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Editors introduction, volume 10, number 5
Universality or diversity? Inclusion or 'targeting'? Integration or disaggregation? Mainstreaming or separation? The belief that human beings have the right to take an active role in shaping the decisions and processes that affect their lives is a guiding principle for most development agencies. 'Participation' is one of those 'motherhood and apple-pie' aspirational terms that the majority of them would see as falling somewhere between an approach that is basically desirable and one that is simply not up for negotiation. The practice, as readers of this journal will know, is more complex, more contradictory, and often more contested. Ends and means jostle for primacy, while pragmatism can seem at odds with principle. Participation can be manipulated or bought, and participants misrepresented or cheated. It can be used to distract and to deceive as well as to democratise. Carelessly practised, it can empower some while excluding others. It may refer to a tokenistic exercise, or to an iterative process. It can be made compulsory, or can be taken as proof of genuine interest.
As soon as one looks critically at the nature of people's existing (non-) participation in development, then some of the structural obstacles and barriers facing different population groups become clearer. If people lack information, resources, or freedom of choice, then the quality of their participation is compromised. It is, for instance, only possible to implement an affirmative action policy if one has a well-grounded sense of where the inequalities lie, who benefits from the status quo, and how and by whom the negative biases might be overcome. Simply declaring zero-tolerance for unfair discrimination does not in itself do away with the social and economic institutions that confer or constrain opportunity. Yet, sooner or later, policies designed to remove the obstacles for one disadvantaged set of people will be characterised as favouritism, as unjust, or as mere 'political correctness', by those who feel excluded as a result. Some of the bleating about 'male social exclusion' is fuelled by the perception that because so many men (and women) get a raw deal out of life, this therefore means that women enjoy unfair privileges over men. (A quick look at the statistical tables in UNDP's latest Human Development Report makes for sobering reading on that score.) (1)
One of the difficulties faced by development agencies is that, in order to create a so-called level playing-field within which various social groups can 'compete' on fair terms, they need to focus on those against whom the pitch is skewed. For a particular sector of society to be able to 'participate', its members need to break through the barriers excluding them - and development agencies generally see it as their mission to help them to do this through various means. The danger is that of looking at these sectors as homogeneous in themselves, and in isolation from the social dynamics that oppress them. What might start out as convenient shorthand risks becoming reified, and viewed as a static and undifferentiated mass: 'the rural poor', 'street-children', 'women-headed households', 'migrant workers', and so on.
Contributors to this issue of Development in Practice examine these questions from a range of perspectives. Starting with the importance of major institutional frameworks in shaping the lives of individuals and groups, Isfahan Merali offers a detailed examination of how existing international human rights law can both be deepened and also provide an organisational framework for grassroots work on gender equity when reproductive rights are explicitly incorporated. Emily Delap and Mark Ritchie look at the diverse and yet common experiences and aspirations of children and older people respectively, while Parinita Battacharjee shares insights from her work on HIV/AIDS in India, and Douglas Webb and Stefan Paquette present the case for using food aid to alleviate some of the difficulties for HIV-infected persons and their families in Zambia. Eamonn Brehony asks whose knowledge is privileged in conventional approaches to development, while in an entertaining but also poignant article Tlamelo Mompanti and Gerard Prinsen show the limited scope for participatory techniques to address and overcome ethnic and other social divisions. That such techniques are not a magic wand is underlined both by Paul Jackson, who looks at their use to bring together different economic actors in Zimbabwe, and by Jens Aune, who looks at how they can be used in conjunction with more formal planning methods to useful effect.
Overall, these contributors illustrate that while the absence of participation has nothing to recommend it - except, possibly, from the perspective of those in positions of power - the sense of cosy inclusiveness it is used to invoke is often a far cry from what is actually experienced, even when real efforts are made to practise it.
Deborah Eade
Notes
1 The Human Development Report 2000 (pp. 161-4) shows that women in OECD countries earn on average only 53 per cent of what men do, with the global figure falling to 51 per cent. In most regions (the Arab world excepted), discrepancies between male and female literacy levels have seen some reduction. In some of the richer countries - the Scandinavian nations in particular - the figures for combined primary, secondary, and tertiary enrolment show females slightly outstripping males (ibid. and pp. 255-8). Yet in none of these countries does women's average income begin to approach men's. In the UK, for instance, women's earnings are only 60 per cent of men's, a figure similar to that of the USA despite a 6 per cent educational enrolment gap in women's favour in both these countries, and despite the fact that more women than men are in tertiary education (p. 255). If we turn to Spain, which has the same overall enrolment gap, women can expect to earn only 42 per cent of what men do. In Argentina, a 5 per cent female lead in educational terms translates into a mere 30 per cent of average male income. When to this we recall that women ubiquitously work longer hours than men (by an average of seven hours per week in developing countries) and also do more unremunerated work than men do (on average 2.7 times more in developing countries and twice as much in OECD countries) (p. 263), the picture is gloomier still.
Obviously, multiple and interwoven factors contribute to this worldwide phenomenon - the fact that women are expected to care for children and also to perform other reproductive tasks in the household, that they are often paid less than men for the same or similar work, their disproportionate presence in the part-time labour force, and the continuing ideology that women should depend economically on men. But since, even with lower average levels of education, men still earn more than women, it is clear that women generally are not benefiting at men's expense - quite the reverse.
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