Men Involvement in Gender and Development Projects - Coursework Example

Introduction

In November 2017 in Kenya, the country’s Minister for Education released the results for primary school students who had sat their exams. The most notable takeaway is that the top student in the country was a girl who had scored 447 marks out of a possible 500 marks (Wanzala 2017, p 1). The female student was widely celebrated across all circles including social and mainstream media, and it culminated with an invitation to State House for a meet up with the president. However, it was not so notable that a male student had emerged second in the country with 446 marks out of a possible 500 marks (p 1), and the boy remained largely unmentioned until social media brought him to the fore.

The incident created a huge debate in the country’s social media circles about neglect towards the boy child, and the ‘over-emphasis’ on the girl child. One of the arguments was that empowering the girl child in isolation while neglecting the boy child was counterproductive as it would result in defensive attitudes in men which would result in a backlash against women. Indeed, Hassan (2017, p 1) notes that it is important for men and masculinities to be included in projects aimed at creating gender equality. Over the years, many feminist initiatives have laid emphasis on preventing inequalities against women, but have failed to include men. This is despite the fact it is men who are likely to witness, heighten or perpetuate these inequalities against women.

Since the 1970s, gender and development debates have sought to understand the economic, social and political realities of only girls and women in the Global South, with many feminists arguing that including men in these debates can only diminish the hard-won gains of feminism (Hassan 2017, p 1). Although some argue that men should not be included in gender-related development projects, they form part of the both the problem and solution to gender equality. According to Moser (1993, p 69), women are subject to the triple burden of reproductive, productive and community management roles which could hinder their economic empowerment. This essay will explore the idea that men should be included in gender-related development projects because they are part of both the problem and solution in addressing this triple burden of women.

Main Gender and Development Debates

In order to understand the conception and progress of the gender and development debates, it is important to examine the interpretation of gender both in the social and development fields. Traditionally, the terms gender and sex have been applied interchangeably. However, the meanings of the two words have become increasingly different in modern society. Sex is basically used to refer to the biological characteristics which can include internal and external reproductive organs, chromosomes, and hormonal activities that take place within the body. On the other hand, gender is more of a social construct and is based on belief systems and societal constructions that define masculinity and femininity. It encompasses aspects such as: gender identity which is a person’s idea of themselves, gender roles which are societal definition of male and female roles, and gender expression. Therefore, since gender is easily malleable unlike sex, it becomes easy to deal with gender inequalities since roles can be easily altered in order to create a balance between men and women, but not without the involvement of men in this alteration.

In the mid 20th Century, decolonization spread across many countries in the Global South. The former colonial masters who were mainly the English and the French were concerned about the newly independent states which they considered backward and in need of development. While seemingly vague, the term development was considered to mean the liberal growth paradigm whereby countries had to sustain economic growth leveraging on their comparative advantage in order to develop. However, this narrow approach towards development left little room for women’s rights and opportunities. As a result, women were only viewed in a limited context, that of wives and mothers. According to Rai (2002, p 51), most of the development strategies that were geared towards women mainly had to do with population control. For example, women’s health and educational needs were often crammed up within the reproduction issues framework, and policies aimed at women were mainly angled towards social welfare concerns such as home economics and nutritional education (Razavi and Miller 1995, p 3). Economic and political empowerment was thus given a back seat.

These concerns culminated in the conception of the Women and Development (WID) approach in the 1970s. This approach marked the start of serious feminist engagements that centred on development. According to Harris (2017, p 14), the approach focused on egalitarianism and development of strategies that aimed to minimize the disadvantages of women in the productive sector, and to end discrimination against them. It was based on the premise that women too were significant contributors to the economy, and as such argued for their access and inclusion into the existing development processes. By focusing on the productive roles of women and their integration into the formal economy, it was widely believed that their status would greatly improve, and there would be more effective and efficient development as a consequence (Bawtree and Rahnema 1997, p 244). However, the approach largely ignored the other aspects of the women’s lives such as the triple burden. It failed to deeply analyse the gender power relations and totally did not endeavor to understand the source of women’s oppression. By exclusively focusing on women, the WID approach failed to involve men in the discussion, and thus did little to shake up patriarchal structures.

These criticisms led to the birth of the Women and Development (WAD) approach which sought to explore issues relating to women from a Neo-marxist approach. The approach was mainly premised on dependency and held the view that women had always been vital economic actors in terms of both production and reproduction, but their integration served primarily to sustain the existing international structures of inequality (Harris 2017, p 14). The approach focused on the relationship that existed between women and development, and how this relationship led to their exploitation by the patriarchal structures. It sought to undo problems such as the treatment of women as a welfare category and economic dependents by viewing them as people who were capable of making equal economic contributions as men. Yet again, the approach failed to include men.

