Sunday, October 30, 2011



Having read Joyce's posting about Kenyan women-soldiers and empowerment, I have decided to write about Kyrgyz women, whose empowerment and political visibility took completely a different turn. Kyrgyzstan does not appear in the top rankings on gender equality. Traditionally, women are kept away from high politics and decision-making. However, the last two “Revolutions” in Kyrgyzstan have shown that women can become a real force through creating special groups of women-provocateurs or “special-purpose women units” (SPWU). First introduced during the “Tulip Revolution” of 2005, the SPWU returned to the political “scenefive years later during the second Revolution of 2010. Nowadays, women and politics took completely unexpected turn in Kyrgyzstan; the women have become a weapon of repression in the hands of local politicians and businessmen.

The SPWU is a group of twenty to thirty strong vociferous women from rural areas, and is hired by politicians to rip the rallies and meetings of their political opponents. The SPWU can suddenly appear at the places of public meetings, protests and start screaming, beating the opponents in order to cause panic and public disorder.

Some believe that the secret of the women’s groups “efficiency” lies in the assumption that the police won’t shoot at women, indeed, among the 86 killed on April 7, 2010 during the second Revolution there are no women in the list, and women charge for their “services” less than men. Besides, women add more drama to the photos and videos, a very effective move in the age of television and Internet.

It is also supposed that the women’s groups are created by taking into account local Asian and Islamic mentality, where the men involved in protest actions, or the police will not beat the women who are at the age of their mothers. However, some politicians in Kyrgyzstan seem to have understood it differently, and have widely used services of such women as an effective tool to suppress their opponents.

Indeed, the law-enforcement agencies treat women more leniently than men, and therefore it is often possible to see the women aged fifty to sixty in the SPWU, and of course, local traditions demand for respectful and polite attitude towards them, comparing to other participants in the protests. For example, the ex-president of Kyrgyzstan escaped from the capital to his home town, and surrounded his house by local elderly and some young pregnant women to protect himself from the police. Local politicians use these women when they want to dispute the results of parliamentary/presidential elections, or court trials about corruption. It was the day of presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan yesterday (October 30), and before the elections day one of nominees warned of "people's outrage" if he wouldn't be elected as the president. Now, you can imagine about which kind of "outrage" he was talking about.

It is evident that the members of SPWU are women from marginalized population who are in need of additional income, because participation in such actions are well paid; according to some unofficial data, depending on the size of the services each woman is daily paid from five hundred to five thousand KGS (from ten to one hundred dollars). Before, the active women in Kyrgyzstan were defined as entrepreneurs, migrants, the unemployed, human-right activists, but now they are depicted as the SPWU.


Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Kenyan Women Soldiers fighting Alshabaab

Kenyan Women Soldiers fighting Alshabaab
While we discussed participatory development this week, I think that, it's important to share the latest news from Kenya. Kenya capital city (Nairobi) has received 2 attacks this weeks from an Al-qaeda linked militia group (Alshabaab). The attacks come as threat from Somali to Kenya for sending it military team to Somali/Kenya border to control proliferation of the terrorist group into Kenya. I'm impressed on how gender mainstreaming Kenya especially in security and defense ministry has increased women participation in what has been often referred as male-dominated careers. If women can be in the front line to protect a nation, then all the world need is appreciation that empowered women need space to exercise their capabilities and I'm sure major societal problems can be solved.

IBM names Rometty its first female chief executive


Taken from BBCnews:
Technology giant IBM has appointed its first ever female chief executive.
Virginia Rometty, currently a senior vice president, will take over from the current chief executive, Sam Palmisano, in January.
Mr Palmisano, who took the top job in 2002, will step aside whilst remaining chairman of IBM.
Both executives helped steer the company from mainly selling personal computers to selling software and services.
Ms Rometty, 54, is also widely known as Ginni.
"Given Ginni's experience running the largest portion of the business by revenue, she was a logical choice," said Macquarie Securities analyst Brad Zelnick.
She joins a relatively small circle of top female chief executives, including Pepsi's Indra Nooyi, Xerox's Ursula Burns, Kraft Foods' Irene Rosenfeld and DuPont's Ellen Kullman.
Hewlett-Packard - a longtime rival to IBM - recently appointed Meg Whitman as its boss.

