Gender, Development, and Diplomacy

Gender, Development, and Diplomacy Sissela Bok. Alva Myrdal: A Daughter's Memoir. Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley , 1991. xüi + 375 pp. ISBN 0-201057086 (d); 0-20160815-4 (pb); $22.95 (d); $12.95 (pb). Sue FJlen Charlton, Jana Everett, and Kathleen Staudt, eds. Women, the State, and Development. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1989. vüi + 248 pp. ISBN 07914-0065-4 (pb); $21.95. Edward P. Crapol, ed. Women and American Foreign Policy: Lobbyists, Critics, and Insiders. 2d ed. Wilmington, Dd.: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1992. xv + 200 pp. ISBN 0-8420-2431-X (cl); $35.00. Lisa 0stergaard, ed. Gender and Development: A Practical Guide. London: Routledge, 1992. xiv + 220 pp. ISBN 0-415-07132-1 (pb); $15.95. Sondra R. Herman For many years American feminists and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women lobbied international agendes to recognize women's work when planning modernization. In 1970 a Danish agronomist, Ester Boserup, launched the field of women and development by analyzing distinctions between male and female farming systems. She showed that urban tiving and the means of sustenance were changing rapidly. Plans which ignored women transformed, but did not improve Uves.1 Unhappy reaUties and strong feminist advocacy finaUy convinced the General Assembly to launch the United Nations Decade for Women in 1975. By the tenth year, women in developing nations had created useful strategies for addressing legal, educational, and health issues. Governments acknowledged the value of women workers and the importance of according them equal opportunity. At three international congresses in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1980), grass-roots activists, planners, and scholars acknowledged their interdependence by creating an approach caUed "Women in Devdopment" (WID). WID advocates explored how women in a particular region worked, and how to increase "the opportunities and skills and resources to enhance their partidpation in the labor markd."2 They indicated to governments what gender-sensitive poUdes might be and caUed for bringing women into the planning as weU as the receiving end of projeds. Often, however, advocates and planners lacked the background to interpret the work and customs they found. Sometimes practitioners were captives of the national governments they served. Male administrators stül dominated devdop- © 1995 Journal of Women-s History, Vol 7 No. 2 (Summer) 1995 Book Review: Sondra R. Herman 153 ment planning. Clearly the people in the field needed both feminist scholars and area spedaUsts. But in what ways did the sdiolars need the writings of WTD adivists? Should historians try to dose the gap between themselves and the people on the front Une? Feminist loyalties demand that we do, and there are advantages to scholars as weU. Studies of development Uterature and of the few women engaged at any high level in the formulation of foreign poticy ülustrate how varied and consistent is the determination of male eUtes to constrain women's pubUc influence. An analysis of the work of development activists and the resistance that they meet may transform our questions about women and power. In the course of working with households and smaU women's groups, activists uncover elements of culture hidden even from sophisticated scholars. Their studies give us new perspectives on women in economicaUy poor but culturaUy rich lands. Just as scholars can free activists from their Western assumptions about gender relations, praditioners can make the work of scholars more comparative and feminist in the most practical sense. The four works considered here, diverse in their purposes and approaches, combine scholarship with activism or inspiration. Women, the State, and Development, edited by Charlton, Everett, and Staudt, is an anthology designed to integrate feminist theory into the disdpUne of poUtical sdence whüe bringing some insights into development issues into feminism itself. The editors rejed Uberal and Marxist interpretations of women's oppression in favor of an analysis of state-sodety relations. They show how governments reinforce inequaUty. Sue Charlton observes about West European welfare states that "what women have gained through specific state poUdes... they have lost by virtue of the expansion of the state... into areas sudi as sexuaUty and procreation. Recognition of this fad ties at the heart of anti-state feminist critiques...