief

Worldwide, Birmingham, 15 September 2009.27. Field notes made on 11 and 12 May 2006 during visits to IRW’s project beneficiaries: a

furniture maker, a welder, tailor; and electronics repairman (all Muslims) and a Christiangrocer Christian, all in the neighbourhood and the bazaar alleys around Street no.3 inNazirabad township, Rawalpindi. The programme gives no cash to the credit taker, in part toprevent it from being squandered on purposes such as marriage expenses and dowries, orlending money to relatives, and does not provide credit for activities considered sociallydamaging (such as selling tobacco) or Haram (proscribed by Sharia Law). Interview withShazia Hassan, Senior Programme Officer, IRW Small Enterprise Development Programme,IRW Country Office, Islamabad, 10 May 2006.

28. See also the presentations and statements made by Philippe Droz-Vincent, Institut d’EtudesPolitiques, and Driss El Yazami, at the Medecins du Monde conference ‘Quelle politiquehumanitaire au Moyen-Orient?’, Paris, 16 May 2008. Although the mentioned gender trends infertility, education and the labour market are real, they often show stark regional as well asinternal contextual differences in scope and intensity. For data and a more detailed analysis, seeMogahed (2006), Kaufman (2009), United Nations Department of Economic and SocialAffairs (2007) and Rudi-Fahimi and Mederios-Kent (2007).

References

Abuarqub, M. (2009) Islamic Perspectives on Education. Birmingham, UK: Islamic ReliefWorldwide, Policy and Research Unit.

Abu-Lughod, L. (2002) Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological reflections oncultural relativism and its others. American Anthropologist 104(3): 783–790.

Abu-Lughod, L. (2009) Dialects of women’s empowerment: The international circuitry of the ArabHuman Development Report 2005. International Journal of Middle East Studies 42: 83–103.

Akiner, S. (1997) Between tradition and modernity: The dilemma facing Central Asian women.In: M. Buckley (ed.) Post-Soviet Women: From the Baltic to Central Asia. Cambrigde, UK:Cambridge University Press, pp. 261–304.

Andrabi, T., Das, J., Khwaja, A.I., Zajonc, T. and DERG World Bank (2005) Religious SchoolEnrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data. Washington DC: World Bank Policy Research.Working Paper no. 3602.

Bano, M. (2007) Contesting Ideologies and Struggle for Authority: State-Madrassa Engagement inPakistan. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Religions and Development ResearchProgramme. Working Paper no. 14.

Benthall, J. (2009) Thoughts on ‘Cultural Proximity’. Paper presented at the Geneva Workshop‘Religion, Secularism, and Humanitarianism: Exploring Differences, Boundaries, and Connec-tions’, University of Minnesota, Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs; 10–11 October, Geneva.

Benthall, J. and Bellion-Jourdan, J. (2003) The Charitable Crescent. Politics of Aid in the MuslimWorld. London: I.B. Tauris.

Clark, J.A. (2004) The Islamic associations and the middle class. ISIM Newsletter 14: 50–51.Clark, J.A. (2007) FBOs and change in the context authoritarianisms: The Islamic centre

charity society in Jordan. In: G. Clarke and M. Jennings (eds.) Development, Civil Society andFaith-Based Organizations. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145–170.

Damen, L. (1987) Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the Language Classroom. Reading, MA:Addison-Wesley.

De Cordier, B. (2008) ONG islamiques internationales et societe civile dans les contextes musulmans:quelle proximite culturelle? La Revue humanitaire 20: 42–49.

De Cordier, B. (2009a) Faith-based aid, globalisation and the humanitarian frontline: an analysis ofWestern-based Muslim aid organisations. Disasters. The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy andManagement 33(4): 608–628.

De Cordier, B. (2009b) The ‘humanitarian frontline’, development and relief, and religion. Whatcontext, which threats and which opportunities? Third World Quarterly 30(4): 663–684.



Donini, A. and Minear, L. (2007) Agenda humanitaire a l’horizon 2015. Principes, pouvoiret perceptions, Les rapports du GRIP, 2007/1, Brussels : Groupe de recherche et d’informationssur la paix et la securite (GRIP) and Medford, MS: Feinstein International Centre, TuftsUniversity.

Droz-Vincent, P. (2008) Ou sont-donc les ‘Societes Civiles’ au Moyen-Orient? La Revue humanitaire20: 57–63.

Duffield, M. (2001) Governing the borderlands: Decoding the power of aid. Disasters. The Journal ofDisaster Studies, Policy and Management 25(4): 308–320.

Esposito, J.L. and Mogahed, D. (2007) Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think,The Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies. Washington DC: Gallup Press.

Fontaine, P.M. (2004) New threats against humanitarian workers. Refugee Survey Quarterly 23(4):168–191.

Hussain, M., Hussain, Z. and Ashfaq, M. (2006) Impact of small-scale irrigation schemes onmarginal areas in Punjab, Pakistan. International Research Journal of Finance and Economics6: 193–200.

International Crisis Group. (2002) Pakistan: Madrassas, Extremism and the Military, Brussels:International Crisis Group, ICG Asia Report no. 36.

