Feminism and the Limits of the Claim to Know: Contradictions in the Feminist Approach to Women in Development

Mayra Buvinic , 'Projects for Women in the Third World: Explaining their Misbehaviour', World Development (Vol. 14, No. 5, May 1986).

My use of the descriptive terms such as 'Third World women' or Western women' is meant to imply no particular ontology and is essentially inadequate. This is both because what might be useful to geopolitics is not necessarily useful to sociology or feminist theory, and because these categories fail to contest and, indeed, reinforce the homogeneity of the West and also the discursive and political stability of the East-West divide.

For some critiques from Third World and non-white women of the Western feminist approach to women in development see Gita Sen and Caren Grown , Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1987); Cecilia Green , 'Marxist-Feminism and Third World Liberation', Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly (Winter-Spring 1985); Asoka Bandarage , 'Third World Women: More than Mere Statistics', Women's Review of Books (November 1983); Monica Lazreg , 'Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria'. Feminist Studies (Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1988).

I take the phrase 'the claim to know better', with its implied assertion of cognitive superiority, from John Dunn.

I am using the term 'difference' here as it bears upon issues of race, class, ethnic, national and cultural difference between women, and will also be addressing the question of difference within the concept of 'woman'. I will not be looking at this issue as it has been dealt with by feminist psychoanalysis in addressing questions of sexual difference and differentiation — although it also bears importantly upon the issue of women in development as regards the debate over gender constitution. Representative texts on sexual differentiation in this area are Juliet Mitchell , Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1974); and Nancy Chodrow , The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkley, CA: SAGE Publications. 1978). The works of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva have dominated this field in the 1980s.

Barbara Rogers , The Domestication of Women: Discrimination in Developing Societies (London: Tavistock, 1980 ) provides the beginnings of a critique of aspects of the bureaucratic approach to implementing policy objectives for women.

Kathleen Staudt , 'Bureaucratic Resistance to Women's Programmes: The Case of Women in Development' in E. Boneparth (ed.), Women, Power and Politics (New York: Pergammon Press, 1982) examines how power structures in policy-making filter out the sophistications of research.

'Another Development with Women', Development Dialogue (Nos. 1-2, Special Issue, 1982).

Ester Boserup , Women's Role in Economic Development (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970).

Some examples of work in this area include: Mona Etienne and Eleanore Leacock (eds.), Women and Colonization (New York: Praeger, 1980); the essays collected in Welleslcy Editorial Committee , Women in National Development (Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Irene Palmer. 'Rural Women and the Basic Needs Approach to Development, International Labour Review (Vol. 115, No. 1).

Examples include T.A. Ahdullah and S.A. Zeidenstein , Village Women of Bangladesh: Prospects for Change (London: Pergammon Press , 1982); Irene Palmer , 'Women and Green Revolutions', paper presented at the conference on the Continuing Subordination of Women and the Development Process, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex (1978).

Examples include G. Cochrane , The Cultural Appraisal of Development Projects (New York: Praeger, 1979); Guy Standing , Labourforce Participation in Development (Geneva: ILO, 1978); Meena Acharya and Lyn Bennett , Women and the Subsistence Sector: Economic Participation and Household Decision Making in Nepal, World Bank Working Paper No. 526, World Bank, Washington, DC (1982); Barbara Wolfe and Jere Behreman , 'Is Income Overrated in Determining Adequate Nutrition?', Development and Cultural Change (Vol. 31, No. 3, 1983).

Examples include Bina Agarwal , Agricultural Modernization and Third World Women: Pointers from the Literature and an Empirical Analysis (Geneva: ILO, 1981); Lourdes Beneria , 'Conceptualising the Labour Force: The Underestimation of Women's Economic Activities' in Nicky Nelson (ed.), African Women in the Development Process (London: Frank Cass, 1981); L. Goldschmidt-Clermont , Unpaid Work in the Household: A Review of Economic Valuation Methods (Geneva: ILO, 1982); International Labour Organisation , Women in the Economic Activities of the World: A Statistical Analysis ( Geneva: ILO, 1980).

