The Gendered Space of Capabilities and Functionings: Lessons from Haitian Community-Based Organizations

Abstract

Different frameworks for building capabilities result in different material outcomes for women in four Haitian community-based organizations: two mixed-gender versus two women’s organizations. This study shows that frameworks deployed by the women’s organizations pay attention to gendered strategic interests by enhancing capabilities and functionings that communities and individuals value. Their frameworks resembled Nussbaum’s (2011, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press): (1) practical reasoning and (2) affiliation, enabling combined capabilities and valued functionings in a manner that respects Sen’s demands for plurality of individual freedoms within the society. We contend that when an organization makes gender central to a capabilities approach, space is created for women to imagine, practice, and choose real opportunities and functionings of value that are otherwise prohibited. This gendered capabilities methodology addresses political and social poverty and creates a platform for building democracy, offering a central frame scalable to national policy.

Keywords:

• Gender
• Haiti
• Community-based organizations
• Women in development
• Capability approach

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledges the contribution made by Haitian interviewees, research assistants, and funding agencies, without which this work would not be possible. A special thanks to Vidya Natarajan and Grace Flesher for comments and suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Jennifer Vansteenkiste http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5840-6394

About the Authors

Jennifer Vansteenkiste is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, IDRC Doctoral Research Awardee, and a Doctoral Graduate of the Department of Geography, University of Guelph. Her research involves examining food security, international development, and power in Haiti from a gendered, grassroots perspective.

Mark Schuller is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller researches NGOs, globalization, disasters, and gender in Haiti, authoring or coediting seven books and over three dozen peer-reviewed publications.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Development Research Centre [Grant Number 107099-99906075-034] and Social Science Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow [Grant Number 752-2013-1518].