2019년 맥쿼리대학교 ANTH815 Development Theory and Practice 수업 과제로 제출했던 페이퍼를 찾았다.
그때 전공은 10년간 쌓았던 경력과 일도 관계 없는 학문이었는데, 계속 했으면 어디에서 무슨 일을 새롭게 시작하고 살아가고 있을까?
그때는 GPT도 없었고, 글은 종이로 읽어야하는 늙은이라 논문 다 프린트해서 읽고, 못하는 영어도 헤매면서 제출했던 숙제다.
매일 도서관에 앉아서 정말 열심히 했고, 지금 돌이켜봐도 참 재미있었던 기억이다.
Summary of Presentation
Gender and Development: why is gender so important to development programming
The term of gender implies socially generated differences between women and men in the social status. This gender division has influenced inequality from the private sector to the public sector such as gender role in a family, political engagement, accessibility to health security and education. To change this imbalanced social relationship, there have been widespread feminist activists and various Feminism theories. Their persistence and political movements have made changes in various part of the world including development plans in developing countries. However, gender issues still remain in a problematic situation in many developing countries. Therefore, firstly, this summary will introduce how much development organizations have achieved their goal in gender equality so far. Secondly, despite those achievements, why development plans have failed to achieve fundamental changes will be explained with a case study. Finally, there will be a summary of why gender perspective is so important to development planning in conclusion.
Firstly, there has been some achievement in developing countries’ gender equality programs under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDGs understand that without gender equality, development plans cannot reach to the successful stage so they aim to enhance women’s participation rate in education, the decision-making process in politics and working environment. According to MDGs’ monitoring web site, they made some changes in girl’s education, especially, in Southern Asia, enrolled girls’ population in primary schools overtook boys’ enrolment. It was only 74 girls per 100 boys in schools in1990; girls reached 104 in 2015. This web site indicates that women labors’ working status is in less vulnerable employment in 2015 compared to 1991. The websites mentioned that there was a 13 percent reduction in vulnerable employment for female whereas men’s reduction was 9 percent. When it comes to political power, the website says women’s parliamentary representation rate has increased by about 90 percent over 170 countries compared to 20 years ago. This increasing rate looks like significant changes, however, women are only one-fifth to men’s parliamentary representation. As like women’ parliamentary representation rate, behind the selective numbers, it is easily found that problematic inequality situation in developing countries, for example domestic violence to girls and women, lack of opportunity to access tertiary education and exclusion in a family and rural communities’ decision-making process. Furthermore, these discriminations are reproducing by development planners and activists.
As mentioned above, even though some developing countries’ data show improvement in gender equality, the real life of female inhabitants in developing countries remains problematic under the ‘ideal’ developing projects because development policymakers and practitioners have low awareness of power relationship in gender division. Indonesia’s forest and watershed management project can be a case to understand reality. According to Darmastuti and Wijaya (2018)’s study, the project has massive potential to generate profits in the local area by reducing environmental degradation caused by natural disaster; therefore, women as a member of the community deserve to share the knowledge of management and profits by involving the projects. However, researchers were possible to document the explicit exclusion of women by activists and planners, for example, decision-makers in the local government think forest work is the male’s responsibility, and women’s participation can be the males’ choice. Darmastuti and Wijaya found that these main actors think gender-related issues are not their missions, and planners also believe that it is enough to consider gender issues in Women’s Empowerment department. By this ignorance, Indonesian women have limited access in natural resources despite the fact that the Government of Indonesia set their development goals, which should follow the policies regarding fairness and equality including gender issues. It seems that top-down ‘ideal’ policies cannot reach to the municipal government whose power influences more directly to daily life.
This Indonesian’s case is not a special situation. According to Smyth (2007), when gender term became a buzzword, the meaning has become void, and it affects the failure of fundamental changes in gender equality. Smyth emphasis that the main reason why development plans fail their mission in gender equality is the planners and activists tend to focus on only quantitative goals than structural problems and ignorance the gender power relations. Without acknowledgment about underlying power connection, their activities and plans cannot solve the problems in the private sectors and cultural suppression such as stigmatization. When female engagement cannot be considered in the process, gender discrimination will be continued in developing countries by restriction of involving development project and failure to share benefits from development projects to women.
In conclusion, this essay introduced achievement in gender equality in development projects such as girls’ education and employment status. It was possible by widespread feminist activists. Thanks to their efforts, almost all development organizations include gender equality as the main purpose. However, gender term in development plans is now overusing without gender-sensitive perspectives. It contributes to re-generating gender discrimination in power and resources distribution. In this essay, using Indonesia’s forest management project case, reproduced power relation to gender was demonstrated. Policymakers and practitioners should have a gender-sensitive perspective because gender issues cannot be solved by the top-down manifesto. As this paper reviewed, achieving gender equality is daily practice with a political mindset from the private to public spaces.
References
Koester, D., 2015. “Gender and power: Six links and one big opportunity”, DLP – Developmental Leadership Program. viewed 5 April < http://www.dlprog.org/opinions/gender-and-power-six-links-and-one-big-opportunity.php >.
Smyth, I., 2007. Talking of gender: words and meanings in development organisations, Development in Practice, 17(4-5), pp.582–588.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), viewed 5 April < https://www.mdgmonitor.org/mdg-3-promote-gender-equality-and-empower-women/>
Darmastuti, A., & Wijaya, A. (2018). Gender power relations in development planning for forest and watershed management in Lampung, Indonesia. Gender, Technology and Development, 22(3), 266–283.