Gender Debate

"I also believe in workshops."

THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT GENDER ISSUES CAN NOT CURRENTLY BE PRIORITISED IN OUR ORGANISATION'S FIELD WORK.

We have competing major priorities: we are trying to reach a critical mass awareness of the value of 'rights' and 'participation' per se amongst our staff and field partners; later we can break it down to specifics like gender.

You are quite simply a misogynist; you hate women.

Donor partners feel obliged to move themselves (and their partners by default, i.e. us) fast down this track to maintain credibility in their own fund-raising environment, but the pace is too fast for our operating context and is damaging our programme cohesion as diverse elements (not merely gender) are expected to be fast-tracked.

You are a closet saboteur of gender-related rights; you have some hidden vested interests in trying to muddy clear waters with your stirring, detours and questions.

Our staff and field partner cohorts contain significant and not easily remediable reactionary elements; we are not prepared to stop or slow our programmes in order to root them out rapidly since beneficiaries will be hurt and structures (even assets) damaged.

I am amazed that you were appointed to your job or allowed through your probation period; you are just a sign of your organisation's structurally entrenched biases. Just look at the gender composition of your organisation's senior management team for evidence: prejudice there is inevitable. I suspect your organisation has a hidden agenda; you are just their front.

Projects aided by donors with a more advanced emphasis are welcome to channel the requisite additional resources required to get 'their' projects over the gender hump, but these will be 'ring-fenced' special cases and subject to agreement by implementing teams without management coercion.

You are making excuses for your own poor management; your organisation could easily enough progress as quickly as gender-related rights (i.e. we) demand.

Our strategy will eventually get us to gender, so relax; there is much more distance to catch up than you assumed.

You are not taking this seriously; this is not a theoretical debate; you should be acting, not talking.

We are entitled to determine our own rate of progress, since we are the ones making the sacrifices needed to do the implementation in the first place; if you don't like it then leave your comfort zone and work out there yourself.

Your assessments about your context are mistaken; in fact staff and partners in your field areas could easily and readily absorb gender-related analyses without any disruption.

It looks to me like you might have been co-opted by your own government's political agenda since they are your most significant source of funds: they insist on gender as a priority; you say gender prioritisation is your own idea, but I think you are in denial, or maybe your politics are reflected by your government, in which case stop blaming them for so much else.

You have framed this all wrong: it's not about the dichotomy you appear to describe; it's not either/or but both; you're in a process, a journey; you have the capacity to weave it all together.

You are devaluing my genuinely held beliefs; I am not a worse 'person' than you; you are a hypocrite regarding human rights if you disallow my world view.

You only have the impression of external pressure but in fact we recognise your desire to progress and accept it; we are just contributing clarity to your strivings; you are slightly paranoid; we welcome your partnership and celebrate your commitment, and we stand alongside in solidarity ready to offer the capacity building inputs you need.

Stuff you, I'm resigning; I don't need this harassment.

It's so hard recruiting committed people for secondment to work in difficult places, or to find local partners who have overcome the shallowness of their own cultures and risen above the vagaries of their own environments. Let's increase our money supply by dependancy on a single donor source.

Hi, I used to work for a reactionary organisation but I resigned and was jobless so I got myself reconstructed; I also believe in workshops. And no – the ‘international development industry’ is just an illusion.