In the 1980s, the Gender and Development framework was developed and it placed emphasis on both strategic and practical gender needs. Strategic gender needs are those that help women in changing their roles in society and thus enhancing equity, while practical gender needs are those seeking a short term improvement in the status of women. The latter was evident in the WID approach. According to Rai (2002, p 72), this framework lays special emphasis on the subordination of women in exploring the socially constructed, endorsed and maintained associations between men and women, and proposes development that is equitable with both women and men being full participants in the process of decision making. This approach marked a shift in the manner in which the issue of gender and development was tackled. Rather than focusing on the needs and role of women, the discussion shifted to gender relations with both men and women included.

However, in practice, intervention programmes by NGOs and development agencies ended up being programmes that were established by women for women, and largely ignored men’s roles. According to Harris (2017, p 20), women were taught to insist on rights and seek autonomy while ignoring the reality that women live together with men. Disregarding the dynamics of male experience by labeling men as the problem while focusing on women as the oppressed only leads to failure by development initiatives in addressing issues of equity and empowerment effectively (Cornwall, 1997 p 8).

Other approaches have included mainstreaming gender equality approach (MGE) which sought to incorporate women’s issues into all sectors that are development-related. The aim was to ensure that all new projects would equally meet both women’s and men’s interests with the ultimate goal being gender equality. However, women in the global south were largely ignored and their opinion was not sought regarding the effective approaches, and as such what was done in the developed countries was replicated in the developing countries with little success. The latest of the approaches has been women empowerment spearheaded by The World Bank and the UN, and it focuses on economic empowerment with entrepreneurship and employment being touted as the sure pathways to empowerment of women. However, various aspects such as access to credit by women, financial remuneration, and societal stereotypes were ignored. At the same time, there was resentment by men towards women empowerment. Therefore, it is crucial that gender becomes everybody’s issue by adopting strategies that address the complexities of difference.

Why Men Should be Involved

At its broadest, the inclusion of men in gender and development work is founded on the acceptance that men are both part of the problem and part of the solution (Flood 2004, p 27). This is an aspect that has been largely ignored especially by the two initial approaches of WID and WAD which focused on women’s problems but largely ignoring the reality that the problems were partly as a result of men. As such, by acknowledging that men form part of the problem is a step towards addressing the root of the problem rather than the branches. According to Flood (2004, p 27), gender injustice can only cease in the event that men join with women in putting an end to it. If gender equality is to be achieved, then the attitudes and behaviours of a large proportion of men ought to change. In most developing countries, patriarchy prevails. Patriarchy is not a deliberate effort by men to dominate women, but is rather an age-old system that people are born into, and unconsciously or consciously participate in advancing. In many African societies, the man is the provider while women are supposed to be wives who take care of the home. As such, children grow up knowing that women ought to submit to men.

Gender stereotypes do not help either. According to Mutabai et al (2016, p 358), the belief that a woman should be subjective leads to girls being socialized as being inferior to men since birth. At the same time, boys grow up looking down upon girls as being inferior to them. As a result, a large number of men maintain unjust gender relations and participate in sexist practices, thus playing a critical role as the gatekeepers of the existing gender order. Feminists have advocated for the exclusion of men in gender and development arguing that men are the problem and they are the obstacle to positive change. For this reason, the gender equality agendas have widely been viewed as women’s concerns, not men’s. As such, feminist initiatives emphasised on the change in behaviour and attitudes on the part of women by encouraging them to claim their rights (Cornwall, 1997 p 10).

However, these initiatives only worked to create a series of negative images about masculinity, and this did not go down well with men. However, this argument is fundamentally flawed. According to Connell (2003 p 3), “men are unavoidably involved in gender issues”. It is mostly men who happen to control resources that are necessary in implementing the women’s claim for justice. Therefore, the inclusion of men in gender and development work is critical since it could lead to a change in attitudes and behaviors among men, and they could in turn play a leading role in fostering gender equality.

