The Girl Effect: Changing Names Keeping Practices

I will start this essay by raising some questions: why do we study development? Why do we work in development? Why do international development agencies, governments, and local organizations invest in the development projects and campaigns?  The simplest answer seems to be that we do all that to mainly find –and then implement- solutions for development challenges and issues such as poverty, inequality, war, and HIV.  So, what does it mean when international development campaigns, such as The Girl Effect, locate the solutions for the main development challenges in girls?  This essay tries to answer the previous question by analyzing visuals of The Girl Effect campaign.

In their critique of the "smart economics" approach, Chant andSweetman (2012) introduce The Girl Effect campaign as an example of “smart economics” approach. They state that “the smart economics approach represents, at best, pragmatism in a time of economic restructuring and austerity” (p.524) and that smart economics is the descendent of the “efficiency” approach.  Chant and Sweetman (2012) insist that these approaches are ineffective because they ignore the structural discrimination against women and because they do not tackle inequality as a relational issue.

When The Girl Effect campaign was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2008, the campaign claimed in its promoting video that “50 million 12-year-old girls in poverty equal 50 million solution, this is the power of the girl effect”.  The video focuses on the individual and local levels. The problems in the lives of adolescent girls such as child marriage, sexual exploitation, and medical complications are seen as results of the society and the backwards men in the poor countries. This emphasis on the local anti-girls environment are obvious on the sequence scenes that came after minute one when the video shows the trajectory of the life of a poor adolescent girl after she survive childbirth. The video predicts that the GIRL “might have to sell her body” (minute 1:04), then we see two hands grow from letters L in “selL” and Y in “bodY” (minute 1:07), after that another hand will come form above (minute 1:10), and the GIRL with her baby will be surrounded and captured by red hands and HIV word will pop up (minute 1:15). The campaign uses the tactic of pathos to mobilize the audience emotionally by invoking feelings of pity toward the girls and feelings of anger toward the girls’ society. 

Now, who will save the 12-year old GIRL from the “bad” hands, it’s you dear viewer, with your support the girl, who will “fix the world” can have a healthy and happy future and can be saved from the “HANDS”. The invitation for the viewer as initiator for changing the destiny of girls and HUMANITY is highlighted on the same page at “girleffect.org,” where the above-mentioned video is posted.  You will find under the video square to the right a quote from Mark Lowcock, the permanent secretary of the Department for International Development (a UK governmental body), who says: “If you change the prospects of an adolescent girl on a big enough scale, you will transform societies.”

The consistency of The Girl Effect, as an instance of the "smart economics" approach, is also emphasized in the second promoting video of the campaign.  This video is also produced in the same style as the first one, without any indication to a specific cultural or a specific geographical location. The videos deliver generalized messages that girls in all poor countries –you will understand as a viewer that they mean the global south- are suffering from their backwards communities. To rescue the GIRL, who represents all the 12-years old girls in the global south, you should support the campaign, and then an empowered, healthy, happy girl will do the rest and save humanity’s future. 

The founders and the funding bodies of the campaign, such as the Nike Foundation and the UK government, are keeping mostly invisible. So, the audience will not directly question the purposes of the campaign. No specific mechanisms to implement the campaign are provided at the website (girleffect.org), and there is no evidence of success in achieving the campaign goals after 5 years (2008-2013). The preliminary analysis of the promoting video of The Girl Effect campaign shows how the “smart economics” approach is changing names (from “efficiency” to “smart economics”) but keeping practices regarding global gender inequality and social justice. This approach tackles the gender inequality as a local problem caused by local obstacles. There is no reference to inequality as a relational issue. The videos are racialized in how they represent people in poor countries as homogenous group. The videos discriminate against women based on their age because the campaign promotes that only 12-year old girls are worth being saved. Finally, the videos do not refer to any form of discrimination that is caused by market-led transnational liberalism exploitation. To sum up, The Girl Effect campaign shows how the “smart economics” approach preserves the practices and interests of the private globalized neoliberal market.

 

A Malawian man and Gender

I agree that the title of this post is rather misleading and maybe a little too broad because I really am not a good representative of Malawian men (and obviously no-one asked me to be) but on the other hand I am a man from Malawi and so I do have the legitimate claim to the title albeit not in all its permutations and understandings, so this broad title should be taken with a pinch of salt.

This being my first posting I will talk a little bit about my experiences and biases as well as my motivation for studying gender. Out of the many courses available to a Graduate student in Communication and Development I chose Gender and Development (yes I actually chose) for mainly professional reasons although I also had many personal motivations. As an employee of the United Nations I felt that having a good understanding of gender provides me a strong foundation for dealing with communities in different parts of the world in a manner that promotes equity.

I need to be honest that my initial understanding of gender advocacy was one of conflict between men and women. In my country there is a belief among large sections of the population that women who promote gender equality are essentially a bunch of divorcees who failed to manage their marriages and are therefore hellbent on confusing as many women as possible to join their crusade against men. Although I didn't fully subscribe to this theory, I couldn't help but notice the trend of failed marriages among the most vocal proponents of gender equality.

