SUPREME MOMENTS

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1892)

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1892)

There is a growing consensus in the development assistance world that human development should provide the framework for development assistance in the 1990s. Yet, while this is widely welcomed by women, there are few, if any, grounds for assuming that this ideology will benefit women any more than any of the previous development assistance ideologies, be they economic growth, growth with equity, basic needs or whatsoever.

The literature on women and development extends back almost as far as the literature on development itself. The mandates and directives have long been in place. Yet, the success stories are anecdotal rather than systemic and this is causing a growing questioning of past approaches.

There are those amongst us, serious but with a sense of humour, who, in response to this chronic failure, are now proposing two new but linked approaches: the radical procedural approach and the radical analytical approach (Long, 2006). The first approach consists in developing a set of procedures that might better bring about the achievement of our women in development objectives. For example, all missions that are responsible for programme or project formulation, implementation teams and evaluation missions must be predominantly or exclusively composed of women. All hose consulted during such missions must be predominantly or exclusively women, and so on. Such procedural directives, if issued by UNDP or CIDA, for example, would undoubtedly be greeted by great discomfiture if not outrage. But it is interesting to note that the obverse, which is the present situation, is not.

The ...