Disciplining Gender?

CECILE JACKSON *University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Summary. — Taken as a whole, research on gender issues in development, whether directly orientedto policy questions or to broader understandings of social change in developing countries, has beenmarked by a broad and deep disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary character whichhas been central to its success. Development agencies research strategies, however, particularlymultilaterals, remain dominated by economics, which therefore constrains the extent to which otherdisciplines are able to contribute to development knowledge and policy evolution. The purpose ofthis paper is to argue that interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity must be sustained inresearching gender and development, and that sociology, anthropology and politics are ofincreasing significance because of changing priorities in development. I argue that these disciplineshave particular conceptual and methodological strengths, very briefly indicated, for researchinggender and development, and that there is a need to resource these fields equally through capacitybuilding in developing countries and renewed e!orts to increase numbers of women research-ers. ! 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Key words — gender, development, research, interdisciplinarity, research strategies, sociology,anthropology, politics, social change

1. INTRODUCTION

After a recent conference on qualitative andquantitative poverty appraisal, Ravi Kanburproposed a number of dimensions for distin-guishing variations in approaches to informa-tion collection and analysis. These were type ofinformation on population (nonnumerical tonumerical), type of population coverage (spe-cific to general), type of population involve-ment (active to passive), type of inferencemethodology (inductive to deductive), and typeof disciplinary framework (broad social scienceto neoclassical economics) (Kanbur, 2001, p. 7).A further dimension to these continua might beadded, ‘‘level of influence and resourcing inmultilateral development agencies: (low tohigh),’’ and this paper argues for the needto redress this imbalance. I also aim to respondto his challenge that we focus on the strengthsof sociology, anthropology and political anal-ysis, rather than continue to make well-knowncriticisms of methods in economics. I argue thatthe hegemony of economics in developmentresearch by multilaterals matters because itcramps the space, the resources and the recog-nition accorded to disciplines with equally im-portant contributions to make to developmentpuzzles and policy. Excellence in policy-rele-vant gender research cannot be confined to a

single discipline but depends on diversity indisciplinary work, on conversations betweendisciplines, and on interdisciplinary endeavors.

2. INTERDISCIPLINARITYFOR HYBRID VIGOR

The problems for interdisciplinary researchstem largely from the social costs for re-searchers of movement beyond disciplinaryboundaries, and apparently incompatible the-ories and methods. The political economy ofacademic research, with the power of discipline-based journals, research associations, peerevaluation and teaching programs, worksforcefully against those with interests in com-bining disciplines. The distinction made be-tween multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarityis well-known, but it is perhaps worthwhile toidentify forms of interdisciplinarity. WhenHarriss (2002) objects to the wholesale impor-tation of rational choice theory into politicalanalysis and social organizational studies, he isobjecting to an economic imperialism whichcolonizes another discipline, rather than con-versing with it. What I argue for here is the

World Development Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 497–509, 2002! 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

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value of distinctive and di!erent disciplinesbrought together—hybrid vigor derives fromcrossing two equal purebred lines, which isdi"cult when hegemonic economics is one suchline. But although economics has developed anoverly strong presence in political science, ingeneral,

[t]here are . . . limits to economic imperialism. . .Afterconquering the border regions and collecting the‘low hanging fruit’ the leader of an invasion oftenfinds it di"cult to keep the troops on the frontierrather than retreating to native territory (Ruttan,2001, p. 24).

This may be both a blessing and a curse,since the same pressures for the retreat of thestorm troops of economics are those which alsoinhibit interdisciplinary research.Contradictions in the concepts and methods

of di!erent disciplines, it seems to me, are thesource of valuable critical tension which shouldbe celebrated rather than avoided, and they donot necessarily impede interdisciplinary re-search, as some surprising examples demon-strate. For example, some might consider theterm feminist economics to be rather contra-dictory and oxymoronic. After all, since femi-nism challenges foundational ideas ofmainstream economics, a term I use as short-hand for the dominant positivist neoclassicalform of economics, by an explicit social justicestandpoint, how can they combine meaning-fully? That they do is itself of interest, andsupports the notion that research with explicitvalues produces stronger analyses (Harding,1987, 1992). This works in a number of ways.Rendering explicit the implicit androcentrismof science, despite its supposed value neutrality,allows new and fuller research questions anddesigns because of a more inclusive range.Feminist epistemologies also value the subal-tern experience of women which generates dis-tinctive knowledges of social reality, and theinclusion of these strengthens analyses. Finally,the feminist stance which does not claim to bedispassionate and disinterested, sets up di!erentrelations between researcher and researched,and caring about the subjects of research can beseen not simply as ‘‘bias’’ but as a route to afuller, more engaged understanding. The ex-ample of feminist economics serves to demon-strate the value of interdisciplinarity indevelopment research, but also establishes theimportant broader point that since develop-ment is by definition concerned with social

