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ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that the assumed link between women’s empowerment, peace, and democratization has taken a firm hold in both theory and practice, the effectiveness of funding empowerment remains highly contested in the literature on gender, war, and democratic transformations. Drawing upon over a decade of fieldwork, this article offers lessons from the Balkans for funding women’s empowerment, with a particular focus on postconflict political transitions. I argue that there are two fundamentally different approaches to funding women’s empowerment, what I call the civil society model and the social movement model, and I lay out theoretical reasons why the social movement model is more likely to achieve enduring political change. I then provide a case study of how the United States government promoted elements of the social movement model in Croatia and Serbia as part of its democratization assistance, focusing on the challenges and promise of this approach.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Carol Lilly, Patrice McMahon, and panel participants at the European Conference on Politics and Gender in Barcelona, 20–23 March 2013 for their valuable input on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Nicholas Halterman, Andrew Halterman, and Julie Halterman for their insightful comments and encouragement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Corrin, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Gender”; Fitzduff, “The New Fifth Estate”; Jaquette, “Women and Democracy.”
2 Hemment, Empowering Women in Russia; McMahon, The NGO Game; Mendelson and Glenn, The Power and Limits of NGOs; and Pospieszna, “Democracy Assistance.”
3 Bush, Democracy Assistance.
4 I use the word empowerment although it is highly contested among feminist scholars, because this is the term most often used by the actors involved and because it includes a wide variety of funding programmes with economic, political and social equality goals (Batliwala, “Taking the Power Out of Empowerment”; Cornwall and Eade, Deconstructing Development Discourse; and Cornwall, “Women’s Empowerment”).
5 My fieldwork for this study was conducted from 2001 to 2014. During this period, I conducted four rounds of interviews totalling 58 interviews: the first in 2001 was conducted as the outside member of a USAID Democracy & Governance fact finding mission, which produced a report on the impact of US funding in Croatia from 1995 to 2000; the second round of interviews was conducted in 2008 in Belgrade, Pristina and Sarajevo; the third round of interviews was conducted in 2011 in Zagreb and Sarajevo; and the final round of interviews was conducted in Belgrade in 2014. The interviews were conducted in the local languages and English; all translations are my own. In addition to interviews I conducted in the country, I conducted a total of 14 hours of interviews with Jill Benderly, director of USAID-funded STAR, in the weeks before her untimely death in January 2013. Adding to my interviews, over a period of years I attended meetings of women’s organizations, transitional justice organizations, and human rights organizations. I have also drawn upon published and unpublished material from local organizations and USAID in this study.
6 Lancaster, Foreign Aid.
7 Antrobus, The Global Women’s Movement; and Sen and Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions.
8 Halterman and Irvine, “Bounded Altruism.”
9 Anderlini, Women Building Peace; Cockburn, Where We Stand; and Kumar, Women and Civil War.
10 United States Agency for International Development, “Database of Projects 1993–2007.”
11 Ibid.
12 Carothers, Essays on Democracy Promotion.
13 Ibid.
14 United States Agency for International Development, “Database of Projects 1993–2007.”
15 Irvine, “From Civil Society to Civil Servants”; and Irvine, “Women’s Organizing.”
16 Belloni, “Civil Society in War-to-Democracy Transitions”; Gagnon, “International NGOs in Bosnia-Herzegovina”; and Helms, Innocence and Victimhood.
17 Benderly, “Women’s Economic Empowerment.”
18 Belloni, “Civil Society in War-to-Democracy Transitions”; Bunce and Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators”; Finkel, Pérez-Liñan, and Seligson, “U.S. Foreign Assistance”; and Wedel, Collision and Collusion.
19 Diamond, “Rethinking Civil Society”; Lancaster, Foreign Aid; and Carothers, Essays on Democracy Promotion.
20 Diamond, “Rethinking Civil Society.”
21 Putnam, “Bowling Alone.”
22 Foley and Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society”; and Kasfir, “The Conventional Notion of Civil Society.”
23 Foley and Edwards, “The Paradox of Civil Society”; and Minkoff, “The Sequencing of Social Movements.”
24 Tilly and Tarrow, Contentious Politics.
25 Elshtain, “Promoting Democracy”; and Kasfir, “The Conventional Notion of Civil Society.”
26 Krause, The Good Project.
27 Basu, Women’s Movements in the Global Era.
28 Hemment, Empowering Women in Russia, 52.
29 Walsh, “The Role of Women’s Organizations”; and Wedel, Collision and Collusion.
30 Alvarez, “Latin American Feminisms.”
31 Lang, “The NGOization of Feminism.”
32 Krause, The Good Project.
33 Campbell and Teghtsoonian, “Aid Effectiveness and Women’s Empowerment”; Hemment, Empowering Women in Russia; Irvine, “Women’s Organizing”; and Mendelson and Glenn, The Power and Limits of NGOs.
