Frankly, I find that the president of Nike Inc. being present at such a meeting downright disturbing, and the fact that she heads up other governmental programs a major conflict of interest; but that's my opinion. I also find number two of her notes a bit of a red flag-"economic solutions are often masked by culture," sounds a lot like undermining indigenous cultures and practices in the name of capitalism.

these outside groups should stay out. their "help" is usually clouded by self interest and doesn't fit with the local culture in many instances.

I run one of the "outside groups" that Ekpe thinks should "stay out", called
Growth Through Learning. We're a nonprofit of (mostly) American (mostly) affluent (mostly) women, who care deeply about supporting the secondary education of girls in East Africa.

I fail to see why a girl we support should be denied a secondary education simply because the parties funding her education "do not fit in with the local culture". If leaders within the local culture are hostile to the idea of educating girls - as is often the case within the Maasai and the Karamajong peoples, both within our service area - then one cannot provide education for girls from those peoples without going somewhat against the local culture.

In that circumstance, educating girls is more important to us than soothing the offended sensibilities of the [male] elders of those peoples. In that sense, helping girls get an education can "undermin[e] indigenous cultures and practices", though in the name of educating girls rather than in the name of capitalism.

From my personal witness, and the witnesses of hundreds of young women we have helped, I can assure you that they do find getting a secondary education deeply empowering. It increases the respect others have for them, and gives them the ability to earn money outside the home, which is crucial both for avoiding destitution in the event of abandonment or divorce, and for asserting their own views and ideas within their personal relationships.

Please, please do not let the valid idea that indigenous cultures should be honored and preserved eliminate the possibilities opened up in these young women's lives by obtaining an education funded by parties outside their culture.

Thanks for the work you do, calibrit. I think that any sort of development work is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. Basically you have equally legitimate arguments that Westerners bungle things up and should more or less keep out, and that the global north has long neglected or exploited the global south and should be expected to invest some of the immense capital it holds into repairing and helping to develop these areas so that they can then do it for themselves.

Of course, it becomes even trickier when you talk about "culture," whatever that means. So what happens when culture is contrary to human rights? After all, aren't issues like wife-burning and stoning of women "cultural" issues? I think that organizations engaged in development work have a responsibility to treat the cultures with which they work with the utmost respect, but where culture clashes with human rights (including a right to gender equality) culture should give way. It's worth recalling that those of us in the United States are part of a culture that justified slavery on religious grounds.

As to the main post, it's heartening to see themes like the ones listed above addressed. I do believe that economic solutions are masked by culture, particularly when the culture specifically excludes women from the marketplace. Not that I think that the market is the key to freedom, but there is a lot to be said for women having the ability to cultivate skills other than those ascribed to women in most cultures (i.e. reproduction, sexual labor, and uncompensated domestic or agricultural labor).

"If we're going to turn around this business, which is developing Africa..."

This caught my attention and to me is a key reason why "Westerners bungle things up."

I think of Development in the terms of helping people help themselves in bettering their own lives. But what I read in the first quote is that Development is about tapping into a market for the benefit of the already powerful and the detriment of the local people who will inevitably be exploited (as we've seen over and again).

I too feel heartened by the topics of discussion at this forum, but also quite wary by the yes, those representing a conflict of interest. I'm all for their inclusion... but am not interested in their leadership over those who actually do the work.

It is absolutely true that too much Western development assistance is wasted by being funneled through large government development consultancies, bloated Western non-profits, and even the army (which, due to the structure and priorities of the current U.S. foreign assistance system, often carries out economic development work). However, to view the issue as a divide between "outside development groups" and local cultures is to over-simplify the problem and cut out one of the most effective catalysts for the "girl effect": local women's organizations working in-country.

In any given developing nation there are likely thousands of under-resourced, indigenous local women's NGOs with proven solutions for empowering women in their communities - whether that be through secondary education, micro-finance or micro-savings, agricultural cooperatives, or rights awareness. Unfortunately, U.S. development dollars rarely go to these groups over development contractors.

Take the example of COMUCAP, a women's agricultural cooperative in Honduras my organization, Women Thrive Worldwide, advocates with. The organization began as an anti-violence group but soon learned that increasing women's household income had the effect of reducing violence in the community by changing household dynamics. Whether you call this a cultural shift or not, the results are clear: women got training and income, they gained increase bargaining power in their households, living standards were raised, and domestic violence decreased.

Effective development has to involve Western groups and governments, because that is where the market power and resources lie. The trick is to get these resources to local groups that know their communities best.

This is a major focus of my organizations work (we do not carry out direct service but instead advocate for U.S. assistance to invest in women and help local women's groups lobby their governments towards the same goal). If you'd like to help you can sign our petition calling on Congress and the Obama Administration to make aid work for women: www.WomenThrive.org/far.

- Mckenzie, Women Thrive Worldwide

CourtroomMama,

Basically you have equally legitimate arguments that Westerners bungle things up and should more or less keep out, and that the global north has long neglected or exploited the global south and should be expected to invest some of the immense capital it holds into repairing and helping to develop these areas so that they can then do it for themselves.

Actually, I do not think these are equally legitimate. The second of these results in a substantial flow of resources to people who desperately need it. The first of these can be used simply as a cover for people to feel OK about not helping people who desperately need it.

