The past two decades have seen two potent but disparate movements - those of gender and participation. Each has generated writings and major implications for each other. Yet, ironically, as Robert Chambers (widely recognised as one of the main driving forces behind the great surge of interest in the use of participatory rural appraisals the globe over) contends, this is perhaps the first book to thoroughly explore the overlaps, linkages, contradictions and synergies between the two.
The two editors set the tone, tenor and context for this compilation of 21 other insightful essays with their (that of the editors) discussion on how participatory development has come to pay so little attention to community differences, focusing on the problem of simplistic notions of community, participation and empowerment.
Many entrenched obstacles have hindered addressing even practical gender needs, not to mention the more structural changes needed to redress power imbalances in gender relations. Irene Guijt and Meera Kaul Shah notice six factors that stand out (p 3). Firstly, development has been driven largely by a poverty-alleviation agenda, and analyses of social difference has remained limited to those below and those above by a theoretical 'poverty line'. Caste and economic differences fitted better in this view of development than gender issues, and efforts focused on creating space for 'the poor' and understanding their issues. Since professionals initially involved were mainly males, communication with women became culturally difficult in many areas. The former were not previously exposed to gender analysis either. Hence, the context in which the concept of participatory research that emerged was centred around male power, perceptions, problems and experiences.
Gender-inclusiveness became an unappealing task since building rapport with women and negotiating changes with men took courage and time. Unacceptability of what was considered by some to be a Western and imposed feminist agenda created further resistance to the analysis of social relations of gender. Fourthly, many early reports described one-off training consultancies. Little attention was paid to the complex processes of social change, the depth of conceptual analysis required and the types of organisational follow-ups that make or break these approaches. Too much was claimed of participation too early without first undertaking intensive and lengthy engagements with communities. This trend is unabated.
Moreover, many efforts have focused, and continue to do so, on appraisal rather than community-based planning and implementation. The lack of efforts to engage communities in thorough planning processes, when more contentious decisions must be made that reveal stark differences in priorities, means participatory planning has been documented mainly as wishful thinking rather than on the basis of actual experiences.
Finally, there has been too much pressure from donors to incorporate concerns in projects. This has resulted in many organisations taking up gender issues in a mechanistic fashion. These are incorporated into programmes only to meet a requirement for resource mobilisation. This has not allowed organisations to let gender issues evolve in an organic manner as part of pursuing participatory processes. It has also led to resistance from many indigenous organisations, since 'gender' is perceived to be an agenda imposed from outside.
The editors then move on to the ambiguous contributions of gender studies to the subject in question (p 6). They feel the focus of gender studies has largely been conceptual with limited translation, until recently, of ideas into practices applicable to sectors such as participatory development. They are scathing when they say that the relative unpopularity among gender specialists of spending time in the field at the grassroots level as opposed to attending international conferences sits alongside a tendency to focus on publications and presentations. Inadequate attention too has been paid to understanding and changing institutional contexts, with most efforts aimed at clarifying gender roles, While descriptions of who does what can help identify development needs, they fall short of dealing with the institutions and processes that underpin unequal power relations.
Facilitators dealing with gender analysis often have a poor understanding of local women's organisations, and work insufficiently with local gender specialists. They rarely consider the positive local experiences with organising women. Even feminist participatory researchers have generally failed to break down the dominance of western researchers over their Southern subjects, despite their explicit attempts to do so.
Gender specialists, assert Guijt and Kaul Shah, are committed to changing oppressive gender relations. Their radical contributions lie at the very heart of the chapters in this compilation. Yet quite often, gender has, in practice, meant only women. This has provoked resistance from many men and has made a ghetto of the gender agenda. Gender has remained the responsibility and domain of a few women specialists, who have only slowly started transforming the theoretical into the practical, in organisational cultures dominated by male management. Training agents of change, rather than local people, has been the main vehicle for this change. Organisational polices on gender equity are also popular, but the limited translation to field practices remains a key constraint to meaningful implementation of new skills and policies.
The clarity about 'participation' has been inadequate. In many projects and programmes, participation is ill-defined and meaningless when it comes to implementation. It has often been used in a normative sense, whereby anything participatory is assumed to be synonymous with 'good' and 'empowering'. Discussions about participation since the early 1990s have been more successful at challenging simplified and normative uses of the term.
Despite their conceptual contributions, the typologies that have developed still harbour the seeds of continued simplification. First of all, there is a wrong assumption of a static picture. Classifying a certain intervention as a certain type of participation implies that this describes the entire lifecycle of the initiative. Yet in most cases, women and men will participate in different ways at different moments. Then again, most typologies describe a sliding scale of shifting responsibility between 'insiders', or community members, and 'outsiders', or project/government staff. The focus in the participation literature on differences between 'insider' or 'community' and 'outsider' or 'development professional' simplifies a vastly more complex reality.
There is another problem - a normative assumption of an 'ideal' form of participation. Most typologies are presented as some kind of continuum. There are also often couched in normative terms, moving from coercion to autonomy. Thus they imply that it is possible, desirable and necessary to move across this continuum to the most intense form of participation, a kind of participation 'nirvana' in which everyone gaily commits themselves to what can be quote conflictual and tedious processes of local analysis and planning. The feasibility of cent per cent participation, the editors argue, is a myth.
The typologies ignore diversity too. Clustering the myriad forms of participation into four or seven categories can hinder innovation, particularly if used in a prescriptive manner. Participation in a research context will be different from an action context. What is more important than finding ones place on a particular continuum, is describing how different players are participating and why those forms have been chosen.
The ideal of empowering the marginalised has been a driving force theory for many participatory projects. The belief was that by enabling the poor to analyse their own realities and thus influence development priorities, they would have a greater ability to continue acting in their own interests. But closer examination reveals that many participatory approaches often focus on using consultation to relieve the symptoms of oppression, such as material well-being, rather than its causes (p 11).
Empowerment, insist Guijt and Kaul Shah, is more complex and carries an inherent contradiction - the notion that 'some can act on others to give them power or enable them to realise their own potential'. If power is essentially about the 'transformative capacity' of people of groups, then empowerment involves increasing people's capacity to transform their lives too. It is more than inviting people to partake in needs assessment or a decision-making process.
[This book was originally published by Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd, London, in 1998. The page numbers indicated in this review are those from the Indian edition brought out by Vistaar.]
Review: Myth of Community