34 Ghodsee, “Feminism-by-Design”; and Bagic, “Women’s Organizing.”
35 McMahon, “Between Delight and Despair”; McMahon, The NGO Game; and Stubbs, “Networks, Organisations, Movements.”
36 Kosova Women’s Network, Monitoring Implementation, 46.
37 Baines, Vulnerable Bodies.
38 Bernal and Grewal, Theorizing NGOs.
39 Hemment, Empowering Women in Russia.
40 Squires, The New Politics of Gender Equality, 131.
41 Baines, Vulnerable Bodies.
42 Ibid.; Helms, “Agents of Ethnic Reconciliation?”
43 Benderly, author interview.
44 Helms, “Agents of Ethnic Reconciliation?”; and Helms, “The Movementization of NGOs?”
45 Baines, Vulnerable Bodies; Helms, “The Movementization of NGOs?”; and Benderly, author interview. Alyssa Helms suggests that despite the failure of the vast majority of NGOs to become more than social service organizations, the NGO boom did expose some individuals to critiques of established gender ideologies, thereby sowing the seeds for fundamental change (Helms, “The Movementization of NGOs?,” 45).
46 Bagic, “Women’s Organizing”; and McMahon, The NGO Game.
47 Corrin, “Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Gender.”
48 Beckwith, “Beyond Compare?”; Htun and Weldon, “When Do Governments Promote Women’s Rights?”; and Waylen, Engendering Transitions.
49 Arutyunova and Clark, “Watering the Leaves,” 11.
50 McCarthy and Zald, Social Movements; and McCarthy and Zald, “Resource Mobilization Theory.”
51 Johnson and Klandermans, Social Movements and Culture; Rose, “Reinterpreting New Social Movements”; Ryan and Gamson, “Reframing Political Debates”; Luciak, After the Revolution; Okeke-Ihejirika and Francheschet, “Democratization and State Feminism”; and Razavi, “Women in Contemporary Democratization.”
52 McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention; Meyer, “Protest and Political Opportunities”; and Tarrow, Power in Movement.
53 Andrews, “Social Movements and Policy Implementation.”
54 Bunce and Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders.
55 Carter et al., “Democracy and Governance Activities.”
56 For a more complete treatment of US funding strategy in Croatia and Serbia see: Irvine, “Women’s Organizations.”
57 Irvine, “From Civil Society to Civil Servants.”
58 Dubjević, “Zenska politika”; and Carter et al., “Democracy and Governance Activities.”
59 Racevic, interview; Stojanovic, interview; and Glas Razlike, “Unpublished Report.”
60 Luciak, After the Revolution; McMahon, “Between Delight and Despair”; McMahon, The NGO Game; and Razavi, “Women in Contemporary Democratization.”
61 Benderly, author interview.
62 Ibid.
63 Jelavic, author interview.
64 Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation.
65 Belić and Bijelić, Žene u Predizbornoj Kampanji.
66 Zajović, author interview; and Racevic, author interview.
67 Irvine, “Women’s Organizations.”
68 Bunce and Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders.
69 Irvine, “From Civil Society to Civil Servants.”
70 Carter et al., “Democracy and Governance Activities.”
71 Bunce and Wolchik, Defeating Authoritarian Leaders; Carter et al., “Democracy and Governance Activities”; Irvine, “Women’s Organizations.”
72 Blagojevic, “Gender Perspective”; Racevic, author interview; Mrsevic, author interview.
73 American Bar Association, “CEDAW Assessment Tool Report”; Glas Razlike, “Unpublished Report.”
74 Benderly, author interview; Ruzdic, author interview; and Stojanovic, author interview.
75 Irvine, “Women’s Organizations.”
76 Carothers, Essays on Democracy Promotion; Bunce and Wolchik, “Defeating Dictators.”
77 Irvine, “Women’s Organizing.”
78 Helms, “The Movementization of NGOs?,” 14.
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Jill A. Irvine
Jill A. Irvine is Presidential Professor of International and Area Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her teaching and research interests include social movements, political mobilization, and transnational activism, with a focus on gender. She has written numerous books, articles, chapters and government reports on democratic transformations in Eastern Europe appearing in International Feminist Journal of Politics; Nationalities Papers; Politics & Gender; Contexts; East European Politics; Communist and Post Communist Studies; and East European Politics and Societies. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, The Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the International Research and Exchanges Board.