According to Ole Elgström, the first Communication from the Commission dealing with gender issues in the area of development cooperation launched in 1995 (COM(95) 423 final) was the result of norm negotiations within an advocacy network providing input to the EU gender officials who were to produce the Communication (2000: 463–466).
At the beginning of the 1990s, gender issues had already been introduced into the aid policies of some northern MSs – as well as future MSs such as Sweden (Elgström 2000: 463). Within the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) existed an ‘advocacy network’, a network of gender experts from different MSs that promoted women’s issues within the field of foreign assistance and aid, exchanging information and expertise (ibid.). At the EU level, the proposal to produce a ‘gender resolution’ in relation to EU development cooperation policies was partly due to pressures from NGOs and some MSs, such as Denmark (Elgström 2000: 463). However, Elgström suggests that ‘even more important probably was the emerging perception
153 New aid modalities are ‘a set of commitments of the international community to eradicate poverty and
achieve the Millennium Development Goals (2000)’ (Woestman 2009a: 3). These new aid modalities ‘include the establishment of some overarching principles to redefine the relationship between donor and recipient countries, and the channeling of aid through relatively recently introduced mechanisms – or modalities’ (ibid.). Some of these new aid modalities are General Budget Support (GBS), Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), Sector-Wide Approaches (SWAps), the Joint Assistance Strategy (JAS), and Programme-Based Approaches (PBA)/Programme-oriented Joint Financing (PJF). These aid modalities have been introduced in development policies by the EC and Member States (MSs) since the Monterrey Consensus (2002) and the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005).
154 GBS is one of the ‘new aid modalities’. GBS ‘constitutes a shift of focus away from project- toward
programme-based assistance. GBS monies are channelled by EC or MS donors directly into the partner country government budget, and are not earmarked to specific expenditures. Internally, the EU has targeted to reach 50% of EU ODA [Official Development Assistance] through budget support by 2010’ (Woestman 2009a: 4).
among high-level DG officials that the Union had to have a gender policy to present at the forthcoming Women’s Conference in Beijing’ (ibid.). The author argues that ‘all relevant decision-makers agreed that the formulation of some kind of women-oriented document was necessary to provide the EU with a platform for the conference’ (ibid.). In May 1993, the Council officially resolved to produce a gender policy document (ibid.: 464). The decision coincided with the renaming of the small gender desk of DG Development: ‘Women in Development’ (WID) was renamed ‘Gender and Development’ (GAD). According to Elgström, this organisational change indicated ‘an ideological shift from ‘women projects’ to a broader emphasis on the roles of women and men in development (the GAD approach)’ (ibid.; see also Poulsen 2006; Razavi & Miller 1995).
In October 1994, the gender expert group first met to work towards the formulation of the EU gender policy document (Elgström 2000: 464). Different possible formulations of a Communication were discussed and ‘three conceptual pillars’ were proposed: equity, empowerment, and efficiency (ibid.: 464–465).155 Finally, in September 1995, with the advice of
the expert group, the EU gender officials presented the Commission Communication on Integrating Gender Issues in Development Cooperation (COM(95) 423 final) (ibid.: 466). Also in September 1995, the Conference on Women in Beijing, with its emphasis on gender mainstreaming, provided further support and inspiration for women advocates and gender experts within the EU (ibid.: 464).156
While the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 offered new opportunities for mainstreaming gender equality, fifteen years later there are still several obstacles to the success of mainstreaming in the EU development policy area (Pollack & Hafner-Burton 2000: 446). Nevertheless, development cooperation is one of the policy areas in which mainstreaming has been pioneered and has had the most significant impact (Mazey 2002: 236). Even before Beijing, gender was an important issue within development cooperation. When gender mainstreaming made its entrance at the EU level, gender issues had already been part of the policy practice within development cooperation for quite some time.157 The mainstreaming strategy was
introduced against a backdrop of favourable conditions provided by prior experience in gender issues, institutional arrangements, and policy
155 Note that the ideas of efficiency and empowerment in development discourse were being discussed already
in 1994. Even so, the 1995 Commission Communication on Integrating Gender Issues in Development Cooperation (COM(95) 423 final) did not include empowerment among its proposed ideas.
156 See also interview with senior gender expert at EC, May 2008. 157 Interview with senior gender expert at EC, May 2008.
instruments, as well as the availability of gender expertise and ‘change agents’ pushing the new conceptions of gender and gender inequality that mainstreaming entailed (Mazey 2002).
When analysing gender equality discourses within development cooperation, it is important to keep in mind that gender discourses are framed, in turn, within development discourse and practice in general. Rosalind Eyben characterises the way of thinking of international aid institutions as substantialist and argues that ‘this mode of thinking, “substantialism”, is concerned with entities – “poverty”, “basic needs”, “rights”, “women”, “results” – as distinct from a more relational mode of thought concerned with connections, patterns and processes (“relationism”)’ (2010a: 383). ‘A substantialist perspective’, she points out, ‘sees the world primarily in terms of pre-formed entities’ (ibid.: 385). From this substantialist perspective, the world is likely to be classified by defining it in terms of ‘essential properties’ (ibid.). This substantialist perspective erases social relations in that, according to this point of view, the entities that form the world are made of essences instead of relations. Hence, for this kind of analysis, poverty is a state rather than a social relation (ibid.: 385). A relational approach, on the other hand, allows us to see and understand social phenomena in terms of relations, connections, patterns, and processes (ibid.). This is very much in tune with Charles Tilly’s approach to understanding inequality, and social processes in general (1995, 1998). He puts forward an approach that assumes ‘not essences but bonds: relational models of social life beginning with interpersonal transactions or ties’ (Tilly 1998: 18). Eyben quotes Bourdieu’s definition: ‘A relational mode of thinking “identifies the real not with substances but with relations”’ (Bourdieu 1989: 15, quoted in Eyben 2010a: 387) and even identifies the ‘discourse of efficiency and results’ as an expression of ‘substantialist’ thinking within international aid (2010a: 386). It is from this perspective that the understanding of gender is constructed in the texts under analysis. I will turn now to the presentation of this analysis.