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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Barefoot College

Do you think this is participatory development at its best? I definitely see the power of local knowledge, representation, a people-centered approach, and local as well as global partnerships coming together under one solar panel covered roof!

Bunker Roy on the "Barefoot College"
http://youtu.be/6qqqVwM6bMM

Sunday, October 16, 2011

"Men are not the problem. Violence is the problem." & The Good Men Project

I came across an intriguing article via the Huffington Post, "The Goddess Kali, Gender, and Violence: A Hindu-American Feminist's struggle" (Oct 13, 2011) by Saumya Arya Haas that I think ties in well with our discussion last week on men and masculinities when we came to the consensus that men do need to be included in gender discourse and development initiatives. Haas makes the claim that men and women share similar hardships when it comes to gender and violence- its not just a one way situation of men as the perpetrators of violence against women- it goes the other way too, with women inflicting violence on men. As Haas points out: "men are vulnerable to abuse," yet the way they are abused is often not as publicly apparent as when women are abused. While women are more likely to get physically battered enough to land them in a hospital or even killed, men still suffer from forms of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Unfortunately men's vulnerability to abuse is more likely to be suppressed or taken off the radar because of what Haas calls "societal pressure"--upholding gender stereotypes that link men to behaviors that employ violence and women as consistent victims of this detrimental display of power and masculinity.  


Haas mentions the story of Kali,  the fearful and ferocious Hindu mother goddess and a popular manifestation of feminine rage to point to the fact that things are not always as they seem (alluding to the portrayal of men as the enemy). Picture source: wikipedia.org



While police records and media coverage may demonstrate many more women being abused by men than men being abused by women, we still only have a sliver of the picture. As we talked about last class, we often understand men through the public eye, subconsciously overlooking men's issues in the private sphere. Because men are pressured by society to uphold their masculinity, they may be less likely to turn to the authorities or even confide in others if they have been abused, rendering them voiceless of their private vulnerabilities. The following statement by Haas provides an alternative perspective to this predicament:



It's easy to think we've identified the perpetrators of abuse, and that they are men. But every one of us has the potential to misuse our power over those more vulnerable. Until we -- men and women -- confront and overturn those tendencies, we are going to keep on feeding a cycle of violence, reaction and blame. Men are not the problem. Violence is the problem. That violence may be emotional, spiritual or physical. In the end, we all suffer.
I agree that violence is ultimately the problem, not men, yet as a society how to we ween off from largely associating men with violent acts and women as their victims? It maybe easy to say but very difficult to put into practice. Nevertheless, one such initiative Haas mentions is  The Good Men Project , founded in 2009 which attempts to create a space for men to have conversations about men's issues and masculinity in the 21st century, asking themselves "what does it mean to be a good man in these modern times?" Their website seems really interesting; it covers a broad spectrum of issues (even gender!) in a very visually appealing, multi-media approach. I encourage everyone to check it out, I've never seen anything like it! 






Friday, October 14, 2011

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Miss Representation

While conducting research for my Special Issue project on gender and media representation, I stumbled upon this film's trailer. I personally cannot wait to watch this film. Let me know what you think about this. Do you agree? Disagree? Is the issue being blown out of proportions? Or not being highlighted enough?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs

Join the Conversation on Global Development | UNDP

One of my former students (Ifoda) just posted this link on Facebook... interesting material for our upcoming conversation on participation!

