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.

The Evolution of Evangelicalisticism

"I believe in evolution. Are you prepared to reject me for it?"

I'm almost ashamed to admit that I used to be a Christian creationist. It began as a teenager in what I would now characterise as a fundamentalist church scene; back then I would just have said we were right.

Simultaneously my Biology classes took me down into the technical details of evolutionary theory. I reveled in the contrasts: reading about natural selection from one book in one hand, and about the 'evolutionarily impossible' Lewis overthrust from another. I stopped resisting evolutionary theory at University - I'm not sure when. It wasn't so painful then.

But increasingly, the world is polarising around the issue (see Economist). I have myself been challenged to accept that creationism is an essential Christian creed. My response had been to be meek and mild and hide behind my development work. But recently, I told a strident pastor, "I believe in evolution. Are you prepared to reject me for it?" He admitted the answer was no.

It is what I call 'evangelicalisticism' (the religion OF being an evangelical) - or 'folk evangelicalism' - which I believe gives passion to some of the growing problem. Not carefully considered Theology. In fact, creationism is not a fundamental tenet of Christian belief. I want to start saying so more and more loudly (though to be honest, I'm afraid to). And no, I won't try to argue the case for evolution. I will simply resist the aggressive sycophancy which is making this issue more and more problematic. (See Christianarchy by Dave Andrews.)

Why the rant here? Because oppressive, facipulative motives for 'doing development' make me sick, and I can smell them from some of my kin. Go ahead and accuse me of conspiracy-related delusions; but I know, because at times I've not resisted: even helped launch some on such endeavours.

Dalliance with Divorce

"To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving
things?"

I'm nervous. It should be nurturing; meeting one of the donor partner agencies in our global network. But in reality, both parties seem extremely wary of each other now: I know I am and one of their staff recently wrote of his fear that every time he met my staff he was, "walking on egg shells."

The two of us have a strange working relationship: he is notionally seconded to me one day a week to supervise one of my project managers - a project his organisation seized control of last year in a temporary 'coup' because our management was not meeting their expectations. The solution: the project now bypasses our country management structure who's leader, having been slighted, doesn't buy my statement that our newly seconded staff can be easily treated as part of the team. (I'm trying to do so myself as hard as I can but hey - I don't live anywhere near there so it's hard to disagree that I'm just blowing hot air...)

Bizarre? I'm trying to address it positively. But it isn't half confusing and won't solve the sense amongst some staff that the donor is interfering rather than 'adding value'; in some lights it can also look like I've been disloyal to my own staff - betrayed them even. But what else can I do? Standing in the donor's shoes, I too might have been tempted to do what they did: they thought the project was going down the toilet and didn't want the fallout to damage them.

We don't want to break relations with them; we helped set them up and we're part of each other. To divorce them seems tempting but isn't it better to work at resolving things? My leadership thinks so, but I'm still nervous.

NOG Spawn

"...I am becoming my own sister..."

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I'm in negotiation with one of my own staff and asking her to represent me to herself. Conflict of interest? Probably. Confusing? Certainly.

We've been in one of the countries I supervise for decades under our own name but for various reasons it's time to change. Specifically, I asked the country director to register a new, locally governed non-government organisation (NGO) - a new sister in our global network.

Knowing she will be appointed the new organisation's chief executive officer (CEO) concentrate's one's mind: for a start, I will never be able to sack her. Second, she is the only resource I have in-country to identify, recruit and motivate a group of highly credentialed Board members; but will they hold her accountable or simply approve whatever she asks for? Thirdly, she has implied that she could delay registering the organisation if I don't recognise her 'need' to be our country representative as well as the new organisation's CEO. Apparently she says, not doing so could cause too much loss of 'face' on both sides. (True or not I don't know, but one of my colleagues is deeply cynical.)

Now it's Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) time. I managed to get her to steer the Board to register themselves (and they seem excellent) without sight of an MoA (I know already the main sticking points). Our deadline approaches and I'm biting my nails in anticipation (my boss wanted me to push all the boundaries first and compromise later). At least the Board Chairman is now alongside my country director to negotiate - I've even suggested a conflict of interest if she tries to negotiate terms with me without his consent. But it can feel like I am becoming my own sister.

Have I done enough? I wonder. This is supposed to be a fledging-cum-graduation but might be turning into a failure-to-launch...