Gender and participation at a project interface
| Published date | 01 December 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-162X(199612)16:5<503::AID-PAD895>3.0.CO;2-C |
| Author | Cecile Jackson |
| Date | 01 December 1996 |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL.
16,
503-51
1 (1996)
Professional Developments
Gender and participation at a project interface
CECILE JACKSON
University
of
East Anglia
This
article explores the ways in which gender objectives and participatory development
have been played out in an agricultural project in rainfed eastern India. Gender in
development (GAD) discourses have only recently begun to focus on the issues around
gender relations within development agencies and organizations, and to analyse the
ways in which the roles, experiences and behaviour of the staff of such organizations
are affected by social identities of gender. The divide between ‘women in management’
and GAD discourses
is
at last being bridged and extended as it is increasingly
recognized that gender relations internal to development agencies have important
impacts on the outcomes and achievements of GAD policies and projects (e.g.
Kardham 1991; Staudt 1991; Amos-Wilson 1995;
Goetz
1995; Snyder
et
al.
1995). One
of the issues that arises in these debates is the significance of the gender of the
fieldworker to the effective implementation of gender objectives in development
projects. This article makes a modest contribution to this discussion and draws in wider
issues of the relationship between project structures and outcomes, and the tensions
between ‘mainstreaming’ gender and participatory practices.
Project intentions and outcomes are less closely related than many
development planners would wish and much depends on what happens at the
interface where local people interact with project staff. This is an account of a
project with almost no women fieldstaff, a narrow view of participation, a
circumscribed area of interest around agricultural technology and a vague and
under-specified gender strategy, which nevertheless produced some quite radical
women’s groups and activities.
These thoughts emerge from my engagement’ with a large ODA financed
project in Eastern India for rainfed agricultural development, through
participation by poor farmers in accessing and adapting appropriate new
upland crop varieties, which began in 1989. The project aims at gender-aware
poverty reduction, and this article reports on an analysis of three fieldworker
diaries, kept on a daily basis over the period 1989-95, and raises a few issues
Cecile Jackson is at the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich
NR4
7JD.
UK.
‘This consisted of two consultancy visits to Orissa, West Bengal and Bihar, the second
of
which involved
several weeks spent with fieldstaff in researching and writing up their histories
of
project involvement in
three clusters of villages in Bihar and West Bengal.
I
would like to acknowledge the help of all project staff
in the work that lies behind this article, but especially recognize the years of daily reflection that went into
the Village Motivator diaries.
CCC
027
1-2075/96/05050349
0
1996
by
John
Wiley
&
Sons,
Ltd.
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