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Critiques of Development Development practices became the instrument to organize the post-colonial, backwards societies, thereby devaluing non-western non-Western systems of knowledge, cultures, and social arrangements (Braidotti 21). This idea, presented by Rosi Braidotti, is the dominant view of the development practices that have gone on in the Third World. Feminists and anthropologists criticize these government programs for disregarding pre-existing communities and hierarchies as well as destroying the environment. They particularly see development programs as in-conflict with womens work and womens roles in their societies. Development, a planned process of change brought to the third world by an outside source, is focused on industrialization and the implementation of new technology. This is typically irrelevant to the need of existing communities, and is detrimental the existing environment.
Braidotti and others give evidence to show that development procedures in the Third World have negative affects on womens lives, roles in their communities, and work. Women play a vital role in their societies in the Third World, however those roles are devalued by the development projects which exclude them. Because those in charge of development, both economically and politically, are Western men, the perspective on communities need is invalid. Western thought epitomizes technology and advancement as necessary to societies improvement, and Westerners assume that other peoples have the same ideology as they do.
Braidotti even criticizes Western feminists, saying that they universalize womens suffering and ignore specific ethnic, cultural, class, and economic factors (Braidotti 71). Developers assume that other cultures include patrilineal families and domesticated wives, though they decidedly do not. In correctly devising development projects, each specific groups needs, religion, culture, and traditions must be taken into consideration. Developers must also create projects which are suitable to the environments involved.
Lands are often destroyed and polluted by the implementation of industrial equipment. This affects the people, particularly the women, who must live in the polluted environment, and often try to return to farming on the now-unworkable soil. These issues are often neglected by developing entities in the third world. One development project in which the existing culture was ignore, was the project in Indonesia, led by the Christian Church of Central Java. This Dutch program brought aid to those members of the community who belonged to the church, which led an huge part of the population to join the church, despite their religious affiliations.
Religious leaders were appointed as bridges between their communities and the government, but locals practiced tribal religions, not Christianity, and therefor did not feel connected to or trust these church officials. Villagers did not believe in the Christianity being preached by their leaders, and tried to cling to their own religious practices, and therefor they resented the strict adherence to Christianity. The two faiths clashed. Customs practiced by the villagers, such as the Slamentan Berhsih Desa, or ritual cleaning of the village brought conflict for the local leaders, who were torn between the villagers expectation and the Church's rejection of this non-Christian practice. This development process tried to enforce an outside set of values on the community, and therefor was not accepted thoroughly by the villagers. While the Dutch government and Dutch missionaries were trying to implement such positive institutions of education, medical and health care, and economic aid, they did so in a top-down approach and did not allow for open interactions between the Church and the culture.
They implemented only male leaders and assumed the men to be the heads of the households as they are in Western, Christian societies, therefor disregarding the womans role, the family structure, and the existing balance of power. This was not appreciated by the community, and therefor did not succeed The degradation of the environment is also caused by development, and causes major problems for agriculture later on. One such example is the Chip movement. In India a Timber company was permitted by the government to use a section of forest which had been thought of by the local people as a common area. Deforestation and the use of chemical fertilizers threatened civilians, who rebelled to improve their own conditions (Braidotti 109). The green revolution, which intended to improve agriculture for peasants by providing new seeds and fertilizers was an act of violence against nature and people, according to Vandana Shiva.
The green revolution seeds produced only a few crops, which needed non-native products to maintain. Traditional methods of farming were lost, and soil was destroyed. Shiva also says that, People who work the land with traditional methods are seen as poor and backward but, they in fact have an acceptable standard of livelihood. These agriculturally based programs hurt societies and communities, as well as the environment itself, which many women claim is deeply connected to women (Braidotti 111). Women in agricultural societies work the land and grow crops, so when an areas lands are affected, they are victims of environmental degradation in quite gender-specific ways (Agarwal 119). Women are also protectors of the environment, and are seen by many feminists to have an innate connection with the nature.
This means that The development processes which harm the environment, are affecting women as well. The major criticism of development, is that it negatively affects women work in the Third World. When womens environments are destroyed, their ability to produce suffers. When their roles are assumed to be domestic, they lose their identities as workers. Developers do not examine what women really do in their communities, and assume that they are domestic. This means that jobs are created for men, and men are given power and control which were not necessarily theirs before development began.
