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Abstract
This article focuses on how northern non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their partners, community-based organizations (CBOs), are ‘working’ gender after a crisis. It explores the relationship between one NGO aiming to mainstream gender and a women's CBO in a village in southern Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. The gender policies of the NGO and how the CBO has co-opted these policies are analysed in terms of discourse, interdependence, power and performance. Structural and individual challenges for working gender in post-crisis situations are analyzed and the constraints for making deep reaching changes that can alter gender relations are identified. Because of differences in the conceptualization and implementation of gender policies and practices, the CBO has manoeuvred to maintain its own interests, while the NGO has experienced disconnections in working gender between organizational levels and locations of implementation. In conclusion, it is argued that for changes to take place, knowledge production on gender needs to be locally situated and sensitive to the structural conditions and power relations with which organizations and communities engage.
Este artículo pone su foco en cómo las Organizaciones No Gubernamentales (ONG) y sus socias, las organizaciones basadas en la comunidad (OBC), están ‘trabajando’ sobre el género luego de la crisis. Explora la relación entre una ONG que apunta al mainstreaming de género y a una OBC de mujeres en un pueblo en el sur de Sri Lanka luego del tsunami de 2004. Se analizan las políticas de género de la ONG y cómo la OBC ha cooptado estas políticas en términos de discurso, interdependencia, poder y desempeño. Los desafíos estructurales e individuales para trabajar sobre el género en las situaciones postcrisis son analizados y las limitaciones para hacer cambios profundos que pueden alterar las relaciones de género identificados. Debido a las diferencias en la conceptualización y la implementación de las políticas y las prácticas de género, la OBC ha maniobrado para mantener sus propios intereses, mientras que la ONG ha experimentado desconexiones al trabajar el género entre los niveles organizacionales y los lugares de implementación. En conclusión, se argumenta que para que los cambios ocurran, la producción de conocimiento sobre género necesita estar situada localmente y ser sensible a las condiciones estructurales y a las relaciones de poder con las que las organizaciones y comunidades están en contacto.
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the excellent comments from the anonymous reviewers and particularly thank Catriona Turner for her assistance in copy editing this manuscript. We also acknowledge the valuable comments we received at the IGU conference ‘Contextualizing Geographical Approaches in Studying Gender in Asia’, March 3–5, 2010, University of Delhi, where we presented an earlier version of this manuscript.
Notes
1. The three writers share equal authorship.
2. In order to secure the anonymity of our informants from the NGO head office, district office in the South and the village, we have not used the names of the NGO, CBO and village.
3. Coir yarn plays an important role in sustaining the livelihoods of a large number of people in the western, southern and north-western provinces of Sri Lanka. Coir yarn extraction, spinning and weaving, and the processing of other coir products are a source of employment for many people – women in particular – who have few other options available to them.