justice (poverty reduction, gender equity,rights), it needs a critical openness to thoseepistemologies in which the values of re-searchers and desired outcomes of socialchange are acknowledged.Feminist economics 1 has delivered some of

the most thrilling insights in development re-search over the past few decades. Since Boserup(1970), the founding mother of gender analysisof development, paradigm-shifting work ofwide relevance has come from the interdisci-plinary combination of gender analysis anddevelopment economics at di!erent scales andin diverse fields. For example, in her extendedwork on property regimes and gender relationsin south Asia, Agarwal (1994) shows just howgender identities mediate the relations of per-sons and property, a key concern in develop-ment economics, while Elson (1991, 1995) hasanalyzed why and how women’s reproductivework matters for macroeconomic analysis, andhow apparently gender-neutral adjustment andstabilization processes are inflected with genderbias.Feminist economists have also reworked

understandings of households and intrahouse-hold relations. They opened the box of thehousehold by thinking outside it, inspired byresearch beyond the discipline of economics,and demonstrated the significance of separateincome streams rather than conjugal pooling,how problematic assumptions of altruism andself-interest can be, the inadequacy of com-parative advantage explanations of gender di-visions of labor, and the value as well aslimitations of game theoretic approaches tointrahousehold resource allocations and out-comes (Agarwal, 1997; Folbre, 1986; Hart,1995, 1997; Kabeer, 1994). An important rolein these advances was played by the in-depthempirical studies of intrahousehold inequalitywhich had flourished in other disciplines sincethe 1970s. While the cooperative householdmodels of the 1990s may have reached thelimits imposed by the individualism of this ap-proach and the constraints of large-scale surveydata (Hart, 1995), the noncooperative modelsof Lundberg and Pollack (1997), and Carterand Katz (1997) again appear to be movingforward at least partially on the basis of non-economists work on gender roles and expecta-tions, such as Ann Whitehead’s notion of theconjugal contract (Whitehead, 1981), whichpoints to the culturally specific implicit under-standings of the exchanges between women andmen in marriage as the basis for what are

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considered to be legitimate claims and expec-tations of partners. Such norms are not un-changing but constitute the discursive resourceswhich women and men draw upon in justifyingindividual negotiating positions. These move-ments in understanding intrahousehold rela-tions are profoundly policy relevant, and not,of course, only for gender policy, but for de-velopment in general. The move from the no-tion of a unitary household to one of separateinterests and preferences has entailed distinctivepolicy implications, for example, the latter ap-proach suggests that it matters who in thehousehold receives income subsidies, and thatpolicy failure may arise from ignoring how in-trahousehold inequality patterns technologyadoption.Finally, Sen’s formulation of his cooperative

conflict model of intrahousehold relationswhich brings together Nash’s bargaining the-ory with important lessons from gender anal-ysis must surely be testimony to the vigor ofhybridity in economics (Sen, 1987). He drewdirectly on gender analysis when he arguedthat individuals sense of their personal well-being is gender di!erentiated in ways thatprofoundly a!ects bargained outcomes, thatgender relations within households are inti-mately linked to broader social landscapes ofgendered advantage and disadvantage outsideof households, and that ‘‘subjective’’ ap-proaches to well-being must stand alongside‘‘objective’’ assessment of well-being. He wastherefore able to devise a model which, byrecognizing the significance of perceptions tobargaining, and the connectedness of relationswithin and without the household, o!eredreal movement forward in understanding howgender inequities operate and change. 2