Join the Conversation on Global Development | UNDP

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Community Development: Notes from South Africa

I had the privilege of visiting South Africa last summer with the O.U. Aids in South Africa program coordinated through the Nelson Mandela Municipal University, NMMU, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. We had lectures at NMMU as a means of orientation to the country, history, and community in which we would be volunteers. The following are principles of community development that are used as guidelines in the Eastern Cape (province), South Africa, where Port Elizabeth is located.

Community development should address:

1. Abstract human needs, but development progresses addressing concrete needs. It is not FOR people, but WITH people. Thus, it is a joint effort and problems of hierarchy are diminished in the service of human dignity, self reliance and happiness.

2. Learning – all must learn together

3. Participation – at all levels and it begins with decision-making for the community.

4. Empowerment – through information, knowledge , experience + power

5. Ownership – the community owns it – It is the outcome off participation and empowerment.

6. Release

vs. relief

the process of empowerment in problem solving

7. Adaptiveness

* There is no blue print - each community is different

* Learn as you go along, make mistakes and correct – if necessary

8. Simplicity

* Bigger is not necessarily better

* Local motivation is a key factor

It was stressed that development professionals MUST, above all, listen to the community voices. Dialogue, get their input, use a democratic forum. Our lecturer told the following story: Nelson Mandela was going around to various communities building schools. He arrived in one community, to open the new school, and was told “We didn’t need a school. We need a clinic. Why didn’t someone ask us what we could use in our community?” To Mandela’s credit, he told the story himself, to make the point.

The point is, outsiders cannot make those community decisions. Government causes itself and people a lot of problems trying to impose from the outside, what it thinks should be done.

Another example: A community had a problem of an inadequate water supply. The outside development specialists said “ You need to solve your water problem.” The people of the community insisted that they needed a soccer field, BEFORE they needed a new water supply. The outsiders threw up their hands and exclaimed “ What can you do with these people, they want a soccer field before an adequate water supply. Typical Africans, they just want to play soccer, no wonder nothing ever gets better.”

The community won that round and a soccer field was built. The community rallied around a soccer league and the community literally developed itself making new friends and talking amongst their neighbors at soccer games. The next year they told the development specialists: “ We are ready to go forward with the water project. We have been talking and planning and believe we can get it done now. Before, there was too much strife and contention as to what should be done.”

Saturday, October 8, 2011

“THE PLIGHT OF SUGARCANE WORKERS IN CENTRAL AMERICA” A LECTURE BY JASON GLASER – OCTOBER 13

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let you know that the Latin American Studies program will be hosting Jason Glaser, filmmaker and president of La Isla Foundation in Nicaragua, at 7:30pm in Bentley 129. This past summer, I interviewed sugarcane workers and their families for my capstone research and also volunteered through La Isla Foundation and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The primary mission of La Isla Foundation in Nicaragua is to coordinate the resources of local institutions to determine the cause of the CRI epidemic in western Nicaragua. Their goals are to identify the causes of Chronic Kidney Disease, facilitate treatment, educate sugarcane workers, and support impacted families. This is going to be a great lecture and learning experience so please try to come! 


Here's a very touching video created by La Isla Foundation on a mother's account of her teenage son that was murdered by the security guards of the sugar mill, Ingenio San Antonio. This is just one example of the many injustices this community faces... 



Friday, October 7, 2011

Proud... and bothered

I had watched on Aljazeera an interview with one of the recent Nobel Peace Prize winners Tawakkul Karman, and I remember admiring what a driven individual she is! It really had nothing to do with her being a woman in Muslim country, where the general perception of the world is that she is not considered an individual with agency. It was just how persistent she was being in her activism, which she pointed out was something she had never done, and how easily she had slipped into the role of a leader and was organizing large groups of students and young people. In the midst of all the turmoil, she managed to joke with one of her colleagues about baking biscuits for when they marched to the main square and they came back to their tents all beaten up by the police! I was wondering if she would get the joke were I to send her the recipe for Mia's cookies :)

And then I read an article Kay Anne showed me about the awards ... and I still don't know exactly how I feel! I am immensely proud of all the achievements they have garnered. Each of these amazing women has in their own way fostered respect and appreciation of humanity. I can only imagine the challenges they have had to work through, which would possibly get compounded because of this recognition. I have also been particularly impressed by Leymah Gbowee’s work, anyone who comes from a country which has sharp ethnic and religious divides can appreciate how complex and potentially volatile it can be to lead a diverse group. Especially when it concerns an issue as touchy and profound as sexual abuse in times of war!

