NGOs and Feminisms in Development: Interrogating the ‘Southern Women's NGO’

Abstract

The inclusion by Northern stakeholders of a discursively constructed category of 'Southern women's NGO' -increasingly heralded as the ultimate organisational form of grounded, subaltern, collective action -has come to represent a signifier of commitments to gender equality, poverty reduction and/or social justice. Southern women's NGOs are frequently credited with the capacity to facilitate the inclusion of marginalised groups conventionally excluded from development's frame. This critical review argues that this essentialism derives firstly from the belief in the Southern NGO as a grounded, democratic and accessible organisational form well-suited to reach and represent the diverse and disparate needs of the grassroots. Secondly, it reflects the tendency, despite an abundance of critical black, Third World and postcolonial feminist theory warning to the contrary, to cast 'Southern women' as a category of politicised agents who share trajectories of historical and contemporary oppression that allow them to transcend other axes of difference to achieve improved development outcomes. The discussion examines this tendency and whether it has led to a wholesale belief in the capacity of both 'Southern women' and Southern NGOs' to reach as well as represent anti-hegemonic, subaltern and thus alternative development paradigms. The analysis concludes with some brief reflections on both the discursive and practical implications of privileging the 'Southern women's NGO', expressed as an homogenous category, as a key interlocutor between the powerful and the marginalised in development.

Agents for Change

“…From the perspective of a women's organization, the story of the paralegals working for lbh apik shows the connection they have with the people they work with, in this case women, and the issues they are working Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 174 (2018) 24-46 on. This is important, since literature on women's organizations identifies a polarization of arguments on the role of women's organizations in promoting gender equality, poverty reduction, and social justice within development practices (Narayanaswamy 2014). It is argued that local women's organizations are 'disconnected' , as they work mainly to fulfil the agendas of their donors, or that they mainly represent the interests of elites at the national level (Narayanaswamy 2014:278).…”

“Let them sing!” The paradoxes of gender mainstreaming in urban policy and urban scholarship

“…First, the emergence of "women's streams" at both events were, paradoxically, useful organizing tools that helped the thousands of delegates at these meetings to navigate large events by topic, while also serving to contain topics on gender and women in dedicated streams, rather than integrating discussions of gender into the broader thematic discussions at the conference. The second trend we observed was the deployment of the figure of the "grassroots woman" in both intergovernmental and academic contexts to provide a common vocabulary for the inclusion of particularly poor, marginalized and racialized women from the global south (Narayanaswamy, 2014) in discussions of gender and poverty, while at the same time instrumentalizing the figure of the "poor woman" in urban policymaking and theory building. We reflect on these contradictions and our own participation in these events to trouble and extend calls for more meaningful discussions and actions on issues of gender in urban theory and policymaking.…”

Disrupting the Saviour Politics in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Global South: Grassroots Women Creating Gender Norms in Nepal and Sri Lanka

“…We call attention to the problem of 'NGO women' who typically come from privileged sectors of the Global South, often based in the capital or other major cities, who tend to dominate NGO networks. Given their positionality, such women are predisposed to representing their own interests, which too often comes at the expense of ignoring grassroots women's interests and needs and is also linked to the lack of grassroots women's participation in NGOs (Narayanaswamy, 2014(Narayanaswamy, , 2016. This may explain why grassroots women engaged in community organising are left out of WPS networks, including funding access, even as they contribute to the WPS agenda (Koens & Gunawardana, 2020;K.…”

“…Yet most privileged women in the Global South typically have little understanding of grassroots women's needs and interests, and most remain unaccountable to these women, who are excluded from, or marginalised within, NGOs (Horst, 2017;K. C. & Van Der Haar, 2019;Narayanaswamy, 2014Narayanaswamy, , 2016.…”