As a father, a brother and a son, it is my wish that my sisters and my daughter should not be denied opportunities in life for the simple reason that they are female, but rather they should be judged as Martin Luther King Junior said "by the content of their character". However for this to happen major changes need to take place at various levels in our society, and these changes need to come from within for them to stand a chance of success. It is encouraging that the voices from the South have facilitated an evolution in the framing of the gender agenda to include masculinities and men as part of the discourse which is a departure from earlier confrontational approaches to the contemporary pragmatic approach of inclusion.

The current focus on gender relations in GAD puts the spotlight on real "issues" e.g. exclusion of women, poor allocation of resources and gender based violence as opposed to the earlier approaches of WID and WAD whose focus was women. This ensures broad based support at community level as compared to the original binary framing of women versus men which in many cases only entrenched men's opposition to blatant "attacks" on the status quo by "a disgruntled group of women".

The few classes taken so far and the readings on gender especially by Kabeer have just increased my curiosity to understand the question of gender even more but at the same time has already provided me with so much understanding that I want to know more and to understand the world from a new perspective!

Pushing From The Top Versus Pulling From The Bottom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQU7JOxkGvo

From the video interview  above I question the concept of empowerment as a push or pull concept. From The Green Belt movement founded by Waangari Maathai, empowerment is more about pull than it is about push. The Green Belt Movement has organised it's activities around women at the grassroots with the intent of creating a "trickle up". This trickle up idea which you can also refer to as the bottom approach has been centered around mobilization of these women at the grassroots. Mobilization in itself is an act of empowerment because it brings a group of women together, with shared interests. Empowerment is not just a case of increasing the women's economic capacity, but provide an arena where this women can learn together and grow together. As they learn new skills, they are also made aware of their role as women in the community. As Kate Young pointed out in her article, not all women are aware of the inequalities they face. Some of these inequalities have been reproduced for such a long time that they are seen as natural. The Green Belt Movement has helped in building consciousness among grassroots women and men. This conscious building may be one of the reasons that the movement has been sustainable and successful, as the members own the projects. I also think that another form of mobilization that can be empowering is when women at the grassroots organize themselves without 'outside' help. In Kenya we have what we had the concept of chama which means group. A group of women would come together and would each give an agreed amount of money and each member would take turns at getting the money. Through this these women have been able to invest. What started at the grassroots has now become national as women in the upper classes forming the groups as well. Banks even give loans to these groups to invest. Here is a short clip on one of these groups http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MX3YuvLMEs

Food systems and women

The last paragraph of the Boserup reading ("It is the men who do modern things...") reminded me of a few things about food systems, both national and global.

My perception of a farmer in the US is of a good old country boy riding his tractor through a field of corn and I feel that's a pretty stereotypical American view. However, the local food movement, which now has a high profile across the country, seems to have more diversity. I've worked at an organization that, among other things, administered three farmers' markets, and nearly all of the staff were women and so were many of the vendors. The vendors at our local market don't seem to be skewed towards one gender, neither do the customers, and I can confidently say that for every farmers' market I've been to. However, despite their presence - or at least my perception of their presence - women aren't always given their due share of respect and media coverage regarding local foods. A book titled Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, profiles women doing some pretty modern and inventive things in our food system, and is interesting if you're looking for an American viewpoint regarding women and agriculture. Many of the profiled women are working in areas of the US that have high rates of poverty, are food deserts, etc but I don't know how applicable many of the ideas in this book would be applicable to development in the international sense. Sadly, this book doesn't feature many women of color, but if you happen to be interested in this topic, Dr. Monica White researches 'the relationship between race, class, gender, the food system and activism and offers a nuanced analysis of the resurgence of agriculture by communities of color, in both urban and rural spaces.' Her particular focus is on Detroit.

From a global perspective, this post on the Civil Eats blog highlights some ways of supporting women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, which Boserup highlghted as being an area with a "female farming system." This post is pretty basic and I'm not sure how truly innovative some of these so-called "innovations" are, but some of the options for aiding women in agriculture offered, such as family planning, formal agricultural education, and vertical and urban farming, address some of the criticisms of Boserup's work leveled by Beneria and Sen, namely landlessness and reproduction as important factors regarding women, agriculture, and economics.

One last thing - Boserup says that women "represent the old drudgery" while men are given a modernized farming education and are implementing advancements such as fertilizers and such. Climate change is going to affect many areas that are already suffering from malnutrition and food security crises, making hunger-related issues worse. However, the "old drudgery" / traditional ways of farming are much more adapted to withstanding climate extremes than the modern industrial techniques, so maybe we will see a return to looking at those old ways instead of labeling them as backward.

Welcome GEOG 6430 Fall 2013 Students!

Welcome to the GEOG 6430 class blog. To get inspired about what you might post on this blog and to see the format that blog posts often take, please look at posts from the previous class or check out my favorite blog, Sociological Images!  You may also want to look at my other class blog (for my Social Geographies class) for inspiration. Please feel free to "comment" to this post with examples of other blogs that GAD students might find inspiring.

I'm looking forward to a great quarter!