What bothered me though was the committee’s explanation for why they were chosen. I do recognize that the problem of gender inequality does exist, so it definitely has to be tackled in this overt manner, where a conscientious effort has to be made to single out women. However, all I could think about was the fact that I do not remember anytime a man has been chosen and the committee has had to point out how their gender played into the decision. If only we lived in the ideal world where people of any gender are rewarded principally because they are causing massive changes in their communities, and have achieved great strides in their own right. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

http://news.yahoo.com/nobel-peace-prize-goes-womens-rights-activists-103726719.html


Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Oatmeal Choco Chip Cookies. Per request


Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt (I used a little less than this)
  • 3 cups quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended. Mix in the quick oats, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets.
  3. Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The single story

I saw this video a couple of years ago and was impressed by it, especially since she speaks my mind in an amazingly succinct way. A way I sincerely wish I could.

This week's readings reminded me of it so I thought I should share. It's a bit long, almost 20 minutes, but worth every second.


Sunday, October 2, 2011

Post-colonial Feminism

As Kenyans celebrated a well lived life of a fallen heroine; Prof. Wangari Maathai, I think it’s good to share some of her snapshots written and spoken biographies that would reflect this week’s reading on postcolonial feminism. According to Nidhi (2009), the only changes that women have orchestrated involved long-drawn-out and violet protest, through mobilizing collective action both locally and internationally.

For her to receive the Nobel Prize in 2004, she was a prophet (postcolonial feminist) who could not be honored in her own home (country). First, because she was a human, environmental and political rights activist who didn’t only exchange her identity as a learned fellow to a poor foolish women in the eyes of political elite but also challenged the 1st president of republic of Kenya not to convert a city park (Uhuru Gardens) to a government land for construction of the tallest building (Times Tower) in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya. Second, she almost lost her life during a protest rally at the same park from a thorough beating by police. However, even after the Nobel Prize award, she never received much attention by the government of Kenya compared to international organizations and leader because she continued to challenge corruption and poor governance.

Below are the 2 biographies

1.1. Wangari Maathai and political activism

BY ANI JOZEN

1st October 2011

News of the passing away from a cancer complication of Nobeal Laureate Wangari Maathai sent shockwaves around the world, with many of the current generation of rather youthful activists mourning one of their iconic leaders and world figures.

Apart from executed Nigerian writer and political activist Ken Sarowiwa, no one on the continent had succeeded to place environment at the centre of political action, and unlike Sarowiwa, the late Prof. Maathai did not have an oil logged river delta as her ammunition. She collected the pieces herself, from ideals of environment and social justice.

The work of Prof. Maathai inspired both the local environmentalist and gender movement, and in a number of cases for instance in Envirocare, the two aspects were put together as integral and incapable of being separated. Indeed, Envirocare leader and herself a university professor, Ruth Meena of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam, was more than a passive follower of her icon.

She also took to be seen more in some sort of dreadlocks of plaiting her hair, precisely the image of the late Wangari, an image she did not appear to seek to alter.

This aspect alone brings to the fore some of the more profound elements of identity – and even a bit of contention of identity – in the life programme or existential disposition of the late environmentalist, arguably the most effective organiser that civic groups in Africa have ever come across.

While other political actors in the country were anchored in physical interest groups like business and ethnopolitical alliances, she angered almost everyone across the political landscape, and emerged with the victims of pursuing political change. Yet the tiger didn't lose its spots, and in 2007 she was squarely in PNU camp.