One example of such a situation is the development project in Gambia. The roles of women in the society were overlooked by developers, and therefor the development project failed. In Gambia, an ethnic group called the Mandinka had evenly divided labor between the sexes. Men were responsible for producing corn, while women were responsible for growing rice. This meant that each group collectively owned the land, produced the food, and distributed the harvest (Dey 110). When the development process began, however, developers saw producing a monocot as the wisest option.
Rice was chosen, however, women were disregarded, and men were set in charge of producing the rice. Women lost their claim to their land, and were forced to search for new types of labor, which were less lucrative. The developers made the assumption that the men, as in Western culture, owned the land, and that the women were secondary in terms of production. This was not the case, and in fact women had owned land and be rice farmers already, and thus had been central to the subsistence of the community. This project created a chronic famine in the community, because the women were forced to abandon food production and work at low paying jobs, while the men were now paid in cash for their labor, and spent this income on technology, not food. Failure to appreciate the division of labor and variations in the control of different crops has not only led to deficiencies in project design but has also increased the divisions in the household with women gaining far less than men (Dey 109).
This is a clear representation of how women and communities are destroyed when native roles are not accounted for in development. Another such project in which development led to urbanization and essentially destroyed the society involved was the Mexican development project. This project caused an overpopulation due in part to the governments control over coffee production. Men were given control over coffee bean production, and certain men came to monopolize the sale of coffee to the government. This meant that many people were unnecessary to production, which led to the migration of large numbers of young people from Copa Bit to Mexico city in search of employment.
This was particularly true of young girls. Girls as young as nine or ten who would be forced to turn to house work or prostitution in Mexico City (Young 152). This was the first case in this area in which a portion of the population became a surplus population. This population boom was officially treated as an increase in births, while feminists argue that surplus populations are actually an adjustment in the population from rural to urban areas, and could not be controlled through the use of birth control. This development process in Mexico essentially failed because the method of improving coffee production did not take into account the community's needs or womens roles. Feminist criticize the development of the Third World on many levels.
First, Western developers make decisions with a western bias and from a western perspective. Third World communities are reorganized based on a Western capitalistic model, thought the native lifestyles and societal structures are not conducive for these changes, and therefor the existing hierarchies are destroyed. This western view is also seen in the destruction of the environment due to industrialization. Braidotti criticizes the West for generalizing the worlds environmental problems, and not taking responsibility for those of the Third World. Casting the multiple and complex problems of environmental degradation, resource depletion, industrial and nuclear pollution, and loss of biodiversity into the mold of the global environment and development crisis that humanity is facing today has given rise to the image of a unitary world system facing common restraints (Braidotti 25). This ignorance of problems in the Third World is representative of Western development policies in general.
Little research is done of the roles members of society play, and therefor, in imposing Western patterns of work and dominance, cultural differences are ignored and destroyed. This is the key to why womens work in the Third World is changes and undermined due to development. The vital role that women played in pre-industrial societies is ignored, and therefor womens work is assumed to be domestic work. Women lose their role in society and their power in the community. Their families suffer because they are made to live on only one income, and the greater economy is hurt because individual economies are hurt. Future development projects will be more productive and less destructive when knowledge of cultures comes first, and blind implementation of pseudo-Western social and political structures ends.
Agarwal, Bina. The Gender and the Environment Debate: Lessons from India. Berneria, Lourdes and But Sen. Class and Gender Inequalities and Womens Role in Economic Development Theoretical and Practical implications. 1982. Braidotti, Rosi, et al. Developmental is: A Discourse on Power, Feminist Critiques of Science, Alternative Development/ Environmental Reforms and the Debates on Sustainable Development.
Women, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. 1994. Dey, Jennie. Gambia Women: Unequal Partners in Rice Development Projects? Hobart, Mark. Introduction: The growth of Ignorance. Sen, Gita and Caren Grown.
Development, Crisis, and Alternative Visions: Third World Womens Perspectives, Alternative Visions, Strategies and Methods. van Ufford, Phillip Quarrels. Knowledge and Ignorance in the Practices of Development Policy. Young, Kate. The Creation of a Surplus Population: A Case Study from Mexico
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