Examples include Tim Dyson and Mick Moore , 'On Kinship Structure, Female Autonomy, and Demographic Behaviour in India', Population and Development Review (Vol. 9, No. 1, 1983); P. Bardhan , 'On Life and Death Questions', Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 9, Special Number, 1974); Amartya K. Sen and Joselyn Kynch , 'Indian Women, Well-Being and Survival', Cambridge Journal of Economics (Vol. 7, No. 3-4, Sept.-Dec. 1983); Amartya K. Sen and S. Sengupta , 'Malnutrition of Rural Children and the Sex Bias', Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 18, Annual Number, 1983).

A clear exposition of the 'bargaining approach' to resolving 'cooperative conflicts' within the household is provided by Amartya K. Sen , 'Economics and the Family' in Amartya K. Sen , Resources, Values, and Development (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984); and also in Amartya K. Sen , Women, Technology, and Sexual Divisions (New York: UNTCD and INSTRAW, 1985).

See Palmer, op. cit

The urgency of the 'feminisation of agriculture' thesis is outlined in, among others: Irene Tinker , New Technologies for Food Chain Activities: The Imperative of Equity for Women (Washington, DC: USAID Office of Women in Development, 1979); and S. Mautemba , 'Women as Food Producers and Suppliers in the Twentieth Century: The Case of Zambia'. Development Dialogue (1982 )

Mayra Buvinic , Margaret Lycette and William McGreevy , Women and Poverty in the Third World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

Caroline Moser , "The Formulation of Social Policy and the Case of Women in Development', paper presented to the Development Studies Association Annual Meeting, Birmingham (September 1988).

Gita Sen and Caren Grown present the perspectives and approaches of the DAWN collective in Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions, op. cit.

UNDP, Women in UNDP-Supported Projects: A Review of How UNDP Evaluations Deal with Gender Issues (New York: UNDP Central Evaluation Office, 1987).

Henrietta Moore , 'Women and Development issues', Lecture in the Women and Society series, Social and Political Sciences Committee, Cambridge University (February 1988).

Florence McCarthy , 'The Target Group: Women in Rural Bangladesh ' in E. Clay and B. Schaffer (eds.), Room for Maneouvre: An Exploration of Public Policy for Rural Development (London : Heinemann and Grower, 1984).

Lorraine Code , 'Experience, Knowledge, and Responsibility' in Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford (eds.), Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy (London: Macmillan Press, 1988), p. 191.

Asoka Bandarage , 'Toward International Feminism', Brandeis Review (Vol. 3, Summer 1983), pp. 8-9.

Trinh T. Minh-ha , 'Difference. A Special Third World Issue ', Feminist Review (No. 25, March 1987), p. 16.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , 'French Feminism in an International Frame' in her In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 23.

See Jessica Bernard's discussion of the reaction of Third World women to approaches to women in development, as expressed in the international forum of the UN Decade for Women , in The Female World from a Global Perspective (Bloomington. IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), Ch. 6.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, quoted in Monica Lazreg, op. cit., p. 89.

Monica Lazreg, op.cit., pp. 85-86, 97.

Biddy Martin and Chandra Talpade Mohanty , 'Feminist Politics: What's Home got to do with it?' in Teresa de Lauretis (ed.), Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (London : Macmillan, 1986), p. 193.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, op. cit, p. 19.

Audre Lorde , 'An Open Letter to Mary Daly' in Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Colour ( New York: Kitchen Table, 1983), p. 97,95. Other writings which critique essentialism include the essays collected by Teresa de Lauretis , op. cit; Barbara Smith , Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York, Kitchen Table, 1983); Ely Bulkin , Minnie Bruce Pratt and Barbara Smith, Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (New York: Long Haul Press, 1984).

For an example of how this might be done. see Bernard Williams , Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Collins, 1985).

Hester Eisenstein , Contemporary Feminist Thought (London: Allen and Unwin. 1984).