International Crisis Group. (2005) The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan, Brussels: InternationalCrisis Group, ICG Asia Report no. 95.

International Development Association. (2008) Aid Architecture: An Overview of the Main Trends inDevelopment Assistance Flows, IDA Resource Mobilization. Washington DC: World Bank.

Kaiser, W. (2005) Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, Religion(en) und Konflikte, Bonn: GruppeFriedensentwicklung. FriEnt-Briefing no. 1.

Kandiyoti, D. (2007) Old dilemmas or new challenges? The politics of gender and reconstruction inAfghanistan. Development and Change 38(2): 169–199.

Kandiyoti, D. (2009) The lures and perils of gender activism in Afghanistan. The MonthlyReview–MR Zine, http://www.mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/kandiyoti041109.html.

Kaufman, E. (2009) Islam, religiosity and fertility in the Muslim world. SA Paper; Tucson, AZ:International Studies Association.

Mogaded, D. (2006) Perspectives of Women in the Muslim World, Special Report, The Gallup Centrefor Muslim Studies, Washington DC: The Gallup Organisation.

Moghadam, V.M. (2007) Peace-building and reconstruction with women. Reflections on Afghani-stan, Iraq and Palestine. In: V.M. Moghadam (ed.) From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women’sParticipation, Movements, and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Syracuse,NY: Syracuse University Press, pp. 327–350.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2007) Egalite des genres et de la mise enoeuvre de l’aide. Ce qui a change depuis 1999 dans les agences de cooperation pour le devel-oppement. , OECD-OCED Portal, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/49/39739679.pdf.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. (2008) Aid statistics and donor charts.OECD-OCED portal, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd.

Oxfam–UK. (2004) Working on Gender Equality in Muslim Contexts, Report of an Oxfam–UKWorkshop, Oxford: Oxfam–UK Gender Detpartment.

Rahman, T. (2005) Madrassas: Religion, poverty and the potential for violence in Pakistan. IPRIJournal 5(1), http://ipripak.org/journal/winter2005/madrassas.shtml.

Ronhaar, E. (2009) Does one size fits all ? Restrictions of gender mainstreaming in Islamic contextsand the alternatives of religious-based coping mechanisms. unpublished Master’s thesis, Master’sProgramme in Humanitarian Action, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Roy, O. (2002) Soviet legacies and Western aid imperatives in the new Central Asia. In: A.B. Sajoo(ed.) Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives. London: I.B. Tauris and theInstitute for Ismaili Studies, pp. 123–148.

Roy, O. (2005) The predicament of ‘Civil Society’ in Central Asia and the ‘Greater Middle East’.International Affairs 81(5): 1001–1012.

Roy, O. (2007) Le croissant et le chaos. Paris, France: Hachette.Rudi-Fahimi, F. and Mederios-Kent, M. (2007) Challenges and opportunities: The populations of

the Middle East and North Africa. Population Bulletin 62(2), Population Reference Bureau,http://www.prb.org.

Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.

De Cordier


Simpson, M. (2006) Local strategies in globalizing gender politics: Women’s organizing inKyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26(1): 9–31.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2007) World fertility patterns,UNDESA population division, http://www.un.org/esa/population.

Wigger, A. (2005) Encountering perceptions in parts of the Muslim world and their impact on theICRC’s ability to be effective. International Review of the Red Cross 87(858): 343–365.

Wiktorowicz, Q. (2002) Islamic activism in Jordan. In: D.L. Bowen and E.A. Early (eds.) EverydayLife in the Muslim Middle East. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 227–245.

Wiktorowicz, Q. and Farouki, S.T. (2000) Islamic NGOs and Muslim politics: A case from Jordan.Third World Quarterly 21(4): 685–699.

Yousef, T.M. (2004) The murabaha syndrome in Islamic finance: Laws, institutions and politics. In:C.M. Henry and R. Wilson (eds.) The Politics of Islamic Finance. Edinburgh, UK: EdinburghUniversity Press, pp. 63–80.



Copyright of European Journal of Development Research is the property of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. and itscontent may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder'sexpress written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Priority Gender Equality Action Plan

2008-2013

Of the world’s one billion poorest

people, three fi fths are women and

girls.

Women make up only one quarter of the world’s researchers.

Gender equality is a fundamental

human right, a commonly

shared value and a necessary

condition for the achievement

of the internationally agreed

development objectives,

including all Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs).

Why is Gender Equality a Priority?

Around the world, as many as one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 59% of those living with HIV are women, and young women aged 15+ are at least three times more likely to be infected than men of the same age.

The gender divide is one of the most signifi cant inequalities within the digital divide, and it cuts across all social and income groups.

Of the 774 million adults in the world

who cannot read, two thirds are

women.

1

“UNESCO believes that all forms of discrimination on the basis of gender are violations of human rights, and a signifi cant barrier to peace, sustainable development and the achievement of all internationally recognized development goals.”

What does Gender Equality mean for UNESCO?

Gender Equality between women and men exists when both genders are able to share equally in the distribution of power and knowledge and have equal opportunities, rights and obligations.