The place of environmental politics as well as gender mainstreaming in African politics was the renewal in activism following the collapse of the Cold War, where most energies were spent fighting imperialism, that is, perceived western encroachment and diktat on African affairs.

Radical persuasion of this sort had a rather limited impact in Kenyan politics; its early post-independence personification, Marxist intellectual and trade unionist Pio Pinto was assassinated, a murder that was never resolved. Ex-vice president Oginga Odinga developed a radical view of things, but he was drowned into ethnicity.

Like others in the activist movement in Kenya, the late Prof. Wangari Maathai was firmly anchored in radicalism as a background, and her take up of environment was a synthesis of radical academic pursuit and proper political activism. She never took her eyes off the environmental core of her engagements, and since her own native central province had little land reserves left, and encroachment on most other public lands was in full swing, she took up an issue that transcended ethnic loyalties. Environment rose to become a key political issue that drew hundreds of thousands, helping to chart a new political order, the focus of which became the enactment of a new constitution, where powers of the provinces have been enhanced. In that case it will not be that easy for 'land grabbers' to just get a

State House memo....

How far the Green Belt Movement changed the political attitudes and helped create 'social federations' as Italian Marxist and political prisoner Antonio Gramsci used to say, that is, the formation of 'political blocs' with environment and justice at the core is hard to say. It will be a matter for research to gauge the proper influence and degree of the environmentalist's impact and transformation of the political agenda from ineffective radical ideology and predominant ethnicity blocs on the one hand, to political accountability on the basis of environment and justice on the other. It was a personal handiwork of hers.

As Marx used to say (in Theses on Feuerbach) social change cannot come about unless the society is put to education, that is, by an educator – in which case the problem was 'who is going to educate the educator.' The response that Marx gave was that it was 'praxis,' that is social practice on a day to day basis, the real problems people meet in life and business, politics etc which would lead to the necessary political action to bring about change. In that case change was tied up with theory, as it alters what is known as 'consciousness,' as people realise the falsity, iniquity, of an existing order of things, and fight.

That sounds like a bit of a biographical note as the much younger university lecturer was going through a new book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and icon in much the same way as idealist social democrats and Pan Africanists around the world saw in the late Mwalimu Nyerere an iconic figure and role model.

Yet Mwalimu belonged to a period where Africa was coming into independence, and it was expected that the new leadership would fashion a path, act responsibly on the basis of ideals of justice, and take Africa forward. It was the period of the 'Burning Spear' in Kenya.

Kenyan nationalism had largely settled for the 'Burning Spear' phenomenon as espoused by imprisoned and tried leader Jomo Kenyatta, the independence hero of Wangari Maathai and most other people in the Central Province, and quite broadly within the whole country.

Thus 'Burning Spear' was of course a colossal threat to colonialism, but as the name suggests, it was fated to burn out and on its ashes would remain a conservative nationalism, seeing land grabbing as a reward for the struggle for independence. That is of course where Wangari comes in, awakened by Jaramogi, with 'Not Yet Uhuru' autobiography.

The autobiography was a cry of despair the veteran independence fighter and supporter of imprisoned Kenyatta, battling those who sought to ignore Kenyatta to gang up with colonial interests, who found an ally in Kenyatta after he was freed. He turned against his radical supporters, a huge letdown.

Yet, as 'blood is thicker than water,' those whose psychological mould was bound up with Native Associations which colonialism extensively used to hinder the growth of nationalism properly speaking could only express disdain within this psychological framework. In this, Wangari Maathai wasn't a big exception.

There is another aspect in which the late Prof. Maathai could have won another Nobel Prize if there was such a prize, that is, one of huge contributions to covering the gap between the genders, that is, as a real champion of women's emancipation. While she sought to emancipate women by her environment and justice programme, it was actually her environmental political activism, imprisonment under second phase president Daniel arap Moi, and putting up her own political party and list of candidates. She became a deputy minister, not since she was less famous but because she could scarcely mix with her colleagues.

