Unit 2 Advocacy and Academic Perspectives Sushila C. Nepali, PhD March 2013

1. Unit 2 Advocacy and Academic Perspectives Sushila C. Nepali, PhD March 2013

2. Today’s lecture A. Development Approaches • Overview of some of the main concepts of WID, WAD, GAD issues and concerns involved in studying gendered aspects of conflict B. Feminist Theories

3. A. Introduction Gender is a development issue. Different concepts: • women in development (WID) • women and development (WAD) • gender and development (GAD) • the efficiency approach • the empowerment approach • gender and the environment (GED) • mainstreaming gender equality

4. Different issues • Gender and education • Resources • Work and women • Maternal mortality ratio • Declining sex ratio • Gendered patterns of migration • Gender and violence

5. Theoretical Framework • WID liberal Feminists (a school of thought ) • WAD Marxist feminists • GAD Socialist Feminists • WED - Ecofeminists

6. Different approaches of WID: • Welfare approach • Equity approach • Anti-poverty approach • Efficiency approach • Empowerment approach

7. Theory and Policy:‘WID’, ‘WAD’ and ‘GAD’ • ‘Women in Development’ • Rooted in modernisation theory and liberal feminist ideas on equality • Economic change = empowerment • Rise of micro-credit policies and the recognition of women in productive economy

8. WID approaches • Women in Development (WID) to gender and development • some improvements in women’s material conditions, but little in their status • women remained marginalized from “mainstream” development, mainly due to how WID was implemented: the establishment of women’s national machineries and WID units and the emphasis on “women’s projects” • “integrating women” to “mainstreaming gender” • relates to the second problem associated with WID, the continued marginalization of women and women’s issues • “mainstreaming” was seen as a way of promoting gender equity in all of the “organization’s pursuits”

9. Women And Development Approach (WAD) Origin: • Emerged from a critique of the modernization theory and the WID approach in the second half of the 1970s Theoretical base : • Draws from the dependency theory Focus: • Women have always been part of development process-therefore integrating women in development is a myth • Focuses on relationship between women and development process

10. WAD Approach Contribution : • Accepts women as important economic actors in their societies • Women’s work in the public and private domain is central to the maintenance of their societal structures • Looks at the nature of integration of women in development which sustains existing international structures of inequality.

11. Wome And Development (WAD) Approach Features : • Fails to analyze the relationship between patriarchy, differing modes of production and women’s subordination and oppression. • Discourages a strict analytical focus on the problems of women independent of those of men since both sexes are seen to be disadvantaged with oppressive global structure based on class and capital. • Singular preoccupation with women’s productive role at the expense of the reproductive side of women’s work and lives. • Assumes that once international structures become more equitable, women’s position would improve. • WAD doesn't question the relations between gender roles.

12. Gender mainstreaming • associated with the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing and the Beijing Platform of Action that signaled the UN’s first official use of the term • call for “gender mainstreaming” seems to have been a culmination of two inter-related changes in discourse prior to Beijing: • Women in Development to gender and development • “integrating women” to “mainstreaming gender”

13. “Gender” is the behaviour that lets people know “he is a man” or “she is a woman” “Gender” is socially learned behaviour and creates or CHALLENGES social expectations Gender roles may be different in different countries Gender identities can CHANGE – this is why the political project of GENDER EQUALITY is possible What is ‘Gender’?

14. Gender and Development (GAD) approach Origin • As an alternative to the WID focus this approach developed in the 1980s. Theoretical base: • Influenced by socialist feminist thinking. Focus: • Offers a holistic perspective looking at all aspects of women’s lives. • It questions the basis of assigning specific gender roles to different sexes Contribution • Does not exclusively emphasize female solidarity- welcomes contributions of sensitive men. • Recognizes women’s contribution inside and outside the household, including non-commodity production.

15. The purpose of gender mainstreaming • Gender mainstreaming is a strategy to get development organizations to promote gender equality • It is not an end in itself

16. ‘GAD’ Ideas and Concepts • Equality vs. inequality • Roles, identity and value • Empowerment and power • Beyond household analysis • Practical vs. strategic interests • Double burden • Men and masculinities • Gender mainstreaming

17. Gender and Development Approach Features: • A strategy that is designed to enable gender concerns to be built into the analysis, planning, and organization of development policies, programs, and projects. • An approach that seeks to promote equality between the sexes through the empowerment33 of women and men in the population and in development activities. • An approach that values equality in all areas in which there are major gaps between men and women, notably in: • the division of labour; • access to services and resources; • control of resources and benefits; • decision-making power.