Women’s Empowerment is about women taking control

over their lives: setting their own agendas, gaining skills,

building self-confidence, solving problems and developing self-

reliance. Although only the individual can empower herself

to make choices, processes that nurture the empowerment of individuals or groups can be

supported by others.

2

UNESCO is committed to a series of actions to support women’s empowerment, women’s rights and gender equality in Member States by:

How is UNESCO promoting Gender Equality?In UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy for 2008-2013, gender equality has been designated as one of the Organization’s two global priorities.

This priority is supported by a dual approach which consists of gender mainstreaming and gender-specifi c programming.

What is Gender Mainstreaming?UNESCO’s gender mainstreaming approach ensures that women and men benefi t equally from programme and policy support. Mainstreaming is intended to transform development such that equality becomes both a means and an end. It aims at achieving all international development goals, including, but not only, those explicitly seeking to achieve gender equality. Gender mainstreaming means:

mainstreaming gender equality issues • throughout the programming cycle at all programme levels through a results-based Action Plan;

building commitment, competence and • capacity for gender mainstreaming through dedicated capacity development and resources for these purposes.

Internally, UNESCO aims to:

support equal career opportunities for staff and • appropriate working arrangements to balance work and life; and

progressively increase the representation of • women in decision-making levels within the Secretariat to reach 50 percent by 2015.

identifying gaps in gender equality • through the use of gender analysis and sex-disaggregated data;raising awareness about gaps; building • support for change through advocacy and alliances/partnerships;

developing strategies and programmes • to close existing gaps;putting adequate resources and the • necessary expertise into place;monitoring implementation; and• holding individuals and institutions • accountable for results.

BSP-2009/WS/7

The UNESCO Priority Gender Equality

Action Plan (GEAP) is a road map to translate

UNESCO’s ideals and commitment to the pursuit

of gender equality into practice.

3

GEAP promotes three main outcomes at the organizational level:

A progressive increase in • the number and quality of gender-responsive and gender-transformative programmes and initiatives in all sectors and fi eld offi ces.

Women’s empowerment and gender • equality in Member States advanced through policy dialogue and programmes promoted by UNESCO

Commitment to gender equality • institutionalized in the Secretariat and in programming.

What is the Gender Equality Action Plan?

The Gender Equality Action Plan describes the actions UNESCO is taking between 2008 and 2013 through its programme sectors in education, the sciences, culture and communication and information, in order to ensure that UNESCO programmes and initiatives

contribute fully and actively to the pursuit of women’s empowerment

and gender equality efforts.

For the full text: http://www.unesco.org/en/genderequality/geap

http://www.unesco.org/en/genderequality/geap

4

The Education sector strives to address gender inequalities in education, assisting countries in developing gender-sensitive teaching and learning materials that promote the equal participation of women and men in society and at work. Gender is mainstreamed across all its initiatives in education from policy advice to capacity development in order to achieve the following outcomes:

EDUCATION

National capacities strengthened • in designing and managing literacy policies and programmes targeting women and girls

Gender-sensitive teacher policies • developed in Member States

Teachers better trained in • gender-sensitive teaching and learning approaches

Quality of secondary education • enhanced to expand equal access and ensure retention of girls and boys

National Technical and Vocational • Education and Training (TVET) policies reviewed to ensure adequate skills acquisition for employment for girls and boys alike

National capacities strengthened • to prepare and manage inclusive, rights-based education sector plans and policies that are gender-sensitive and assure equitable access to education

Education systems’ responses • to HIV and AIDS are gender-sensitive

A literacy project for Girls and Women in Lebanon is underway addressing gender-based violence and gender stereotypes in schools and improving literacy programmes in rural areas.

One example of the Education sector’s work

towards gender equality:

Prof. Tebello Nyokong, 2009 UNESCO-L’Oréal Laureate

for Africa and the Arab States for her work on harnessing

light for cancer therapy and for environmental clean-up. 5

The Natural Science sector aims to promote the increased participation of women in science, to ensure the following outcomes:

NATURAL SCIENCES

One example of the Natural Sciences sector’s work towards gender

equality:

Gender equality perspective integrated • in the design, monitoring and evaluation of educational, training and capacity-building activities and research projects to meet the global water challenges defi ned by the MDGs

Value of indigenous and local • knowledge held by women, as well as women’s contributions to sustainable development in SIDS, highlighted and showcased, with particular reference to natural disaster preparedness and response, biodiversity conservation and climate change

Participation of women in the basic • sciences increased through capacity-building and training activities

Gender-responsive approach to • disaster risk reduction promoted

Gender-responsive approaches • to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development fostered through the promotion of effective participation of women in decision-making processes

Science policy processes progressively • gender mainstreamed

Effective participation of women in • processes shaping scientifi c policies and promotion of national science policy agendas

Gender balance in capacity-• development initiatives of training, research and education, as well as in scientifi c events organized by IOC, promoted and progressively increased

UNESCO-L’Oréal Women in Science • partnership continued

Gender dimensions of poverty and • knowledge/technology transfer addressed through UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs Programme

Participation of women scientists and • engineers in academic research and innovation, especially in developing countries, promoted

The UNESCO-L’Oréal partnership has helped more than 500 outstanding female scientists move forwards in their careers.