It is increasingly common to see gender dis-aggregation of data in research by economists,and this is valuable and welcome. But it doesnot, of course, amount to gender analysis, andsuch work alone is not an adequate response tothe challenge of researching gender for devel-opment, nor is it reasonably called interdisci-plinary. Gender disaggregation is useful since itreveals gender gaps and variations, but unlessharnessed to an understanding of gender rela-tions, is analytically impoverished. For exam-ple, documenting gender gaps in education, wasonly a descriptive start, and showing the sta-tistical significance of educating girls for theachievement of various development goals suchas fertility reduction, was an important nextstep, but it is the explanation of quite how ed-

ucation produces the e!ects that it does thatdemands social and cultural analysis. It hasbeen clear for some time that changing fertilitybehavior is di"cult to account for in terms ofmaterial factors alone such as the costs andbenefits of children and that ideational changeplays an important and underrecognized role(Cleland &Wilson, 1987) in this. Measuring thee!ects of ‘‘culture’’ may lie within the purviewof economics but understanding its workings,the connections between economy and cultureand how the apparently economic is also pro-foundly cultural, is not. Development studieshas been slow to take the cultural turn of othersocial science disciplines, but the social rela-tional focus of gender analysts combined withthe ongoing debates on the cultural character ofthe material within feminism (e.g., Butler, 1999;Fraser, 1999) means that we are poised to makea major contribution here.

3. MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXCELLENCEFOR GENDER KNOWLEDGE

If interdisciplinarity allows the exploration ofresearch questions which would not otherwisearise within the boundaries of a single disciplineand is therefore the source of much that isoriginal in development research, it is also,however, at risk of a lowest common denomi-nator e!ect, where only relatively straightfor-ward research questions are posed.Multidisciplinarity, however, i.e., parallel dis-ciplines in close conversation about the sameproblem, rather than integrated within thesame study, is not subject to this risk, and singledisciplines can achieve a particularly valuablekind of depth. Inequality is itself multidimen-sional and cannot be the preserve of a singlediscipline; alongside mainstream economics,anthropology, sociology and politics needequivalent research resources to pursue thoseresearch questions where they hold a clear ad-vantage in terms of conceptual scope andmethodological appropriateness.Why does excellence in gender research for

development require sociology, anthropologyand politics (SAP)? One answer is that devel-opment objectives have changed in ways thatmake SAP knowledges increasingly critical.First, development used to be shorthand foreconomic development, but it is no longer.Social development, human rights and demo-cratic participation have greatly increased theirimportance in development activity during the

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1990s, as indicated by the sta"ng of bilateralagencies such as DFID, and with them thedisciplines of sociology, anthropology andpolitics have become central to developmentresearch. 3 This disciplinary expansion fol-lowed on from two significant changes to howpoverty and inequality were conceptualized.Alongside the older notion of private con-sumption poverty have developed both Sen’scapabilities and functioning’s notions of well-being (Sen, 1985), and Chambers’ subjectivecharacterizations of poverty (Chambers, 1988),which, while very di!erent, both introduced asocial institutional element into poverty think-ing, for which social anthropology, sociologyand politics clearly were central. Theorists ofsocial exclusion now see poverty as multi-dimensional, dynamic, and as a process rather acondition (de Haan & Maxwell, 1998; Rodgerset al., 1995). Second, the recognition in devel-opment discourses that inequality was basednot only on class but also on other forms ofdi!erentiation, notably gender, created open-ings for SAP since the theorizing of genderroles, relations and resistances has never beenmore than a minor interest for mainstreameconomists; it was others who shaped the fieldof gender analysis (Chodorow, 1978; Edholm,Harris, & Young, 1977; Molyneux, 1985; Ort-ner, 1974; Rubin, 1975).Another answer is that interdisciplinary re-

search may reach a point at which, as in thecase of intrahousehold gender relations out-lined above, progress requires disciplinarydepth and detail, in this case, ways to thinkabout perceived personal welfare and the val-orization of work. The former will need to bebased in anthropological work on personhood,how this is constructed over the life course, andthe cultural specifics of how a person is con-ceived as a bounded individual, or rather as asocial being in which persons largely exist inrelation to other persons (Strathern, 1988). Thelatter depends on research by political analystsand sociologists on how gender interests andaspirations develop and express themselves. Inthis field there has been a vigorous and usefuldebate about ‘‘false consciousness,’’ the ques-tion of how gender ‘‘interests’’ are di!erent,from class interests (e.g., age is very significantto gender interests while social mobility be-tween genders is not), the extent to which theyare recognized, mystified and mutable, and theways in which resistances to gendered subor-dination can be understood (Agarwal, 1994;Kandiyoti, 1988, 1998; Molyneux, 1998).