Men should also be involved in gender and development since their omission from development projects ultimately renders them ineffective. The current interventions such as the addressing of women’s health issues, guaranteeing access to education for girls and incorporating them into the formal economy have failed to fully achieve their aims without the inclusion of men (Melnichuk 2015, p 1). This is because they are interventions geared towards the satisfaction of the practical gender needs which are immediate rather than the strategic gender needs. Some counter this argument by noting that empowering women economically is the efficient and rational method of reducing poverty. According to the World Bank, investing in women accelerates economic development by increasing productivity and improving efficiency in the use of resources. This results in remarkable social gains such as improved child survival and a raise in living standards.

However, the value and sustainability of such changes for women without the involvement of men is questionable. This is because proponents of such arguments make the assumption that women live in isolation while in reality they live side by side with men. For example, if a woman opens a business, she cannot only depend on women clients but will have to also bank on male clients if the business is to be a success. Initiatives such as micro-credit and advocacy were used in its implementation. However, these initiatives did not take into account the triple burden of women. As a result, the formal employment and engagement of women business coupled with an unaltered domestic workload only led to increased intensity of work and hours among women (Moser 1993, p 69). This negatively affected women’s leisure, nutrition and sleep. While their ‘quantity of life’ increased in terms of inclusion into formal development, their ‘quality of life’ significantly reduced. For example, there have been noble women initiatives such as the one third gender rule legislation in the Kenyan public sphere, and the Women Fund. Affirmative action initiatives such as the creation of women representative positions in order to increase the number of women in the country’s legislative assembly have been entrenched in the constitution (Bwisa 2015, p 1). While the initiatives are splendid on paper, in practice, women in Kenya still struggle to increase their presence in the public service. For example, the country is still struggling to meet the one third gender rule 7 years after a new constitution was promulgated, and it is because men have been either excluded from the process or treated with hostility by women leading to a rebellious attitude.

Men should also be involved in gender and development discussions because they are simply the other part of the gender that is perceived to be privileged. By failing to include men in projects through training and provide market access to marginalized men, the economic empowerment of women resulted in a masculinity crisis, and this in turn caused a rise in domestic violence. For example, with women accessing micro-credit, men felt undermined. At the same time, wives had formal jobs and businesses while husbands depended on handouts from their wives. For example, in Central Kenya, men have been said to languish in cheap liquor dens in frustration (Mosoku 2015, p 1). But feminists are quick to point out that Rwanda has managed to achieve gender equality with an 86% rate of female participation in the country’s labor force (Thomson 2017, p 1). However, it is important to note that Rwanda’s female participation is to a large extent a consequence of the genocide in 1994. After the genocide in which about 800,000 people lost their lives, the surviving population was largely composed of women and naturally filled the roles.

Men also ought to be included for their role in reproductive and sexual health. This is an area aid agencies focus their interventions in trying to create bring about development among women. The primary areas of focus in the interventions are HIV/AIDS, and family planning. While feminists find it useful to include men in projects that are related to reproductive and sexual health, practical measures have continued to focus solely on awareness among women. Exclusion of women neglects the reality that a number of cultures seem to acknowledge male promiscuity as being acceptable, and as such men put women at risk of disease (Chant and Gutmann 2002, p 275). At the same time, family planning interventions seem to target mainly women, especially with regard to reproductive rights and contraception. It is obvious that men are active participants in the reproductive process, and as such excluding them often leads to failed outcomes. The counter argument is that by creating awareness among women creates a multiplier effect whereby the woman will in turn educate the entire family (Razavi and Miller 1995, p 2). However, interventions that are solely women-centred will only serve to treat the symptoms of unequal power relations that exist between genders while still maintaining the status quo of the same patriarchal structures that cause the same inequality.

Conclusion

The gender and development debate has evolved from the women-only perspective of WID to the GAD perspective which was more balanced, to the economic empowerment approaches fronted by the World Bank and the UN. The shift in approach towards gender and development acknowledged the significance of men involvement in gender issues such as reproductive health, violence against women, and the liberation of women through education and economic empowerment. A focus on women solely only worked to depict men as the oppressor rather than a participant and as such resulted in resistance towards the inclusion of women in development. Exclusion of men limits the theoretical comprehension of gender relations, and fails to effectively address the issues of women, only reinforcing the patriarchal structures. The ultimate goal should be to involve both men and women in the gender discussion in order to achieve an inclusive society that is free from either matriarchal or patriarchal structures. Empowering women while retaining such structures only serves to disenfranchise women since it only translates to an increased workload and working hours for women, and this negatively affects their quality of life. If inclusive and equitable development is to be achieved, femininities and masculinities have to be explored together since they are interdependent. Therefore, men should be included in gender-related development projects because they are both part of the problem and part of the solution.