It is also possible to say that this achievement, getting party activists into Parliament on a Green Belt movement ticket, but having to be allied with the business interests in the Party of National Unity (the president's embattled majority) was a 'kiss of death' to her erstwhile valiant activism. She would from then on toe the line of minister and finally her parliamentary whip. Not much was heard of her since.

While there is no dispute that a cancer is something that grows in the body against anyone's expectations or wishes, there is an uncanny manner in which the programme that is called life reaches its own logic, and isn't ended 'prematurely' by cancer. When a disease crops up in the body, medication and the body's own metabolic and immunity systems help each other to combat this intrusion into its logic of function, but at times there is a 'live and let live' from a profound anchor in the mind, or an organ in the brain which the individual or medics won't be aware of its function. It dictates that the disease stays.

The human body, like political systems, has a suicide element embedded in its survival character, that it retains a right to die, even if it is programmed to fight for survival, in which case when an environment activist starts being ashamed of attending anti-government meetings, or has to shout them down, or stay silent, she no longer feels it is herself.

She may even start having premonitions of death, medication more or less refuses to work, not even an application from the very natural environment she dearly battled to preserve. She did not want her disease to be made public and then she has to receive crowds of sympathisers – not quite the valiant fighter in her, having been scarcely at all a woman; all they could is to mourn, later.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

http://www.ippmedia.com/frontend/index.php?l=33942

Below is her second brief biography on YOUTUBE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VVz54pwlF4

Trapped by Tradition, Then What's the Escape Route?

I recently came across the CNN headline story, Trapped by Tradition , and immediately thought about our previous class discussions on tradition and culture. The included article explores a CNN documentary that investigates the traditional implications for child prostitution in some Indian villages (there is a YouTube video embedded within the article for further inquiry).  The title of the documentary, “Trapped by Tradition”, is what initially stood out to me. As I read further, it became increasingly clear that this type of terminology is directly related to our previous discussion on ‘cultural relativism’. This criticism of tradition throughout this article explicitly uses the notion of tradition as a major impediment to gender equality in these regions.   
 Although there is reference to the economic hardship that drives families and girls to enter prostitution, it is clear that that article blames the ‘backwardness’ of these communities as being detrimental.  If you go to the Plan India's website and read the main goals of this intervention, you will see that this NGO targets "the most backward" communities, a clear indication of their focus. While investigating further, I found another DailyMail article on Trapped in Traditon that had some rather strong points on ‘tradition’ as the problem.  In exploring the documentary, the article states that that the overarching goal is “to shatter hundreds of years of tradition which have blighted thousands of lives”.
So, if it is the culture that is the problem, how do you suggest we eradicate tradition? Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor recommends the use of education and awareness raising.  In doing so, Kapoor argues that we need to change the attitudes of the communities and provide alternative choices to girls. Part of this education involves provided awareness to adults on the ‘dark side of this tradition’. In our previous class discussions about culture and context, it seems to be one of the biggest challenges in development intervention, especially within the GAD paradigm. Additionally, not only is it difficult, it is controversial.  How do we implement interventions that tackle deeply rooted cultural beliefs without imposing outside beliefs systems? 
As someone with an anthropology background, I am often at odds with the ethnocentrism of development discourse and policy.  I believe it is extremely important to exercise caution when one is tackling an issue from such a precarious angle as tradition. Such speech can carry overbearing language and inaccurate assumptions about contextual implications. However, I do recognize that just because something is culturally relevant doesn’t necessarily make it right. As our class discussions and stories such as this one have illustrated, there is a very fine line between intervening without imposing cultural dominance.  I believe more discussions on this topic as well as further probing of such interventions is a good starting point for finding balanced solutions.