Fruits of the Loom: A Fetishisation of Success? Exploring women’s gains in the loomweaving industry

Abstract

This essay primarily argues that antipoverty programmes have long been a gendered arena and thus considers some of the assumptions about the ‘poor’ and about ‘gender’ and how it is used in an antipoverty programme. It has two main objectives: first, describe and analyse the discourse of poverty in antipoverty policy platforms from a gendered perspective; and second, apply this analysis to a poverty reduction project using a case study of a women loomweavers multi-purpose cooperative in the Philippines. The case study links macroeconomic policy on poverty with a locally-implemented poverty reduction programme in the Philippines. It examines how the dominant discourse of poverty primarily based on conventional conceptions and the ‘feminisation of poverty’ thesis, selectively appropriating women’s issues in certain development areas, has been acted out in different antipoverty policy platforms in the country. To some extent, this seems to produce a partial notion of “success” in the development intervention focused on the women loomweavers’ multipurpose cooperative, because it assumes that the gains women loomweavers get from the project also equitably redound to the benefit of all members of their household. This lack of serious attention to gender differences and intrahousehold dynamics in antipoverty programmes may undermine poverty reduction in itself while reinforcing gender stereotypes at the local context.

Introduction

Economic restructuring has altered and shaped the needs, priorities and realities of populations. It has brought national governments and development organisations together in a web of standardised macroeconomic policy prescriptions contained in antipoverty programmes bearing neoliberal constructions of the ‘poor’ and ‘gender’ that has put premium on conventional econometric parameters over experiences of growing insecurity and vulnerability. Technologies of governmentality based on conventional conceptions of poverty have framed the poor as a ‘social problem’ therefore, ‘has to be handled and managed’.

However, the increased concern with global poverty has led to a rethinking within development discourses of the approaches to poverty as well as to development organizations requiring poverty assessments coupled with an increased awareness on gender as a condition for development aid (Chhachhi, 2009a). This “need to incorporate gender differences has not only increasingly been taken on board in poverty analysis but in policy and practice too” (Chant, 2008:171).

In recent years, “there has been a growing recognition of the importance of macroeconomic policy in shaping women’s living standards and their prospects for economic empowerment” (Elson in Budlender et al, 2002:23). Evidenced amply in policy rhetoric, Rodenberg (2004:iv in Chant, 2008:172) further describes that this is a ‘winwin’ formula which links greater gender equity, economic growth and effective poverty alleviation. Yet the manner by which gender has been incorporated in the burden of coping with poverty in households, through the ‘feminisation’ of antipoverty programmes, has sometimes exacerbated living conditions and reinforced gender stereotypes.

This essay attempts to examine whether an antipoverty programme has adequately considered the intersecting realities of poverty and gender. It has two main objectives: first, describe and analyse the discourse of poverty in policy platforms from a gendered perspective; and second, apply this analysis to a poverty reduction project using a case study of a women loomweavers multi-purpose cooperative.

By drawing on feminist positions highlighting the significance of tracing the gendered dynamics of poverty, the essay will demonstrate that poverty is couched in social relations, including gender relations and underscore that the lack of serious attention to gender differences and intra-household dynamics in antipoverty programmes may undermine poverty reduction in itself while reinforcing gender stereotypes.