Women must be consulted about development aid

Press, 21 March 1983, Page 16

Women must be consulted about development aid

By

JACQUELINE STEINCAMP

Western male priorities and attitudes are increasing the burdens of women in Third World countries, according to Dr Brenda Howell, a member of New Zealand’s Advisory Committee on External Aid and Development. Western development, strategies, she maintains, can seriously disadvantage women.

Technological solutions to development problems often end up only in putting more power into the hands of the rich.

“Across the length and breadth of Asia, Africa and Latin America, it’s a similar story,” she told the recent Pacific Science Association’s congress in Dunedin. “Development projects in rural areas are missing the mark. Well-intentioned schemes are often making life harder for women, who already work much longer hours than men.” Dr Howell outlined the most important factors in aid policies which disadvantage women and their families:

• Men only trained to operate labour-saving machinery. • Men paid for work done by their wives and families on cash crop projects.

•No recognition for women’s unpaid work.

She cited the 18 hours a day worked by many rural African women, who after a hard day in the fields go back to their villages to collect firewood and water, grind corn, and cook in a

time-consuming and labourintensive way, and may spend half the night on household duties while their husbands are out spending money on liquor and cigarettes.

When labour-saving machines were introduced into villages, it was often the men who were given the training to operate them, and women who lost their jobs and source of income. In India and Indonesia, rice mills were replacing the husking operations traditionally performed by women as a major source of regular income.

Tractors and combines made men’s work easier, but increased laborious work like weeding, traditionally left to women. Modernisation, (such as cheap machine-made clothes replacing handmade goods) reduced a woman’s chances of making any cash off the land.

The introduction of cash crops, like tobacco, sugar, and coffee were benefiting men at the expense of women. Most of the best land was used by men while growing food to eat is women’s work.

Though a wife may plant, fertilise, weed and harvest the crop, it was her husband who got the money at the end of the day. Economic and population changes disadvantaged women in the Pacific. High population growth rates and population pressure altered the age and sex structure of many Pacific countries. Crop diversification meant

that women were spending more time on agriculture. Migration and shortages of skilled manpower required women to take on new roles.

women”

National statistics on which planning was based often include men’s but not women’s work. A man’s cash crops grown for market counted as part of national income statistics; his wife’s food crops did not.

The United States Department of Labour claimed, for instance, that only 5 per cent of women in Africa work, when actually as much as 80 per cent of the agricultural work in Africa was done by the men. A man laying a water pipe in the city was part of the statistics of development. A woman carrying a day’s supply of water from a well was not.

Her work, like much of women’s other work that was vital to a family’s daily needs, went unrecorded, unsupported, and unrewarded.

“This absurdity can be matched by the example of Gross National Product going down if a man were to marry his housekeeper, whose wages till the happy event counted in national statistics,” Dr Howell said. The International Labour Office is now stressing that women’s work is just as important as that of men — if not more so.

If this were recognised for the inescapable fact that it was, it could lead to one of the biggest-ever changes in the nature of development projects in rural areas that could be imagined. “in future, women’s economic potential must be gauged by new yardsticks,” Dr Howell said.

Changes in attitude Dr Howell described the International Women’s Decade as providing an invaluable catalyst, and focus on women and development policies. Before 1975, practically no mention of women was found in literature on development. A rallying of forces, knowledge, and ideas took place in 1975. By July 1980, the date of the second International Women’s Decade Conference, “planners the world over could not ignore the facts, excuse the lack of remedial measures, or explain away the exclusion from development involvement of women.”

There was a powerful impetus in many parts of the world to include women as strategic com-

ponents at early stages, rather than individuals needing protection and requiring the stereotyped “home-economics” approach to development. Dr Howell pointed out that the New Zealand Government, in 1981, approved a revised set of guiding principles for bilateral assistance. This makes specific mention of the need to safeguard women’s interests and to increase their capacity to contribute towards development.

In spite of the growing awareness of the donor countries, the message did not always get through to the local officials.

Researchers and planners in rural Fiji recently consulted male heads of households only on a survey g of work divisions in the family. They were told

that the women do the cooking and the washing. Dr Howell said that in fact Fijian women do most of the subsistence farming and fishing as well, and that if the researchers had wanted the true picture they should have consulted women as well as men. To make women’s burdens less and to improve their productivity and enjoyment of life, technology must be introduced imaginatively and with adequate planning. Women would not then be thrown out of jobs, or relegated to low-skill, low-paid occupations. Women’s voices must be heard, in planning, Dr Howell concluded. “There is a very simple way to find out what women want out of development. Ask them,” she said.