Women Development Workers

One of the biggest obvstacles to promoting women’s rights in development is the resistance of middle and lower level development workers to gender equality. Yet, very little is known about this facet of the development process or about the practical ways in which development agents can either promote or subvert gender equality goals. Anne Marie Goetz tackles this important subject through a study of development workers in their interactions with poor women iin Bangladesh. Using origincal empirical research, Dr. Goetz compares the experiences and attitudes of women and men development agents in several major micro-finance programmes delivering credit to poor rural women. One of the book’s findings is that women development workers are often more critical than their male colleagues of prevailing gender relations and are willing to engage with poor women on issues such as domestic violence, reproductive health, children’s well-being, and property rights. By displaying this sensitivity to women’s social and economic constraints, women development agents can be an important resource for the empowerment of women. However, the organization of developmentwork often creates seriouis practical and attitudinal obstacles to women’s capacity to promote women’s rights in their everyday work or, indeed, to bring gender concerns to the leadership of their organizations. Dr. Goetz utilizes organization theory to create a framework for a gendered analysis of development organisatioins, and shows how the gendered nature of organisatioin can undermine their capacity to promote women’s interests. This involves understanding gender issues in organizational structures and cultures, as well as incentive and accountability systems. Finally, the book elaborates an approach to institutioinal capacity building indevelopment to show how accountability to women can be developed in both state and non-governmental development organizations. Based on extensive qualitative and quantitave research and combining both field observations and conceptual explorations, this pioneering book will attract a wide audience among students and scholars of development studies, gender studies, politics, sociology, public administration, governance, and organizational studies. IT will also be of interest to NGOs, development activists and donor agencies.