Catherine MacKinnon , 'Feminism. Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (Vol. 7, No. 3, 1982).

Christine Delphy , The Main Enemy (London : WRRC, 1977); and also Delphy. 'A Materialist Feminism is Possible', Feminist Review (No. 4. 1980).

Shulamith Firestone , The Dialectic of Sex (London : Publisher, 1979).

Alice Echols . 'The New Feminism of Yin and Yang' in Ann Snitow. Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson (eds.), Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983).

Michel Foucault , 'Why Study Power: The Question of the Subject in Hubert C. Dreyfuss and Paul Robinow, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics: Michel Foucault (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press . 1983). p. 212.

Michele Barrett. 'The Concept of "Difference" '. Feminist Review (No. 26. July 1987), p. 32.

Irene Tinker and Jane Jacquette. 'UN Decade for Women: Its Impact and Legacy World Development (Vol, 5, No. 3. 1987).

Analyses of the uses and limitations of deconstruction and post-structuralism for feminist theory and politics include: Teresa de Lauretis. Alice Doesn't: Feminism. Semiotics and Cinema (Bloomington. IN : Indiana University Press, 1984 ): Biddy Martin . 'Feminism. Criticism and Foucault', New German Critique (No. 22. Fall 1982): Alice Jardine. Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). 1 have not found it helpful to explore the French feminist school in this essay as I will be concentrating less on deconstruction's recuperative project than on its approach to demystifying Western metaphysics. French feminists have focused on the semiotic and linguistic elements of Derridcan analytic strategies to try to reconstitute that 'in-between' mode of speech which Derrida describes as discourse: that which might have come before the dominant male symbolic economy. This quest for origins developing a langua,e of the female body encourages a politically problematic biologism and essentialism. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , in her essay, 'French Feminism in an International Frame' (in Spivak, op. cit.). discusses the implications of this approach with respect to some of the questions at issue here in her critique of Julia Kristeva , About Chinese Women, trans. Anita Baroows (London: Marion Boyars, 1977).

In particular, Jacques Derrida , Of Grammatology, trans. G.C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1976).

Mary Poovey , 'Feminism and Deconstruction', Feminist Studies (Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1988), p. 59.

Julia Kristeva , 'Woman can never be Defined' in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (eds.), New French Feminisms (New York: Schocken, 1981), p. 137.

Peggy Kamuf , 'Replacing Feminist Criticism', Diacritics (Summer 1982), p. 45.

John Thompson , Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).

Jacques Derrida, op. cit., p. 24

Jacques Derrida , 'The Double Session' in Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press , 1981), p. 265.

Lazreg, op. cit., pp. 96, 99.

Martin and Mohanty, op. cit., pp. 193-5.

de Lauretis, Alice Doesn't, op. cit. These feminists come from the post-structuralist position. It is important to note that feminists defending a 'feminist standpoint epistemology' are also trying to grapple with the problems of political ineffectuality caused by contradictions in feminist epistemology and the tensions between cultural and post-structural feminism. Perhaps the most interesting recent discussion of this is provided by Sandra Harding in The Science Question in Feminism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986). Harding argues for a feminist 'successor science' to replace dominant male paradigms, yet acknowledges its essentialising, universalising limitations. She therefore proposes that both 'modernist' and 'post-modernist' projects be pursued in tandem, because both projects require the success of the other: 'for an adequate successor science will have to be grounded on the resources provided by differences in women's social experiences and emancipatory political projects; and an effective deconstruction of our culture's powerful science requires an equally powerful solidarity against regressive and mystifying modernist forces.' (Ibid., p. 246.)

de Lauretis, Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, op. cit., p. 9.

Martin and Mohanty , op. cit, p. 194.

Linda Alcoff , 'Cultural Feminism vs Post-Stricturalism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (Vol. 13, No. 3, Spring 1988), p. 434.

Zillah Eisenstein , 'Developing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism' in Z. Eisenstein {ed.), Capitalist Patriarchy and Socialist Feminism ( New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).