Abed Alraheem Qusini, Second Place in PWRDC Photo Contest

(Professional Category).6

The Social and Human Science sector mainstreams gender throughout its work, to achieve the following outcomes:

SOCIAL & HUMAN SCIENCES

One example of the Social and Human Sciences sector’s work towards gender

equality:

Policy recommendations for women’s • socio-economic empowerment formulated and communicated to policy-makers

Awareness raised among national • authorities on the impact of poverty on women during review of National Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers

Awareness raised among youth • on gender-specifi c issues in the fi ght against HIV/AIDS-related discrimination

Municipalities’ awareness of gender • issues in the fi ght against racism and discrimination enhanced

Participation and visibility of women • philosophers in the sector’s philosophy programme initiatives promoted and enhanced

Gender equality issues integrated into • ethical frameworks for science and technology

Gender equality dimensions integrated • into the MOST tool

Gender equality considerations • integrated into the work on migration

Awareness of gender equality issues • in sports and physical education enhanced

Equal participation of young women • and young men in UNESCO youth initiatives promoted

A Palestinian Women’s Research and Documentation Center (PWRDC) was set up in Ramallah to function as a training, research and resource centre.

7

The Culture Sector will strengthen its efforts to effectively and systematically mainstream gender equality in pursuit of the following outcomes:

CULTURE

One example of the Culture sector’s work towards gender equality:

Gender perspectives in cultural • policies for development promoted

Gender equality considerations • integrated into policies and practices related to cultural heritage conservation

Awareness of the gender dimensions • of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) enhanced

Gender equality integrated into the • development and implementation of capacity-building activities for museums

Women’s active and visible • participation in cultural and creative industries increased

Gender-responsive policies and • strategies responding to HIV and AIDS strengthened

Women entrepreneurs, especially those in rural areas, are benefi tting from capacity building through the “Awards of Excellence for Handicrafts” programme (China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

8

The Communication and Information Sector aims to address the stereotyping of women and inequality in women’s access to and participation in all communication systems, and is working towards the following outcomes:

COMMUNICATION & INFORMATION

Gender equality perspectives fully • integrated into communication and information-related policies and strategiesEnabling environment for equal • accessibility to information and knowledge promoted through media and Information and Communication Technology (ICTs)Women empowered to participate in • development and public life through access to information and knowledge

Gender perspectives in media content • increasedCapacities of media institutions • enhanced to offer high-quality and gender-responsive trainingWomen’s involvement in confl ict • resolution and peace-building processes, as well as reconstruction efforts, strengthened through better access to informationSafety and security of female media • professionals and journalists in confl ict and post-confl ict situations strengthened

One example of the Communication and Information sector’s work towards gender equality:

Launched annually on the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), “Women Make the News” is a global initiative aimed

at promoting gender equality in the media.

9

Delivering as One

UNESCO is actively involved in all United Nations discussions and initiatives in the area of women’s empowerment and gender equality, at the global, regional and country levels. More specifi cally, UNESCO is fully engaged in system-wide gender equality work through membership in the following:

Partnerships for Gender Equality

United Nations Inter-Agency • Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE).

IANWGE Task Team on the Gender • Dimensions of Climate Change (co-manager).

UNDG Task Team on Gender • Equality.

The United Nations Girls’ Education • Initiative (UNGEI).

The Inter-Agency Task Force on • Adolescent Girls.

The Joint United Nations • Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Private sector partnerships

UNESCO—Sony Ericsson Women’s Tennis Association Tour (SE-WTA Tour) Partnership for Gender Equality

The UNESCO–Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Partnership for Gender Equality was launched in November 2007 with the objective of promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in every region of the world and across all of UNESCO’s domains of action. Currently, Billie Jean King, Venus Williams, Tatiana Golovin, Zheng Jie and Vera Zvonareva work as Mentors and Promoters of Gender Equality within the framework of the Partnership.

UNESCO—L’Oréal Partnership for Women in Science

The UNESCO-L’Oréal Partnership for Women in Science, established in 1998, has gained world renown for its pioneering recognition of outstanding female scientists around the world, and support for promising young scientists. Two of the UNESCO—L’Oréal Laureates, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and Dr. Ada Yonath were awarded the Nobel Prize, for Physiology and Chemistry respectively, in 2009.

The Division for Gender EqualityUNESCO’s commitment to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment is facilitated by the Division for Gender Equality in the Bureau of Strategic Planning.

As the UNESCO focal point for Gender Equality, the Division provides policy guidance in the Secretariat, carries out capacity-building and coordinates cutting edge research in order to provide informed policy advice to Member States. The Division also monitors gender parity within the UNESCO Secretariat.

