Interpreting Gender Mainstreaming by NGOs in India: A comparative ethnographic approach

Abstract

This article examines the way gender mainstreaming is interpreted by specific non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India whose development initiatives draw upon particular ideologies of gender equality in their attempts to apply gender analysis. Its purpose is to locate and situate gender mainstreaming in the culturally specific contexts in which it is practiced to capture the complex realities in which gender policies are implemented and women are positioned to effect change. This is an important focus given that gender mainstreaming now pervades transnational governance and yet is informed by feminist analysis. Moreover, NGOs form key sites in which these policies are expected to be implemented. Of the critiques of gender mainstreaming which have emerged in the last 10 years, I examine how potentially conflicting models of gender inequality and equality take local expression and expand on the importance of framing in making gender mainstreaming meaningful by attending to indigenous interpretations of feminism and gender equality. The analysis I offer provides an ethnographic and comparative contribution to an understanding of gender mainstreaming as a contested site whose possibilities and limitations can be revealed by an attention to its feminist origins, namely a focus on context, process and identity formation.

Este artículo examina la manera en que el mainstreaming de género es interpretado por ciertos organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONGs) en la India quienes tienen iniciativas del desarrollo que se inspiran de ideologías particulares de la igualdad del género en sus tentativas de aplicar análisis del género. Su propósito es localizar y situar el mainstreaming de género en los contextos culturales específicos en que se practica para así capturar las realidades complejas donde las políticas de género se ponen en ejecución y donde se colocan las mujeres para que puedan efectuar cambio. Esto es un foco importante dado que actualmente el mainstreaming de género impregna el gobierno transnacional pero es informado por análisis feminista. Además, los ONGs forman sitios dominantes en que se espera que estas políticas se pongan en ejecución. De las críticas del mainstreaming de género que han emergido en los últimos 10 años, examino cómo los modelos de la desigualdad y de la igualdad del género, que están potencialmente en conflicto, toman la expresión local y amplían la importancia de la contextualización haciendo significativo el mainstreaming de género a través de la consideración de interpretaciones indígenas del feminismo y la igualdad del género. El análisis que ofrezco da una contribución etnográfica y comparativa a una comprensión del mainstreaming de género como un sitio disputado donde las posibilidades y limitaciones se puedan revelar por una atención a sus orígenes feministas, a saber un foco en la formación del contexto, del proceso y de la identidad.

Keywords:

• NGOs
• India
• feminist discourse
• gender mainstreaming

Keywords:

• ONGs
• India
• discurso feminista
• mainstreaming de género

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. I would like to thank Albert Schauwers, Leslie Robertson and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. Reflected in the National Commission for Women (Gov of India); Making It Happen, available at http://ncw.nic.in/pdfreports/Gender%20Justice%20Forging%20Partnership%20with%20Law%20Enforcement.pdf; see also Report of the 5th South Asia Regional Ministerial Conference Celebrating Beijing Plus Ten, 3–5 May 2005, Islamabad, Pakistan (New Delhi, Unifem, South Asia Regional Office), pp. 23–25. Both documents emphasize the roles of NGOs in gender sensitization.

2. Gender mainstreaming, laid out in the Platform for Action, was adopted by the UN in 1997 and taken up by nations worldwide as an effort to mainstream gender analysis and gender equality measures into policy arenas worldwide.

3. National Commission for Women (Gov of India); Making It Happen; Report of the 5th South Asia Regional Ministerial Conference Celebrating Beijing Plus Ten.

4. Periyar and the Empowerment of Women in Tamil Nadu, Report submitted to POWER, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India (Madras, Emerald Publishers, 2001), 60 pages; A Matter Of Quality: A Study of People's Perceptions and Expectations from the Schooling in Rural and Urban Areas of Uttarakhand (Sanshodhan, Society for Integrated Development of the Himlayas, 2000).

5. This analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in north India in 1991 and 1999/2000 and south India, 2000/2001. My focus on the organizations was supported by interviews and participant observation that provided a broader socio-cultural backdrop, including over 100 personal narrative interviews, focus groups in both settings; attendance at events (for example on AIDS awareness and environmental initiatives) in both regions; my participation in the development of an educational manual (see note 4, A Matter of Quality, 2000) and participation in four ‘gender sensitivity’ workshops and the charting of village-based kinship networks. A translator was used in both case studies – these were two young women from the region with formal education who had also attended gender sensitivity workshops.

6. I am quoting from one of POWER's glossy pamphlets but I chose this quote because it was recited so frequently, almost verbatim by many members of POWER and those at the school; hence it succinctly reflects the key aspects of their ideology.

7. The Himalayan or ‘hill’ region are terms used to distinguish this area socially and geographically from the plains of Uttar Pradesh, the state in which it was situated. This distinctness was reflected in a regional identity and socio-political struggles which have been connected to Gandhian, environmentalist, feminist and ecofeminist movements (Sinha et al., 1997). The region was formally created as the state of Uttaranchal in November 2000.

8. Polyandry is a marriage practice in which one woman is betrothed to more than one man. The practice is not common globally, but is found in India. A popular notion, evidenced at the NGO and also denounced in Christian sermons given at the nearby church which I attended, was that this was a practice in Jaunpur which need to be eliminated.