It certainly becomes much more complicated when you're talking about money going from taxpayer to government to government to, hopefully, the people who need it. That's three principal-agent problems right there. But aid to African women does not have to work in that large-scale a way. People in the US can help women in Africa without the interposition of governments.

I admire the work of local women's cooperatives, but it is not necessary that money be routed through such cooperatives in order for it to be effective. You do need local coordinators to make sure the money is routed correctly, and to make sure that your work is effective, but the organization itself does not have to be based there in order for its investment to be OK.

I think that you are actually just as likely to hear it from the people to be served themselves.

I'm not sure what po-mo is, but I guess we can only speak to any extent from our own experience.

My experience is both in low-income neighborhood nonprofits in the US and in Western-based nonprofits that aid the developing world, and it suggests that such sentiments would be those of an extremely small minority.

Nobody has ever come to us who is from East Africa and expressed anything but wholehearted enthusiasm for what we are doing. We do not directly encounter the elders who oppose girls' education: the people who do encounter them are people who work in refuges and shelters for girls fleeing forced marriages and FGM in those communities, and who send some of their academically brightest girls for sponsorship by us at high-quality in-country schools.

In a similar way, when I was working in community development, none of the low-income people assisted by the nonprofit ever expressed anything but wholehearted enthusiasm for our efforts. The anxiety was all on the side of people not in their situation hypothesizing that low-income people might feel patronized by our assistance, and feeling inhibited in what they were willing to do to help low-income people as a result.

It's not enough to hypothesize that East Africans might feel patronized by their girls' education being funded from the West, or that low-income people in the US might feel patronized by assistance coming from outside their communities. I'm perfectly happy to leave to their own devices communities that have no desire for outside intervention, but in both cases it was the community people who desperately wanted help and intervention and genuinely couldn't understand why [highly-educated, affluent, liberal] outsiders might feel reticent about doing so.

If the girls and young women we fund, our primary clientele, ever indicate to us that secondary education is not useful to them, we will change what we do and provide something else. As it is, they report to us that it is enormously useful to them and that they really want Western donors to be involved. In the absence of counter-evidence, I don't think you or anyone should presume to impute that it might not actually be what they want.

I think that postcolonial feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty has quite a lot to say about how western feminists imagine women of the global South. Her piece called "Under Western Eyes" is really great. Try this link to access it on jstor, and if that doesn't work, a google search should lead you to the piece:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1395054

I wrote a paper for school critically reading the Girl Effect video and Greenpeace viral video (Dove Onslaughter) for thier representation of the 'third world girl' as the face of their campaigns. I'm trying to boil down my thoughts on this type of gender and development work... I struggle with it, and ultimately find it very dangerous and that such narratives erase difference across the global South and they further permit a capitalist neocolonialism (cough, Nike!?) to take root in the name of saving vulnerable girls.
definitely an interesting and important conversation to have. thanks for bringing it up!

I rather like the Girl Effect video. It has been effective at raising the importance in Western donors' minds of educating girls in the developing world, and it does not stereotype girls' experiences in the process. Girls in both places, to a greater extent than is usual in the United States, struggle against patriarchal modes of thought, and it is valid to draw attention to that. It is entirely natural for a worldwide campaign to use a message that applies to common experiences of girls in developing countries, and having lived and worked in education in villages in India and in East Africa, there is genuinely a lot that girls' experiences in the two places did have in common.

In what sense would donating money to the organizations funded through the Girl Effect enable "capitalist neocolonialism"? What makes that anything more than a couple of buzzwords? Do you have any examples of women in the developing world who actually consider Western donors funding girls' education in their countries to be capitalist neocolonialism, or are you simply imposing your view of what you think they ought to be thinking of it?

You may find this kind of work "very dangerous"; I can witness to the fact that this kind of work changes many girls' and young women's lives for the better, and enables them to have a chance of achieving their desires and aims in life. You don't have to contribute to it; but please do not discourage others from giving to something that can make such a difference.

I would also note that in our work, rather than "constructing a single monolithic subject" of the "Third World girl", we collect the words of the individual girls we sponsor and use those words to tell their stories. We can do that viably because we are much smaller than Nike!

I don't think I will change your mind on this, but here is my response.
Nike, as a corporation benefits hugely from 'capitalist neocolonialism,' or a new era of nongovernmental colonialism that largely exists through capitalist globalization. Nike and other transnational corporations are able to exert their power in moving capital to wherever they can minimize labor costs, dictating enviro and labor standards as they go.

The creation and funding of the Nike Foundation was a reaction to consumer boycotts due to poor labor conditions and rumored use of child labor. In order to repair their public image, they started a foundation to show how much good they do in the world, hoping that the right hand would distract the public from what the left hand has continued to do: exploit Southern workers for Northern consumption and profit. Who better to pick than the presumed most vulnerable - girls geographically and racially located in the Global South? that should do the trick to show the world how good Nike is.

I'm not saying that people who benefit from these programs are not extremely grateful. But I think it is extremely important that feminists constantly evaluate our own positionality and impact in any intervention. And I really believe that perpetuating a Global North/Global South: Hero/Victim narrative is problematic at least and dangerous.

Colonial discourse shows that colonial conquerors thought they were just helping people, too. The burden of western feminists to 'save the third world girl' doesn't sound that far off from the 'White Man's Burden'... outright bad? probably not. but dangerous? definitely.