Division for Gender EqualityBureau of Strategic Planning

7, place de Fontenoy 75007 Paris, France

Tel: 33 (0)1 45 68 16 54Fax: 33 (0)1 45 68 55 58

Email: [email protected]

For more information, please visit : http://www.unesco.org/genderequality

Cover © Scott Griessel/Fotolia© NIamhBurke/Unesco© Marc Romanelli/Unesco© Caroline Lefresnes© Robaton/UN Photo

Page 1© Ayman Nobani/UNESCO© Duncan Church© Janis Jooris/UNESCO© Christopher Herwig/UN Photo

Page 2© Michel Ravassard/UNESCO

Page 3© Yannick Jooris/UNESCO© John Olsson/UN Photo

Page 4

© Rob Cousins/Panos Pict.© UN Photo

Page 5© Katy Anis/UNESCO© Tello Nyokong/DR

Page 6© Abed Alraheem/PWRDC© Katy Anis/UNESCO

Page 7© Mark Garten/UN Photo© Georges Malempré/UNESCO

Page 8© Serge Daniel/UNESCO© Sergio Santimano/UNESCO© Arcna/Fotolia

Photos credits:

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.unesco.org/genderequality

Priorité Égalité Plan d’action 2008-2013

entre les sexes

Sur le milliard de pauvres parmi les pauvres recensés

dans le monde, les trois cinquièmes

sont des femmes et des fi lles.

Les femmes ne représentent qu’un quart des chercheurs dans le monde.

L’égalité entre les sexes est un droit fondamental de l’être humain,

une valeur communément partagée et une condition nécessaire à la réalisation des objectifs de développement internationalement reconnus, y compris tous les Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement (OMD).

Pourquoi l’égalité entre les sexes est-elle une priorité ?

Dans le monde, une femme sur trois est battue, contrainte à des rapports sexuels non-désirés ou subit d’autres formes d’abus au cours de sa vie.

En Afrique subsaharienne, 59 % des gens vivant avec le VIH sont des femmes, et les jeunes femmes âgées de plus de 15 ans courent au moins trois fois plus de risques d’être infectées que les hommes du même âge.

La fracture entre les hommes et les femmes est l’une des inégalités les plus marquées observées dans le cadre de la fracture numérique ; elle concerne tous les groupes sociaux et toutes les tranches de revenus.

Les femmes représentent les deux tiers des 774 millions

d’adultes de par le monde qui ne savent

pas lire.

1

L’UNESCO estime que toute forme de discrimination fondée sur le genre est une violation des droits de l’Homme et un obstacle considérable à la paix, au développement durable et à la réalisation de tous les objectifs de développement internationalement reconnus.

Qu’est-ce que l’égalité entre les sexes pour l’UNESCO ?

L’égalité entre les sexes deviendra une réalité lorsque les femmes comme les hommes seront dans la même position en ce qui concerne la répartition du pouvoir et du savoir et qu’ils auront les mêmes opportunités, droits et obligations.

L’autonomisation des femmes est un processus par lequel celles-ci prennent le contrôle de leurs

destinées, c’est-à-dire défi nissent leurs propres objectifs, acquièrent

certaines compétences, gagnent de l’assurance, résolvent des

problèmes et développent leur autonomie. Nul ne peut « autonomiser » quelqu’un

d’autre : l’individu est le seul apte à renforcer son propre pouvoir de

choisir. Toutefois, les processus menant à l’autonomisation

d’individus ou de groupes peuvent être appuyés par d’autres acteurs.

d’intégrer les questions d’égalité entre • les sexes tout au long du cycle de programmation à tous les stades du programme par un plan d’action axé sur les résultats ;

de renforcer la volonté, les compétences • et les facultés nécessaires pour intégrer les questions relatives à l’égalité entre les sexes grâce à des mesures de développement des capacités et à des ressources spécialement consacrées à cette fi n ;

En interne, l’UNESCO cherche à :

favoriser l’égalité des perspectives de carrière • des membres du personnel de même que les conditions de travail permettant de concilier vie professionnelle et vie privée ;

accroître progressivement la représentation • des femmes aux niveaux décisionnels au sein du Secrétariat pour atteindre 50 % d’ici à 2015.

2

L’UNESCO mène une série d’actions visant à promouvoir l’autonomisation des femmes, les droits des femmes et l’égalité entre les sexes dans les États membres en s’efforçant :

Que fait l’UNESCO pour promouvoir l’égalité entre les sexes ?Dans la Stratégie à moyen terme de l’UNESCO pour 2008-2013, l’égalité entre les sexes a été désignée comme l’une des deux priorités globales de l’Organisation.

Cette priorité est soutenue par une double approche qui consiste à la fois à intégrer les questions relatives à l’égalité entre les sexes dans tous les programmes (« gender mainstreaming ») et à soutenir les actions et initiatives spécifi ques axées sur l’autonomisation par le biais de programmes ciblant un sexe.

