It’s a big, complex world. Development is a small part of it. We address it because we have huge inequalities–in a sense development implies some sort of disconnected network of global welfare services. But those who take it seriously look beyond any band-aid mentality of welfare toward sustainability and greater agency for and acknowledgement of people, countries, cultures, regions, communities, households, individuals.

But change happens, regardless of what is done in the name of development. If you put the last two centuries on a timeline with the last 10,000 years, it would look stark, you would have to ask yourself ‘What happened?‘ Sometimes development creates more problems than it solves. Sometimes social movements emerge from groups that experience discrimination or bias–this is where WID and GAD came from (it can also be the origin of more violent groups, like neo-nazis or ISIS, though). Other broad social processes can have drastic effects–for instance, economic globalization. I remember watching my ‘mom’ in the village putting a packet of something in the sauce pot. ‘Glutamati,’ she called it. From China (it was MSG, a flavor enhancer). She probably didn’t know where China was exactly, probably never saw a spinning globe, or how MSG showing up in local markets and making its way into the bush represented major change. That’s not development–just the operating of markets (which often produces greater need for development). Sometimes even the simple introduction of a technology–for instance the introduction of the snowmobile in Northern Finland and how it turned the Lap herding culture upside down in 20 years–can completely transform a society (and not always in a way we would consider beneficial for most people, in fact many times the spoils go to the well-connected minority). Sometimes, in development and outside, the more dramatic consequences of change are the unintentional. So it is a weighty responsibility, nothing to be taken lightly.

Whatever we do in the name of development, it may be useful to think of it like a classroom on campus. We can meet, discuss, come to agreement, and take action within that classroom. But when we step outside that class, maybe outside the building, there may be steamrollers prowling the adjacent lawns–these represent big processes like globalization, militarization, corporate capitalism, free trade, that could swallow us up, despite our efforts in the classroom to make a small difference. Think of the ‘patriarchal bargain.’ A woman (more likely in Asia) moves into her husband’s compound, under the thumb of his mother, who may have an interest in keeping the filial, vs the conjugal bond, strong. Some day, if she has sons, she may slip into a similar role with her daughters-in-law. It’s changing in some areas, where the penetration of a cash economy creates a need for income, perhaps for more income earners in the family, and women who marry into their husband’s households may work outside the home, supplementing household income rather than being sequestered and subordinate to the mother-in-law, possibly even in their own nuclear household.

Change happens. Not always what we want or plan, but tends to produce an array of winners and losers. Now, if change involves billionaires losing an occasional tax deduction or exemption, many people–myself included–would be hard-pressed to shed a tear. After all, they benefited from the system, financed by income tax revenue, that enabled their wealth accumulation. Of course, in the real world these are the fiercest kinds of fights–the ones that involve powerful people or groups with resources and organizational capacity. I think we’ve figured out who the winners are more often than not in the arena of globalization, and it isn’t agrarian villages or third world countries–more likely multinational corporations and consumers in the wealthy societies.

Remember back to the beginning of class, and Dudley Seers’ article on the meaning of development. He described some minimum conditions that every society should strive for:

1. Meeting material needs (food, shelter)
2. Livelihood (some source of employment, but ideally something that has some meaning beyond a drudgerous job and a wage)
3. equality–everyone should have access to the above two, have the right to participate in public life and share equal protection under the law.

Distinguishing needs, interests

Yet even that minimal sort of criteria for development lies far into the future for many if not most countries in the world (the US included). In Kate Young’s article on gender and planning, she discusses three different criteria for identifying needs and interests and thinking about them. First are practical interests. These are some of the basic necessities–enough food to eat, shelter from the elements, access to clean drinking water, maybe even respect and dignity (some people would identify these as fundamental needs. Second are strategic interests. These might include some voice or agency, some ability to be heard in debates and discourse about issues that affect women, and have options for pursuing a course of action. One important strategic interest would be women’s control over their own labor. Often times the husband (in most African households) or mother-in-law (in many Asian/Arab households) exert control over a woman’s labor–she may have little say in the matter. Or perhaps by the time she is freed to clear her own fields, for instance, she may have missed the planting window.

A second strategic interest would be women’s access to resources. This could be natural resources–fuelwood, land to cultivate, etc. It could be other sorts of resources–institutions of government, for instance (the law, the courts). It could be health care–women do have the babies and perpetuate the local populations . . . Access to resources may be necessary for women to meet their practical needs as well.

A third strategic interest might involve the elimination or at the very least drastic reduction in violence against women. This is a pervasive problem especially in patriarchal cultures. Female genital cutting would fit into this category.

After practical and strategic interests, a third consideration in thinking about women’s interests is the idea of transformatory potential. When we think of development interventions, what will they do for women? Will they address strategic interests? Will they transform some of the structures, such as patriarchy, that work as a system of privilege to prevent women from achieving equality of opportunity? For instance, the WID movement did an excellent job of documenting women’s status, their plight in countries of the Global South, and some of the adverse effects that ‘development’ had sown. But it didn’t really change the rules of the game, the patriarchal incentive structures that reinforce certain gender roles in societies. It provided some welfare services and more income for some women, but did not translate into greater voice, power or decision making authority so that women could become equal partners in their own development. They were in a sense an appendage of a larger development apparatus (itself sometimes hijacked by even broader processes like globalization, as you’ll remember if Structural Adjustment Lending rings a bell).

What transforms gender and power relations?

Here are some examples of development projects or initiatives. Think about whether they offer transforming opportunities, just a wage, etc.:

1. Doing piece work. For instance, ever heard of the small parts assembly business? People put together assemblies at home, send them off to a factory to be united with the rest of some product (the automotive industry does this)? Would women working in their own households provide transformative opportunities for women as a whole? Or merely a chance for individual women to earn some extra income (nothing wrong with that, but it is not what Young refers to as ‘transformatory’)?
2. Factory employment. This is the wave of economic development. Many women are migrating to cities in Latin America and Asia, particularly, in search of factory wage work. Many more than can find work, in fact. What happens to the spillover? What opportunities are available? Informal sector street commerce, petty trade, sex work, drug trade, etc.?
3. Collective garden. Women in many parts of the world have a tradition of working together, especially where they are lacking adequate access to productive resources, such as land, labor (e.g., when they have a labor-intensive job that takes help to complete), and capital (e.g., equipment, money). Collective action brings people together. It may be more difficult to take away resources that women acquire as a large group. Men may challenge them for a plot of land, but if they’ve put extensive labor into it, and they’ll go complain to their husbands (who will likely to complain to the claimant of the land seeking to evict the women), chances are they have more security of tenure.
4. Technology that reduces drudgery. We’ve discussed this a bit in class. Women in many parts of the world, but especially where technology is low-energy, and tools are simple and often back-breaking, suffer from time poverty. If a woman–in the non-growing season–spends on average 6 hours a day engaged in meal preparation (especially pounding grain with mortar and pestle), searching for and hauling fuelwood, drawing water, washing clothes, tending to animals, caring for small children, etc., what time is left for perhaps other economic activities that might offer a greater return? Or . . . God forbid . . . a few minutes of rest and recuperation? Nevertheless . . . .  Why would we give the most productive members of the household the least-emancipating technologies?? The field of appropriate technology addresses this issue quite well. Women may choose, freed of time poverty, to spend their time in non-productive ways (economists often assume they’ll run businesses or work diligently to coax out the inner capitalist). But it’s what they want that counts, their agency, given a range of choices and possibilities of which they’re aware, isn’t it?

So in pursuing a development course that offers women transformatory potential, there are some key design principles that would be important to consider. In part II.