Sociology, anthropology and politics shouldnot, however, be seen as there simply to helpsolve the knottier problems of human behavioras individuals, groups and societies, and in aservice capacity to economics. They bring en-tirely new issues into development research,pose important research questions that wouldnot have arisen in their absence, and have su-perior conceptual and methodological tradi-tions in relation to some developmentquestions. An eminent World Bank economistwas recently asked about his vision of inter andmultidisciplinarity in research and he repliedthat his ideal was to have a (named and equallyeminent) social anthropologist available totelephone about questions that puzzled him. 4

Simply servicing economics is, however, not aconversation between equals, nor does it beginto recognize the value of the agenda of an-thropology in its own right, and the importanceof equivalent resourcing of disciplines otherthan economics.To accept a service role for SAP is to block

o! the important gender research questionswhich originate from the wellsprings of disci-plines other than economics. One example isresearch on accountability and organizationalcultures. The work of sociologists and politicalanalysts on the organizational explanations forthe policy achievements and shortcomings inGAD policy is both original and broadly rele-vant to policy sciences, including much of de-velopment studies. They ask what were thefactors behind di!erential adoption of thegender agenda by agencies? How can organi-zational cultures constrain gender policy? Whatdoes gender accountability consist of? How dobeneficiaries engage as actors in forming pol-icy? This research shows that the gender iden-tities of development personnel a!ects the waysin which they work with participants of di!er-ent genders (Goetz, 1997; Staudt, 1990), thatdevelopment project participants actively shapeproject activities and outcomes through di!er-ential levels and styles of cooperation and en-gagement (Villareal, 1992) and that thereforethe distinction between ‘‘participatory’’ and‘‘nonparticipatory’’ projects is spurious, and itanalyzes the conditions under which genderaccountability, i.e., responsiveness to women’sinterests, is e!ective (Kardam, 1995). Further-more, introducing gender equity policies indevelopment has entailed confrontation of arange of distinctive problems relating to the farfrom universal acceptance, among donors,agencies and hosts and partners, of the legiti-

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macy of this development goal. Studying howthis has been (partially) achieved, is especiallyrelevant today when the tensions betweenconditionality of assistance, and relationshipsconceived of as partnerships, loom large. Thisresearch strength has a great deal to o!er thosecurrently concerned with making developmentagencies more pro-poor. The broader implica-tion is that social science disciplines other thaneconomics should not be bolted onto econom-ics but given room and resources to establishtheir own parallel strategies for developmentknowledge.

4. GENERIC STRENGTHS OF SAP FORGENDER ANALYSIS OF DEVELOPMENT

The recent World Bank Policy Report‘‘Engendering Development’’ (2001) proposesa strategy based on institutional reform toestablish the legal and economic institutionsfor equality, economic development to gener-ate employment and social infrastructural in-vestments for equality, and improvingwomen’s access to resources and politicalvoice to reduce persistent gender disparities. Itstates that gender research needs to move be-yond gender gaps, such as those in educationand health, to questions of autonomy, lead-ership and voice. All of these suggest a newsalience for SAP. The complex issues raised byautonomy, and the emphasis on leadershipand voice, recognizes the importance of cre-ating the conditions in which women in de-veloping countries can themselves moree!ectively make demands and influence prior-ities of states and agencies. Researchingvoice—what will be the content of those de-mands? which women’s voices will be heard?will women represent the interests of otherwomen?—is a proposal in which the politics ofspeech looms very large, and for which SAPdisciplines are uniquely relevant. In this sec-tion, I briefly outline some of the specialstrengths brought to such a project by soci-ology, anthropology and politics.

(a) Social relations

Methodological individualism has never beenas firmly entrenched in SAP disciplines as eco-nomics and therefore they are able to concep-tualize gender in terms of not simply thedi!erences between women and men as sepa-rate social categories, but the relations between

them. 5 A social relational focus involves ap-proaching women not only as individuals, andas a social category, whose problems appear tobe somehow connected to characteristics of thiscategory, but as parties to sets of relations(involving resources, rights, responsibilities andmeanings) with men and other women throughwhich what it is to be a woman, in that timeand social place, is defined and experienced.Autonomy for women, as an objective of de-velopment, has to be problematized, for theautonomous individual does not necessarilyenjoy greater well-being. At a material level forexample, Guyer’s research in Cameroon shows,through comparison of incomes and expendi-ture of married and unmarried Beti women,how adult women ‘‘gain access to resourcesthrough the culturally dominant ideology of themarital relationship’’ (Guyer, 1988, p. 163).Fraser (1997) also points out the negativeconsequences for women when the state, in heranalysis of the United States, assumes thatautonomy is good and dependence bad. Thequestion of dependence and autonomy arecomplex precisely because the social relationsof gender which subordinate women are alsosimultaneously implicated in the experiencedwell-being of women through, for example, thevariable but not insignificant levels of physicalprotection, emotional and sexual satisfaction,cultural approval and material well-being de-livered by marriage.

