generalspeaking

Building Consensus

It's a hard lesson to learn, that with the best of intentions, hard work, scarce funding, devotion to altering perceptions, traditions simply will not budge. It is difficult beyond imagining to turn around ancient traditions in a culture that is so deeply ingrained that even when the need to change is carefully explained and demonstrated by the social advances that ensue, reluctance lies deep in the psyches of those who find comfort in the familiar.

And tradition, almost universally, is that when dire circumstances are present in a situation of ongoing poverty, the most vulnerable in a society are the very ones whose best interests are simply not recognized. They remain at the bottom of the priority list for most emerging societies. And it is always women who suffer. They suffer doubly in that women will accept that their role is to follow the dictates of men.

When conditions are miserable and food scarce a woman will attempt to feed her children, and will deliberately, and of necessity, look to her own needs last, providing the largest portion for the man of the house whose work it was traditionally to provide for the family and whose need of sustenance was always greater, it was held, than the woman's.

In our modern era, where women are seen in the developed world as equal to men, given equal opportunities and have the expectations of equality, there is still a struggle to conform to expectations. Life is simply more complicated and more difficult for women than it is for men, anywhere in the world. They raise society's young and nurture them, and although they may work out of the house, they work within the household as well, doubly tasked.

Their difficulties not quite to be compared with those of women in under-developed countries who remain wholly culturally subservient to men. Women remain tasked with the everyday concerns of allocating food to the family, finding potable water, giving a care to the ill and the elderly. Not all that different than in Western society, but of a different dimension, when resources are scarce.

Western-based aid and social development agencies felt that women might stand a better chance at equality of opportunities in making their voices heard by taking authority away from centralized government agencies and investing an authority for change and development in decentralized administrations.

That is, to transfer responsibilities for basic services in a village, for example, to women who by the very nature of their biology and culture-inherited tasks have a far finer understanding of needs than their male counterparts. And that would translate into giving them political positions of authority in local governing councils.

But the political representation of women in towns and villages of under-developed countries, those struggling to advance themselves, hasn't quite worked out as anticipated. Throughout South Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa women's place remains well defined as being secondary to that of men.

In countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa, Honduras and El Salvador women are simply not welcomed in local budget or financial committees, and in fact, women know their place and they defer to men, demurring to speak their minds because experience has informed them they would be seen to be out of place in doing so.

It hasn't been all that very long since women in Western societies, established in the general workforce, might aspire no higher than teaching or nursing, most other professions being effectively closed to them. And women working as administrative assistants or secretaries in offices were always dispatched to prepare coffee; nothing was beneath the dignity of their position.

Women elected locally to positions of influence in their community end up doing on a larger scale in their communities, the social work that women have always been tasked with, but on an enlarged scale. Their traditional caregiver roles simply enlarged and expanded, distributing resources within the community as a whole.

Gender politics in impoverished countries mandate that women become involved in practical-needs projects; where once they looked to the welfare of their families, they now take care of the fundamentally practical needs of their communities. They do not take part in local governmental decision-making. They may sit in on the meetings, but silently.

Development agencies looking in from the outside, perplexed by the perception of failure of their attempts to encourage equality between the genders, shake their heads and feel that perhaps "gender analysis training" might help to turn things around. As though things would be that simple.

It has taken a lot of time and effort for women in developed, wealthy and socially advanced societies to be enfranchised, longer still for women to feel secure enough and sufficiently respected to stand for public office. And when they do, there is still residual antagonisms to be contended with, along with the struggle to balance family needs against public political life.

Why would the Western world, struggling to meet the empowering needs of women in countries only now advancing into entry positions in a 20th Century environment, while they're in the 21st Century, think it would be any easier for women to advance in the midst of men struggling to find their places, when women have always been last in line?

Labels: Environment, Political Realities, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 13, 2008