Qu’est-ce que l’intégration des questions relatives à l’égalité entre les sexes ou «Gender Mainstreaming ») ? La stratégie de l’UNESCO en faveur de l’intégration des questions relatives à l’égalité entre les sexes fait en sorte que les femmes et les hommes bénéfi cient à parts égales des programmes et des politiques de l’Organisation. Elle est conçue pour infl uer sur le développement et cherche à faire de l’égalité, à la fois, une fi n et un moyen. Elle vise la réalisation de tous les objectifs internationaux de développement, y compris, mais pas uniquement, ceux qui tendent explicitement vers l’égalité entre les sexes. Intégrer les questions relatives à l’égalité entre les sexes («Gender Mainstreaming») nécessite les interventions suivantes :

identifi er les disparités entre les sexes • au moyen d’analyses selon le genre et de données ventilées par sexe ;faire prendre conscience des disparités ;• mobiliser des soutiens en faveur • du changement par une action de sensibilisation et en instaurant des alliances/partenariats ;élaborer des stratégies et des programmes • afi n de combler les écarts existants entre les femmes et les hommes ;mettre en place des ressources adéquates • et l’expertise nécessaire ;assurer le suivi de la mise en œuvre ;• tenir les particuliers et les institutions • responsables des résultats.

Le Plan d’action de l’UNESCO pour la

priorité Égalité entre les sexes constitue la feuille de

route permettant de traduire en actions et résultats

spécifi ques l’engagement de l’Organisation en faveur de l’égalité entre les

sexes.

3

Au niveau de l’Organisation, les trois résultats escomptés du Plan d’action sont :

Qu’est-ce que le Plan d’action pour la priorité

Égalité entre les sexes ?Le Plan d’action pour la priorité égalité entre les sexes décrit les actions menées par les Secteurs de programmes de l’UNESCO entre 2008 et 2013, à savoir, l’éducation, les sciences, la culture et la communication et l’information, afi n d’assurer que les programmes et initiatives de l’Organisation contribuent pleinement et activement

à l’objectif de l’autonomisation des femmes et aux efforts en faveur

de l’égalité entre les sexes.

Le texte intégral du Plan d’action est disponible à l’adresse suivante : http://www.unesco.org/fr/genderequality/geap

L’augmentation progressive du • nombre et de la qualité des initiatives et programmes sensibles au genre et de ceux qui visent à transformer les relations de genre dans tous les secteurs et bureaux hors Siège.La promotion de l’autonomisation des • femmes et de l’égalité des sexes dans

les États membres par un dialogue sur la politique à suivre et par les programmes appuyés par l’UNESCO.L’institutionnalisation de l’engagement • en faveur de l’égalité des sexes au sein du Secrétariat et dans la programmation.

http://www.unesco.org/fr/genderequality/geap

4

Le secteur de l’Éducation tente de faire face aux inégalités entre les sexes dans l’éducation, d’aider les pays à élaborer des matériels d’apprentissage et d’enseignement sensibles au genre et prônant la participation égale des femmes et des hommes à la vie sociale et professionnelle. Les questions de genre sont intégrées dans toutes les initiatives de l’Organisation en matière d’éducation : du conseil stratégique au renforcement des capacités, en vue de parvenir aux résultats suivants :

ÉDUCATION

Renforcement des capacités nationales • en matière d’établissement et de gestion de politiques et programmes d’alphabétisation destinés aux femmes et aux fi lles.Élaboration, dans les États membres, • de politiques relatives aux enseignants qui soient sensibles au genre.Amélioration de la formation • des enseignants aux méthodes d’enseignement et d’apprentissage sensibles au genre.Amélioration de la qualité de • l’enseignement secondaire pour favoriser l’accès dans des conditions d’égalité et garantir le maintien à l’école des fi lles et des garçons.

Réexamen des politiques nationales • d’Enseignement et formation technique et professionnelle (EFTP) pour garantir l’acquisition, tant par les fi lles que par les garçons, de compétences adéquates pour pouvoir occuper un emploi.Renforcement des capacités nationales • pour l’élaboration et la gestion de politiques et plans du secteur éducatif qui soient inclusifs et axés sur les droits, qui soient sensibles au genre et qui assurent un accès équitable à l’éducation.Rendre sensibles au genre les • mécanismes de réponse au VIH et au SIDA des systèmes éducatifs.

Un projet d’alphabétisation pour les fi lles et les femmes a été mis en place au Liban pour faire face à la question de la violence fondée sur le genre et les stéréotypes de genre à l’école, ainsi que pour améliorer les programmes

d’alphabétisation dans les zones rurales.

Une action menée par le secteur de l’Éducation en

faveur de l’égalité entre les sexes :

Professeur Tebello Nyokong, lauréate 2009 UNESCO-L’Oréal pour l’Afrique et les États arabes, pour sa contribution à l’utilisation

du potentiel des lumières dans le traitement du cancer ou pour remédier aux nuisances

causées à l’environnement. 5

Le secteur des Sciences exactes et naturelles vise à promouvoir la participation accrue des femmes dans le domaine des sciences afi n de parvenir aux résultats suivants :

SCIENCES EXACTES ET NATURELLES

Une action menée par le secteur des Sciences exactes et naturelles en

faveur de l’égalité entre les sexes :