18. Gender and Development Approach • An approach that does not focus solely on women or on men, but rather on transforming the relationships between the genders in a more egalitarian sense. • An approach that does not attempt to marginalize men, but tries to broaden women’s participation at every level. • An approach that is not designed to turn women into men, but rather to make sure that access to resources is not tied to belonging to one sex or the other.

19. Integrationist or Agenda-setting? • integrationist “builds gender issues within existing development paradigms” • agenda-setting “implies the transformation of the existing development agenda with a gender perspective.” (Jahan, 1995:13).

20. Gender and development All societies have established a clear-cut division of labor by sex, although what is considered a male or female task varies cross-culturally, implying that there is no natural and fixed gender division of labor. Second, research has shown that, in order to comprehend gender roles in production, we also need to understand gender roles within the household. The third fundamental finding is that economic development has been shown to have a differential impact on men and women and the impact on women has both positive and negative results. .

21. Women ,Environment and Development (WED) • Origin in 1970s (Northern Feminist ) • Male control over nature and women • Ecofeminism • Ecofeminist (Rosi Braidotti, Harcourt, Maria Mies, Vandana Shiva etc.) • Theoretical stream within feminist movement • Environment decline – patriarchal authority in Development planning • Destroying relationship between community, women and nature

22. Practical Gender Needs and Strategic Gender Interests The following is a summary of some of the principal differences between practical gender needs and strategic gender interests. Practical needs: • Short-term, immediate (e.g. clean water, food, housing, income) • Unique to particular women (i.e. site specific) • When asked, women can identify their basic needs. • Involves women as beneficiaries/participants • Problems can be met by concrete and specific inputs, usually economic inputs (e.g. water pumps, seeds, credit, employment) • Benefits the condition of some women • Is potentially successful in ameliorating the circumstances of some women

23. Strategic Gender Interests Strategic interests : • Long-term • Common to all women (e.g. vulnerability to physical violence, legal limitations on rights to hold or inherit property, difficulty of gaining access to higher education) • Women are not always in a position to recognize the sources or basis of their strategic disadvantages or limitations • Solutions must involve women as active agents • Must be addressed through consciousness raising, education and political mobilization at all levels of society • Improves the position of all women in a society • Has the potential to transform or fundamentally change one or more aspects of women's lives. This is called 'transformatory potential' of the project/policy

24. Gender and Security Gender is a relationship of power: most men are more powerful than most women

25. Male dominated traditions about security exclude women… And are also bad for men

26. Vulnerability and Capacity • What makes women vulnerable in times of war and armed conflict? • What capacities do women have? • What makes men vulnerable in times of war and armed conflict? • What capacities do men have?

27. What different problems do we see? • Men’s capacity for resistance is decreased • Women are excluded from decision-making or positions of authority • Post-conflict insecurity impacts people differently • Gender-based violence increases • HIV/AIDS may spread

28. Security impacts of unequal power “Men discuss politics, security, the military, everything. They are all men, speaking to each other. But on the ground, where the conflict is, women bear the consequences of these men’s decisions.” (woman peacemaker, Bukavu, DRC)

29. Male violence – a gender ‘trap’ “Men here generally like to be identified with coercive measures and force. You cannot be a man unless you have power, so you cannot talk about a non-violent approach” Male peace activist, Uganda “Men who support women will have no respect in our communities” Woman peacebuilder, Sudan

30. Security Studies • Documentation and interpretation of armed conflicts: ’All male field’ • Introduction of ’Peace Studies’ as an academic field – engaged women • Discourses of war and peace are highly gendered: • War is related to men • Peace is related to women

31. Conflict - World BankGender, Conflict and Development (2005) • Intra-state conflicts • Conflicts whose major causes and protagonists can be found within a particular society, but with external actors • Some form of organized combat and a planned, systematic strategy • Excludes: spontaneous uprisings of short duration, unique or single skirmishes i.e. Sporatic riots and coups d’etat, and crime

32. Gender - World Bank • The review tries to take a dynamic perspective: How women and men acquire and consolidate new identities and roles in conflict situations. • Focus on roles, not relations • Focus on individual roles and identities, not touching on the institutional ideological and symbolic levels • Actor-oriented, which considers agency, however, could be overemphasized, risking an individualization of power relations.

