Excluding themselves from development? Carework as a discursive resource for women farmers in Ethiopia

Abstract

Developmental states see a vital role for women in development, but women do not always share the state’s enthusiasm. In development circles, this is still treated largely as a problem to fix, so how women make sense of their own participation in development projects is a crucial understudied question. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 50 semi-structured interviews, we use the case of community development meetings in rural Ethiopia as a window into women’s engagement in state-led development projects. Women farmers tended to explain their absence by citing a woman’s need to care for the household as a mother, a finding that seemed to support prior research on the negative consequences of the gendered caregiving burden. But in-depth analysis, particularly of exceptional cases when women did participate, showed that a woman’s need to care for the household as a mother operated not as a static harmful cultural expectation, but as a discursive resource that women farmers could use to avoid the developmental state – or justify their engagement in state-led activities. As such, this article contributes to research on carework, gender, and development of a fuller and more nuanced account of the strengths and limitations of motherhood expectations in development contexts.