Intégration de la problématique • de l’égalité entre les sexes dans la conception, le suivi et l’évaluation d’activités d’enseignement, de formation et de renforcement des capacités ainsi que de projets de recherche visant à relever les défi s mondiaux dans le domaine de l’eau défi nis par les OMD.Mise en valeur des savoirs autochtones • et locaux détenus par les femmes ainsi que des contributions des femmes au développement durable dans les PEID, eu égard notamment à la préparation et à la réaction aux catastrophes naturelles, à la conservation de la biodiversité et au changement climatique.Augmentation de la place des femmes • dans les sciences fondamentales par le biais d’activités de renforcement des capacités et de formation.Promotion d’une approche de réduction • des risques de catastrophes sensible au genre.Promotion d’approches de la conservation • de la biodiversité et du développement durable sensibles au genre en encourageant la participation effective des femmes aux processus de prise de

décision.Intégration progressive d’une perspective • de genre dans l’ensemble des processus d’élaboration des politiques scientifi ques.Participation effective des femmes • aux processus de détermination des politiques scientifi ques et à la promotion de stratégies d’action nationales dans le domaine scientifi que.Promotion et amélioration progressive • de l’équilibre hommes-femmes dans les initiatives de renforcement des capacités par le biais de la formation, de la recherche et de l’enseignement ainsi que dans le cadre des manifestations scientifi ques organisées par la COI.Poursuite du partenariat UNESCO-L’Oréal • pour les femmes et la science.Prise en compte des dimensions relatives • au genre de la pauvreté et du transfert des connaissances/technologies par le biais du Programme UNITWIN et chaires UNESCO.Promotion de la participation des • femmes scientifi ques et ingénieurs à la recherche et à l’innovation au niveau universitaire, en particulier dans les pays en développement.

Le partenariat UNESCO-L’Oréal a aidé plus de 500 femmes scientifi ques exceptionnelles à faire progresser leur carrière.

Abed Alraheem Qusini, deuxième place du concours de photographie du

PWRDC (catégorie professionnelle).6

Le secteur des Sciences sociales et humaines intègre une perspective de genre dans son travail en vue d’atteindre les résultats suivants :

SCIENCES SOCIALES ET HUMAINES

Une action menée par le secteur des Sciences

sociales et humaines en faveur de l’égalité entre les

sexes :

Formulation et communication aux • décideurs de recommandations en faveur de l’autonomisation socioéconomique des femmes.Sensibilisation des autorités • nationales à l’impact de la pauvreté sur les femmes lors de l’examen des Documents de stratégie pour la réduction de la pauvreté.Sensibilisation de la jeunesse aux • aspects relatifs au genre de la lutte contre la discrimination en matière de VIH et SIDA.Sensibilisation accrue des municipalités • aux aspects relatifs au genre de la lutte contre le racisme et la discrimination.Promotion et renforcement de la • participation et de la visibilité des femmes philosophes dans les initiatives du programme de philosophie du secteur.

Intégration des questions d’égalité • entre les sexes dans les structures éthiques en science et technologie.Intégration des aspects d’égalité entre • les sexes dans l’outil MOST.Intégration des considérations d’égalité • entre les sexes dans les activités en matière de migration.Renforcement de la sensibilisation aux • questions d’égalité entre les sexes en sport et en éducation physique.Promotion de l’égalité de participation • des jeunes femmes et jeunes hommes aux initiatives de l’UNESCO en faveur de la jeunesse.

Le Centre de recherche et de documentation des femmes palestiniennes (PWRDC) a été mis en place à Ramallah. Cette institution est à la fois un centre de recherche, de formation et de documentation.

7

Le secteur de la Culture renforce ses efforts pour intégrer effi cacement et systématiquement les considérations d’égalité entre les sexes dans ses activités. Les résultats suivants seront plus particulièrement poursuivis :

CULTURE

Une action menée par le secteur de la Culture en faveur de l’égalité entre les sexes :

Promotion des perspectives relatives • au genre dans les politiques culturelles pour le développement.Intégration des considérations d’égalité • entre les sexes dans les politiques et pratiques liées à la conservation du patrimoine culturel.Sensibilisation aux dimensions relatives • au genre du patrimoine culturel immatériel.Intégration de l’égalité entre les sexes • dans la conception et l’application d’activités de renforcement des capacités des musées.Renforcement de la part prise • activement et visiblement par les femmes dans les industries culturelles et créatives.

Renforcement des politiques et • stratégies sensibles au genre pour lutter contre le VIH et le SIDA.

Les femmes entrepreneurs, en particulier celles vivant dans les zones rurales, bénéfi cient d’opportunités de renforcement des capacités par le biais du programme « Reconnaissance d’excellence pour l’artisanat » (Chine, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Ouzbékistan, Tadjikistan,

Turkménistan).

8

Le secteur Communication et Information de l’UNESCO prend des mesures pour s’attaquer aux stéréotypes visant les femmes et à l’inégalité dont elles sont victimes dans l’accès et la participation à tous les systèmes de communication. Les résultats escomptés sont les suivants :

COMMUNICATION ET INFORMATION

Intégration pleine et entière de la • problématique de l’égalité entre les sexes dans les politiques et stratégies relatives à la communication et à l’information.Promotion, à travers les médias et • les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC), d’un environnement favorable à l’égalité d’accès à l’information et à la connaissance.Autonomisation des femmes afi n • qu’elles puissent participer au développement et à la vie publique grâce à l’accès à l’information et à la connaissance.

