Towards the
end of the class discussion on masculinity within Gender and Development, one
question stuck in my mind based on various things that were said by Dr. Whitson
and classmates. As the issues of men in development were being discussed, especially
the inclusion of men in gender initiatives, it was said in some way or form
that inclusion of men is not always necessary, that obviously both men and
women are affected by development issues, however in many if not most cases,
women often experience two negative impacts of economic underdevelopment and
unequal gender relations. This implies that while men may experience negative
effects of development and underdevelopment, women are almost always going to
experience them worse. (I apologize for this poor paraphrasing. It is just my
best recollection and any diminishing of the points made are my fault alone).
This had me thinking after class whether in all problems related to
international development women suffer worse for being victims of the problem
and being women on top of it or if there existed any situation where that was
not the case.
The video
that we watched in class also influenced my thinking. The idea that men, or at
least those that desire to reaffirm masculine domination of any discourse,
often try to shut down those who bring up cases of women’s issues by either
calling them advocates of special interests that want everything to be biased
towards women, or using other bullying tactics. I am sure that the idea of
finding a case where men suffer from an issue more than women for being men
would be fuel for those who wish to dominate the discourse to prevent change in
how gender issues are dealt with in a society. However, when I realized the
case that came to mind of a situation in development where men suffer and are
exploited more than women due to their being men, it shouldn’t necessarily be
seen as contrarian if one does not follow the dualistic framework that may
often be assumed; that men’s suffering is due to the benefit of women as if
women suffer it is due to the benefit or assertion of power and dominance of
men. However, the case that I present below does not follow this dualistic
paradigm. Instead men, by being men, qualify to work under conditions deemed
unsuitable for women. However the men are made to work often by men, both in
the forms of their families and the owners of the companies, who are
predominately men.
The
community that I worked and lived in during my two years in the Peace Corps in
Nicaragua was situated adjacent to large areas of sugar cane production. Known
as ingenios, these areas consisted of
hundreds of hectares of flat land planted with sugar cane and a processing
center. In the community I lived in, similar to most all other rural
communities in the area, most young adult males from age 18 to 40 worked in the
ingenios during the cutting season.
Buses would pass through the communities in the morning to pick up the workers
and they would come back late in the afternoon, after working all day under the
oppressive sun, completely covered in ash from the burnt sugar cane. It was
interesting that women could work in the ingenio
but only in jobs that were considered appropriate or safe for women. These jobs
included the planting of sugar cane and the maintenance of the seedling areas.
However, they could not work in the actual cutting of sugar cane. The young men
who worked in the sugar cane would do so either to support the agricultural
activities of their parents, or if they had families of their own, to maintain
their own families through a low but regular salary to cover costs and support
agricultural activities of their own (planting of basic grains) during the
rainy season.
Although
they were able to maintain direct and extended families through their work in
the sugar cane, they were often overburden and isolated socially from their
work in comparison to the women of their age. There were high incidences of
alcohol abuse and violence after parties that occurred after payday, especially
in nearby communities that had less of a tradition as independent communities.
During my work, I found myself working with younger women, some of whom were
spouses of sugarcane workers, along with older (40-55) men in many projects
such as a community bank we established while the people working in the sugar
cane I found to be the least accessible. This process of rapid mental aging and
reflexive outlooks toward life were exacerbated by the high incidences of
creatinal kidney failure amongst sugar cane workers. This would leave the
effected workers invalid, and since the
ingenio
would test for the condition before offering contracts, unemployable. Fundacion
La Isla is a group that works with sugar cane workers affected by the disease
http://laislafoundation.org/
It is hard
for me to see that the social situation of the male sugarcane workers is
enviable in comparison to that of the women of the same age in the communities.
While the men may have established jobs with “regular” salaries, the burden
placed on them to be bread winners first by their parents, and then by their
own families, they have to live through unenviable working conditions where
little gratitude is given, and if one becomes sick with a potentially lifelong
and degenerating disease, they are at most given a small pension and made
unemployable and invalid for the rest of their lives. While some with this
condition try to make it as small farmers, others migrate to El Salvador where
there are fewer regulations, while some descend into alcoholism, which
exacerbates the kidney problems, often causing early death. In comparison, the
women in the communities, depending on their personalities, are often more
economically agile, and with support of the state, many of them finish their
high school degrees and have more opportunities for employment or establishing
small businesses since they live relatively close to urban centers. In much of
the literature we read on masculinity in development, Southern men were often
portrayed as modern day Okonkwos (from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart), who are unsettled by the changes they see
happening in their society, especially with regards to gender relations, and
this unsettlement explains such behavior as alcoholism and spousal abuse. In
White’s article, while she recognizes that depictions of men being abusive and
spending wages on vices while women work at home are problematic stereotypes in
development literature, she depicts a Filipino male as asserting that as the
male of the household he was the only breadwinner as a sort of “traditional”
belief rather than one that is developed through their experiences and economic
conditions (14-15). However, this type of cultural affirmation does little to
show how these roles and expectations as breadwinners are developed, how
burdensome the can be, and how they can influence unequal gender relations and
community and familiar problems involving men such as alcoholism and domestic
violence. Cases like those of the cane workers should show that this
unsettlement is explained not by gender relations or changing cultural norms
alone, but the physical and mental burden placed on these groups of men. These
cases shouldn’t be used to say that women don’t have it so bad, but rather to
join gender and economic geographical analysis of international development so
that men’s situation in communities is better understood, and therefore can be
better incorporated in gender and development initiatives.
