Volume 19, Number 3 Article by Malathi V Gopal September, 2007
Gender and Sustainable Development: Case Studies from NCCR North-South : Edited by Smita Premchander and Christine Muller. NCCR North South, Switzerland, 2005, pp 352. :
Gender in public policy demands constant re-assessment as there is an accepted stand that policy has always favoured men. This book is an attempt to bring into focus a wide array of research resources using equally varied methodology to mainstream and integrate gender. The book basically culls gender issues from micro-research. The Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South emphasises the continuation of such studies until gender is actually integrated in research processes.
Sustainable development research first came into being with the debates on the dangers of pesticides and other toxins to natural and human environments. Women activists have introduced a gender perspective to the debate, although.the political environment for women and gender agendas is less favourable. The key dimensions and forces that are eroding or are detrimental to the lives of both men and women include social crises, civil wars, deregulation, privatisation and neo-liberalisation. Women’s voices need to be heard at the global level through modern information and communication technologies. A trandisciplinary research culture is required to investigate the diversity, complexity and variability of issues, which will subsequently provide solutions. This is what the book does. The methods applied are rooted in classical sociology or social anthropological research paradigms.
One of the main attractions of this book is the array of research methodologies and descriptions used. These include micro-studies, long-term ethnographic enquiry, micro-demographic techniques, expert interviews, participant observations, focused group discussions, mental maps, surveys, secondary literature, and content analysis of documents. The topics covered are infrastructure development, politics, christianisation-induced modernisation, invisibility of women, water scarcity, socio-cultural values, subordination of women, out migration of men, gendered division of labour, law, drought, internalised patriarchy, poverty and hierarchy. The case studies are from India, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nepal and Bolivia.
Pfister states that many development projects that ignored a gender perspective have failed. Differentiating between gender and women’s studies, she clarifies that gender includes both men and women. The author believes that disciplinary blindness has led to straightforward technical solutions with negative impacts on certain groups in target societies. The absence of a gender perspective has led to the failure of developmental projects and agendas. To cite an example, agriculture is in the male domain in Bolivia, while silviculture and secondary crops like beans and peas are a woman’s domain. Developmental projects initiated by the agricultural scientists in the country failed because they addressed only the men.
Bieri introduces relevant terminology like ‘feminisation of responsibility’ and ‘add women and stir’, a fashion statement to pay lip service to gender issues. The major epistemic shifts in the discourse on gender and development are provided. There is a definite positive shift from earlier ‘feminising development’ approaches to more sophisticated and ambitious human-rights frameworks. The headway made in gender and development studies is the engendering of the development process as one of the fundamental requirements for sustainable development. The rights based discourse implies not only the foregrounding of negative rights such as anti-discrimination, but also the implementation of positive rights, i e empowerment and equality projects. Gender mainstreaming can be achieved by seriously engaging with both sexes. The redistribution of power asymmetries within gender relations has to occur along with a politics of cultural recognition. To engage with gender means above all pushing theoretically sound frameworks further, re-imaging geographies of development and dealing with innovative models that account for complex structures of the globalised time space in which local societies are embedded.
Smita Premchander answers a basic question: how can women’s interests and priorities be better addressed in policy circles? Unequal gender relations begin at the level of private households and are played out in the public domain through a variety of institutional arrangements, practices and attitudes. She emphasises the necessity to mainstream gender concerns at institutional levels, from the micro to meso to macro in order to affect change. Oppressive labour divisions or women’s lack of decision making power within the household, can be translated into wider efforts to institute meso or macro level changes that make it possible for women to reach positions of authority or improve their bargaining positions. It is through the creation and integration of such links and measures that development planners and agencies, governments, NGOs and social movements can facilitate the transformation of women’s agencies into collective capabilities in the fight against gender-based discrimination. In another paper, Premchander presents her research on the impact of micro credit on women’s lives, how the livelihoods context influences women’s use of money, when and why women access money, and the nature of social learning processes as a result of externally induced Self Help Groups (SHGs) on the one hand and the internal pre-existing social setting on the other. She concludes that SHGs can link up with community, ecological and social issues, or develop into new forums that specifically address them so that they can create a balanced livelihood security that economies alone cannot.
Speranza emphasises that gender is an important analytical category that determines vulnerability to drought. She states that gender determines access to and control over resources as well as social positions. Thus women, who are already overburdened and have limited access to resources in non-drought times, find their plight further exacerbated by drought, thus increasing feminine vulnerability. In a similar vein, Fleishi has applied a gender analysis to the Cauvery river dispute. She asserts that women are stakeholders who often get marginalised. Water is central in the daily tasks of women, hence the water disputes and the resulting violence ended in sexual harassment and rape. Men migrate when water is scarce, leaving the burden of water-management to the women. Women did not get a voice in negotiations and provisional resolutions were gender blind. A study by Kasper outlines the gender impacts among the Nepali poor in the case of out migration of the male members, a frequent occurrence in poor families. When men, who traditionally control decision-making, migrate the control shifts to women. The article identifies household type, relevance of the decision factor and the duration of the man’s absence as having an impact in transferring control.
The central questions in Muller’s local knowledge project are: What kind of relevant knowledge is needed to solve societal problems? How is this knowledge produced and who participates in its production? These are important questions because local knowledge is a key to development; more specifically it is the major factor in contemporary societal change. The facts are that the school curriculum is irrelevant in traditional societies, and the required knowledge is acquired outside the school. Thus women’s forums continue to be important. They function as translation nodes. Women understand that building up one’s own capacity for knowledge strengthens trust and enforces growing independence from eternal or externalised knowledge in the long run. Women in traditional societies are excluded from formal political decision-making processes at all levels. They hardly enter the development arena. Access to resources was, and continues to be, channelled through male-dominated connections and networks. Hence women are seen as receivers of knowledge, whose discursive power of negotiating between different forms of knowledge such as ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ is eliminated. Muller emphasises the need for research on knowledge as it sheds light on the changing realities of women and men and their abilities to change the social knowledge order. Women based organisations allow for the generation and circulation of new, innovative knowledge. It is essential to encourage the active involvement of women. In another essay, Doumbia recommends that agencies should reinforce promotion of contraceptives for women and more especially for men as part of their efforts towards empowerment and autonomy of women and the improvement of their political, economic and health status. The full participation and partnership of both women and men is required in productive and reproductive life, including shared responsibility for the care and maturing of children and maintenance of the household.
A topic of interest, ‘Reshaping Female Roles through Political Commitment’ by Frey et al, emphasises that male inability to fulfil the traditional task of provider puzzles both men and women. The reduction of responsibilities in the male role and increase of responsibilities in the female role has permitted massive female incorporation into poor unemployed working peoples’ organisations. The researchers found symbolic conflicts related to the definition of the ideal female image. In spite of progress in re-defining traditional roles, leadership roles are conceived as a masculine activity. The notion that women must obey and politics is a male domain intensifies the struggle for gender equality.
The contributions presented in the book do not signify an end; the intention of the book is to help shape positive developments in the respective regions, and also motivate more research. The main aim of bringing this book to print was to share ideas with gender-experienced or non-experienced actors willing to contribute to gender justice and as a consequence to social justice. The book will be of immense value to all activists and research scholars interested in gender and development studies.
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