Meilleure prise en compte de la • problématique de l’égalité entre les sexes dans les contenus des médias.Renforcement des capacités des • médias afi n qu’elles puissent dispenser une formation de grande qualité tenant compte de la problématique de l’égalité entre les sexes.Renforcement, grâce à un meilleur • accès à l’information, de la participation des femmes aux processus de règlement des confl its et de consolidation de la paix, ainsi qu’aux efforts de reconstruction.Renforcement de la sûreté et de la • sécurité des femmes professionnelles des médias et journalistes dans les situations de confl it et de post-confl it.

Une action menée par le secteur de la Communication et de l’Information en faveur de l’égalité entre les sexes : «Les femmes font l’info », opération mondiale destinée à promouvoir l’égalité entre les sexes dans les médias, est organisée tous les

ans à l’occasion de la Journée internationale de la femme

(8 mars).

9

« Unis dans l’action »

L’UNESCO prend une part active dans toutes les discussions et initiatives des Nations Unies en matière d’autonomisation des femmes et d’égalité entre les sexes, aux niveaux mondial, régional et national. Plus précisément, l’UNESCO participe pleinement au travail du système des Nations Unies en matière d’égalité entre les sexes par son action dans les initiatives suivantes :

Partenariats en faveur de l’égalité entre les sexes

Le réseau interinstitutions pour • les femmes et l’égalité des sexes (IANWGE);

L’Équipe spéciale chargée du genre • et du changement climatique de IANWGE (co-responsable) ;

L’Équipe spéciale du GNUD sur • l’égalité des sexes ;

L’Initiative des Nations Unies pour • l’éducation des fi lles (UNGEI) ;

Le Groupe de travail inter-agences • sur les fi lles adolescentes ;

Le Programme Commun des • Nations Unies sur le VIH/SIDA (ONUSIDA).

Partenariats avec le secteur privé

Partenariat UNESCO—Sony Ericsson WTA Tour pour l’égalité des genres

Le Partenariat UNESCO—Sony Ericsson WTA Tour pour l’égalité des genres a été lancé en novembre 2007 afi n de promouvoir l’égalité entre les sexes et le renforcement du pouvoir d’action des femmes dans toutes les régions du monde et tous les domaines d’action de l’UNESCO. Dans le cadre de ce partenariat, dont Billie Jean King est la « Marraine », Venus Williams, Tatiana Golovin, Zheng Jie et Vera Zvonareva agissent comme “Promotrices” pour l’égalité des genres.

Le Partenariat UNESCO-L’Oréal pour les femmes et la science

En récompensant des femmes scientifi ques remarquables à travers le monde et en apportant son soutien à de jeunes scientifi ques prometteuses, le Partenariat UNESCO-L’Oréal pour les femmes et la science, établi en 1998, a atteint une renommée mondiale. Deux des lauréates du Prix UNESCO—L’Oréal pour la femme et la science, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn et Dr. Ada Yonath ont reçu respectivement le Prix Nobel de Médecine et le Prix Nobel de Chimie en 2009.

La Division pour l’égalité des genresL’engagement de l’UNESCO en faveur de l’égalité entre

les sexes et de l’autonomisation des femmes est mené par la Division pour l’égalité des genres au sein du Bureau de la

planifi cation stratégique.

En tant que point focal de l’UNESCO pour l’égalité entre les sexes, la Division fournit l’orientation générale des politiques au sein du Secrétariat, appuie le renforcement des capacités et coordonne la recherche de pointe

pour conseiller les États membres de la meilleure façon possible. La Division suit également les progrès réalisés en matière de parité

au sein du Secrétariat de l’UNESCO.

Division pour l’égalité des genresBureau de la planifi cation stratégique

7, place de Fontenoy 75007 Paris, France

Tél: 33 (0)1 45 68 16 54Fax: 33 (0)1 45 68 55 58

Email: [email protected]

Pour plus d’informations, veuillez consulter le site Internet :http://www.unesco.org/fr/genderequality

Couverture © Scott Griessel/Fotolia© NIamhBurke/Unesco© Marc Romanelli/Unesco© Caroline Lefresnes© Robaton/UN Photo

Page 1© Ayman Nobani/UNESCO© Duncan Church© Janis Jooris/UNESCO© Christopher Herwig/UN Photo

Page 2© Michel Ravassard/UNESCO

Page 3© Yannick Jooris/UNESCO© John Olsson/UN Photo

Page 4

Rob Cousins/Panos Pict.© UN Photo

Page 5© Katy Anis/UNESCO© Tello Nyokong/DR

Page 6© Abed Alraheem/PWRDC© Katy Anis/UNESCO

Page 7© Mark Garten/UN Photo© Georges Malempré/UNESCO

Page 8© Serge Daniel/UNESCO© Sergio Santimano/UNESCO© Arcna/Fotolia

Crédit photos :

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.unesco.org/fr/genderequality