How does development operate through NGOs in Ecuador? I would like to begin answering this question by sharing a quick fact about myself. Before coming to the USA and starting my graduate program in Latin American Studies, I worked at an NGO focused on supporting migrants and refugees in my homecuntry. It works closely with donor partners such as the United Nations through its agencies: UNICEF, UN Women, IOM, UNHCR, among others. As a humanitarian organization, it focuses on areas such as Attention and Prevention of Gender-based Violence, Children's Protection, Food Security and Nutrition, Resettlement, and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support.
This experience was life-changing for me. My time in the programmatic department of Resettlement and Prevention of Gender-based Violence led me to observe that both this organization and United Nations agencies often operate within development frameworks that tend to simplify or overlook the deeper social and structural dynamics shaping realities in Ecuador and Latin America. Therefore, they acted more like a bandage on a wound or in some cases were the cause of problems rather than mechanisms seeking to change the structures responsible for the oppression of subaltern populations (women, children, migrants, refugees, racialized people, LGBTQI+, among others). I will illustrate this argument by drawing parallels between my observations during my time at this organization and theory on WID and WAD paradigms.
Part the rhetoric used by the NGO emphasized that we were “supporting people,” not merely “helping beneficiaries”. This is interesting because one of the main goals was to provide such aid (food, shelter, transportation, documents, or internet access). This support is undoubtedly essential, given that most people seeking aid were at psychosocial risk and had limited resources to meet basic needs. However, there were occasions when humanitarian assistance was overstated or imposed in ways that ignored people’s own agency and organization. For example, I recall a refugee family in the Coastal Region who found an abandoned piece of land and built a house with their own hands. It was modest but symbolized their autonomy and collective effort. They managed to include basic living resources such as water, light, and gas inside their home. The most notable aspect of this place was that they didn’t pay rent. When the UN agency learned about their situation, it offered to relocate them, claiming their house did not meet the “dignified housing” criteria. Accepting support meant leaving their home and community, thereby reproducing dependence on temporary aid.
This illustrates what Rathgeber (1990) identifies as a “technological fix” logic, typical of the Women in Development (WID) approach, in programs designed to integrate marginalized populations into existing structures without questioning the roots of inequality or the gendered power relations that sustain them. Development becomes a depoliticized tool, focused on measurable outcomes and integration rather than transformation.Similarly, from a Women and Development (WAD) perspective, we can see how these international organizations continue to reproduce a global division of labor between North and South, where countries like Ecuador are positioned as recipients of expertise, funding, and models of intervention. While these programs claim to empower women, families and communities, they often reinforce dependency on Northern agendas and institutions. Their interventions rarely consider local feminist knowledge or collective forms of care that have historically existed in Latin America.
Narayanaswamy (2016) goes further, arguing that the professionalization and bureaucratization of Gender and Development (GAD) have transformed a once subversive feminist praxis into a technocratic field aligned with neoliberal imperatives. In practice, this means that UN agencies and international NGOs prioritize “gender mainstreaming,” indicators, and reports over sustained relationships with grassroots actors. It also means they do not consider people as part of families, where gender relations are also at play, as in the example I provided earlier. As she notes, the same processes that claim to include women’s voices often silence subaltern perspectives by privileging “expert” discourse and elite feminist agendas from both the Global North and national capitals (Narayanaswamy 2016). In Ecuador and across Latin America, this dynamic perpetuates colonial logics of knowledge and intervention. Development agencies act as gatekeepers, defining what counts as “gender equality”, “empowerment,” or “care”. Their frameworks often overlook intersectional realities like race, class, migration status, and transform local struggles into standardized programs that fit donor expectations. As Narayanaswamy suggests, the problem is the existence of North’s dominance and also how Southern elites and professionals become intermediaries who reproduce those hierarchies in local contexts.
With this case, I aim to analyze how gender and power relations are rooted in organizations and institutions, and how this extends beyond violence between men and women. Patriarchy and colonialism can threaten people's well-being and dignity in various ways. Ecuador is one example among many of how organizations operate in pursuit of “development”. However, I find it essential to recognize and emphasize people's agency and autonomy in these circumstances, like the family in my example. They refused the offer to leave their home; instead, their living conditions improved in that space, reflecting their own resistance against an imposed, non-contextualized Western living checklist.
References:
Rathgeber, Eva M. 1990. “WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in Research and Practice.” The Journal of Developing Areas 24 (4): 489–502. College of Business, Tennessee State University. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4191904
Narayanaswamy, Lata. 2016. “Whose Feminism Counts? Gender(ed) Knowledge and Professionalisation in Development.” Third World Quarterly 37 (12): 2156–2175. doi:10.1080/01436597.2016.1173511
Moser, Caroline O. N. 1993. Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training. London: Routledge.
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