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This book under review "Women Development Workers
Implementing Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh" by Anne
Marie Goetz, a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies,
University of Sussex, Brighton, explores the question of
institutional change from the point of view of women involved in
development delivery, the women field workers in rural
development programmes. The location of this book’s
investigations is two rural credit and development programmes in
Bangladesh, one a state programme and the other run by a
non-government organisation (NGO).
Both have
brought about institutional changes which are known to improve
the access of poor people, especially women, to credit. These
include bringing banking to the village and substituting social
for physical collateral. Pioneered in Bangladesh, these
innovations have inspired micro-finance programmes for the poor
all over the world, and are rightly celebrated as development
success stories. But having women as the focus of
credit-delivery efforts does not mean that these programmes
necessarily put women’s needs and interests as women, as a
group with specific gender interests before other concerns such
as poverty reduction. For women’s need to find a response,
other kinds of institutional changes may be necessary; changes
which institutionalise a capacity to promote women’s rights
and opportunities.
However, many
organisations have taken up gender and development goals without
assessing the implications for management practices both inside
the organisation and in relation to the way development is
practised in the field.
The initial
intention of this book was to compare typical approaches of NGOs
with state-bureaucratic approaches to rural development and
credit provision to investigate the causes of any differences in
delivery capacity to women. From the 1980s, widespread
disappointment with the development programme of state
institutions has led to policies which cut back on the role and
reach of the state and privatised some development delivery
functions to NGOs, which are assumed to have a greater capacity
to serve the poor.
Initially, she
tried to establish whether this presumed advantage in reaching
the poor extended to a comparative advantage in promoting women’s
interests in development. But in the course of the research for
this book an unexpected finding shifted the focus of the study
to the attitudes and work practices of field-level staff in both
types of organisation, as opposed to the structural
characteristics of these institutions and the organisation of
their programmes. Although administrative and cultural
differences typical of NGOs and public sector organisations did
indeed result in efficiency differences, they did not
necessarily result in major differences in the local-level
receptivity of the staff to the problems, needs and concerns of
women clients.
Instead,
cutting across both of the organisations were differences in the
perspective and behaviour of women and men field workers towards
women programme clients, suggesting that gender was an important
factor determining how staff respond to organisational capacity
to respond to poor women.
At the heart of
these differences was a more critical attitude amongst some
women staff towards existing gender relations and willingness to
engage with women clients on matters such as domestic violence,
"reproductive health, children well-being and property
ownership rights. These are all matters which affect, one way or
another, women’’ capacities to profit economically and
socially from their access to credit.
This study does
not romanticise these attitudinal and behavioural differences.
The class distance separating women staff from their clients
allied them much more closely with their often impoverished
women clients. The incipient alternative perspectives and
practices of women field staff do, however, point to their
potential to contribute leadership resources to gender-sensitive
development practice. Their potential impact in this sense was
hampered by gender biases in organisational cultures and
structures which limit women’s capacity to use their
discretion in the field or to have an impact on decision-making
within their organisations.
Using original
empirical research, Dr Goetz compares the experiences and
attitudes of women and men development agents in several major
micro-finance programmes delivering credit to poor rural women.
One of the book’s findings is that women development workers
are often more critical than their male colleagues of prevailing
gender relations and are willing to engage with poor women on
issues such as domestic violence, reproductive health, children’s
well-being and property rights. By displaying this sensitivity
to women’s social and economic constraints, women development
agents can be an important resource for the empowerment of
women.
However,
organisation development work often creates serious practical
and attitudinal obstacles to women’s capacity to promote women’s
rights in their everyday work or, indeed, to bring gender
concerns to the leadership of their organisations. Dr Goetz
utilises organisation theory to create a framework for a
gendered analysis of development organisations, and shows how
the gendered nature of organisations can undermine their
capacity to promote women’s interests. This involves
understanding of gender issues in organisational structures and
cultures, as well as incentive and accountability systems.
Finally, she
elaborates an approach to institutional capacity building in
development to show how accountability to women can be developed
in both state and non-government development organisations.
Women’s right
to equality with men is accepted and promoted in international
development organisations and in the development plans and
policies of many developing countries. Yet actually achieving
equal rights has proved difficult. Notions of gender equality
are profoundly counter-cultural in many societies, North and
South. Efforts to promote women’s equal entitlements to
resources and equal opportunities to flourish in their
productive and private lives encounter considerable social
resistance. This resistance is often shared by development
workers - from the top-level decision-makers to the
"street-level" workers who implement policy. In such
circumstances, how is it that development workers ever come to
change their perceptions about women’s entitlements and
capabilities? And how do they begin to champion women’s rights
and counter the widespread tendency to downplay gender and
development goals?
These questions
motivated this book. They were initially triggered by her
experience in the mid-1980s and working as a UNDP programme
administrator in Africa. She observed there that women working
for women in development have to make a special kind of
difference in their work — they often have to challenge their
own internalised sense of inferiority while also challenging the
gender-related subordination of their women clients. It takes
considerable determination to stick to a conviction of women’s
rights as equals, inspite of frequently having to confront
apparent evidence to the contrary. And this often happens
inspite of lack of support from their organisation for this
commitment, Inspite of active, pointed undermining from male
colleagues.
How do ordinary
people working in the development change their perceptions? How
do they begin to champion women’s rights? This book examines a
range of possible catalysts from the personal background of the
women engaged in development work to their experience in the
organisation, connection to women’s civil society associations
beyond the organisation, and so on.
Based on extensive qualitative
and quantitative research and combining both field observations
and conceptual explorations, this pioneering book will attract a
wide audience among students and scholars of development
studies, gender studies, politics, sociology, public
administration, governance, and organisational studies, it will
also be of interest to NGOs, development activists and donor
agencies.
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