33. Limitations – World Bank • Little on men and masculinities, or the social and historical construction of the male gender, including the role of masculinized institutions (army, business and the bureaucracy) • Literature is biased on experiences of agencies involved in conflict settings, mulitlateral and international NGOs, at the expense of grassroot civil society organizations • Bias towards post-conflict: little focus on before and during a conflict

34. World Bank Agenda: 8 Themes • Gender and Warfare • Gender-Based and Sexual Violence • Gender and Formal Peace Processes • Gender and Informal Peace Processes, and Rebuilding Civil Society • Gender-Sensitizing the Post-Conflict Legal Framework • Gender and Work • Gender and Rehabilitating Social Services • Gender and Community-Driven Development

35. Policy Documents • Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) • UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2000) • Both stressed the importance of women’s equal participation and their full involvement in the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, as well as the need to increase women’s role in decision-making in conflict prevention and resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction.

36. Gender and Warfare • Myth: Men are more violent, women peaceful • Men in resistence or peace movements? • Women as combatants • Between 1990-2003, girls/women were part of the fighting forces in 55 countries, involved in armed conflict in 38, and comprise between 10-30% of the fighting forces • Sri Lanka and Nicaragua: 1/3 of the forces • El Salvador: ¼

37. Gender and Warfare • Symbolic roles created • Serbian feminine ideals (the patrotic mother or the occasional promotion of the woman fighter) were deliberately constructed to bolster the militarization of masculinity (Enloe 1998) • ’the male soldier’s construction of his gender identity – masculinity – molds boys from and early age to supress emotions in order to function more effectively in battle. Women support this system in various ways. The militarized masculinity of men becomes prominent in conflict and is reinforced by women’s symbolic embodiment of ’normal life’ and by women witnessing male bravery’ (Goldstein 2001).

38. Gender and Warfare • Women’s roles in armies • Combatant • Supporter • Dependent • Implications for how they are treated after the war in programs of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR).

39. Gender-Based Violence • ’GBV is frequently rooted in pre-conflict conditions, but it increases and often becomes an accepted practice during conflict and the post-conflict phase. In addition, with the transition from conflict to peace, a shift in GBV seems to take place from the public to the private domain through an increase in domestic violence’. • GBV against boys and men, understanding perpetrators, power issues...

40. Gender and Formal Peace Processes • Women seldom involved • No connection between women’s political agency during the conflict, and their participation national post-conflict decision-making processes • Once peace returns, traditional social structures and gender divisions often return also. Changes in gender ’roles’ rather than ’ideologies’.

41. Gender and Informal Peace Processes • Conflict offers many women the opportunity to enter into peace processes • They assume the roles of public institutions • Can contribute to conflict management • However, their roles in the informal sector can also be considered as an extension of their traditional gender roles, reinforcing inequality – not taken seriously • Women in Sierre Leone

42. Alternative approaches to studying gender and conflict? • Peace-building? Livelihood development? • Study of conflict management as part of everyday life, before, during and after ’escalted’ conflict • Study of Resistance (Kjersti Larsen) • Indicator of changing power relations? • Study of powered negotiations over control of resources? • Social networks?

43. Negotiation • Negotiation over resources • Formal vs informal fora • Dynamic • Powered • Extensive use of social networks • Family • Other allies

44. Negotiation • How do women and men negotiate over resources? • Negotiating land rights (custom, Islamic law etc) • Negotiation over time • Morality and negotiation: firewood • Flexibility/Ambiguity and negotiation • Silent/muted negotiation • Covert strategies, where negotiations are concealed, muted, or embodied in action, to be used when risk of conflict is high • Negotiating mobility

45. Context- The Term Excluded Group We have challenges and issues We have policies and Acts addressing exclusions

46. GM and SI in Nepal’s development "Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development." (Kofi Annan) Development process is sustainable when it ensures participation of all the sectors of population in decision making processes and maintains true democratic governance systems.

47. GM and SI in Nepal’s development Guiding International Conventions: • Convention for Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW),1979 • Beijing Platform for Actions (BPFA),1995 • UN Security Council Resolution, 1325 • ILO Convention 169 (social inclusion)

48. GM and SI in Nepal’s development Four main areas of GM: • Gender disaggregated data and gender analytical information • Influencing development agenda • Context specific actions to promote gender equality • Organizational capacity building

49. …and therefore must be addressed at many levels Society Community Relationship Individual

50. B. Feminist theories