(b) Social identities

The assumption of genderless individuals hasbeen at the heart of many policy failures whichhave not anticipated the di!erential experienceof interventions, such as new technologies, bywomen and men. Rather than assuming a uni-versal, implicitly male, person, within SAP in-dividuals are held to carry a number of socialidentities—of which woman is one—which in-fluence what it is possible for them to be and do(e.g., Lister, 1995 on citizenship). While genderdisaggregation of data helps to describe thesignificance of gender identities for outcomes,e.g., in well-being comparisons, it does not ex-plain how those identities are formed, con-tested, and co-exist with other identities such asethnicity. For example, we know that there isexcess mortality among girls in a number ofsouth Asian countries, but why girl’s are subjectto foeticide, infanticide, and aggressive neglectrequires a full analysis of gender identities andrelations over the lifecourse and disaggregated

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by class and caste. Important elements in ex-plaining this phenomena are forms of marriageexchange, notions of personhood, the genderedhierarchies within belief systems, sanskritiza-tion and the content of hegemonic masculini-ties.

(c) Agency, action and social change

‘‘Engendering Development’’ (World Bank,2001) asks why do gender disparities persist?The framework suggested (World Bank, 2001,p. 99) as an explanation for the persistence ofinequalities, however, has nothing but thedead hand of structure at work—social andcultural norms, socialization, and a determin-ing economy. The question deserves better. Tome, it is a good question, important because itdirects attention to social change and becauseit reflects dissatisfaction with old answers(‘‘because of patriarchy, silly!,’’ or ‘‘becauseour policies have been flawed’’), and because itimplies a search for explanations in whichwomen are not simply the dupes of patriarchy,nor passive recipients of development aid. Ifwe need to understand the engagement ofwomen with their experiences of gender-basedinequality as an active process characterizedby agency, as much as structural constraint,then those disciplines which have grappledwith theorizing social action, and the exerciseof power, will be increasingly significant indevelopment research.

(d) Power and interests

The empowerment of women is now an ob-jective of an enormous array of developmentactivity, which therefore requires concepts andmethods for studying resistance, compliance,influence, and interests. Casually adding ‘‘em-powerment’’ to project and policy goals haslittle meaning without clarity over which of anumber of notions of power is being deployed.In a post-Foucauldian world where we no

longer think that woman is to man as weaknessis to power, we need the help of disciplineswhich can conceptualize women as agents,sometimes acting up to, and against, the socialstructures they live within, and at other timesacting in ways which perpetuate gender dis-parities, and disciplines through which the dis-tinctive character of gender interests can beanalyzed and brought to bear on the issue ofwhy disparities persist.

(e) Essentialism problematised

Debates about how women are essentialized,i.e., treated as if being a woman is to embody aset of characteristics (essences) that can bespoken of in generalized ways across time andspace (Fuss, 1989) may seem rather abstruse,but their absence from policy research has, Iwould argue, led to some misconceived policydirections, for example, in environmental fields.It is still common practice to speak about‘‘women’’ with almost no di!erentiation be-yond an occasional regional descriptor, andconfident generalizations readily imply natu-ralized essentialisms. Thinking about essential-ism, about the variations among women, andalways asking ‘‘which women?’’, is a guardagainst treating women in an undi!erentiatedand decontextualized manner. The continuingpresence of overly essentialist assumptionsabout women is indicated, for example, in thesuggestion that, in the relationship betweengender and corruption, ‘‘there may be intrinsicdi!erences in the behaviors of women and menthat lead to cleaner government when morewomen are in key government positions.’’(World Bank, 2001, p. 93, my emphasis). Cor-ruption studies appear to show that women areless corrupt than men (Dollar, Fisman, &Gatti, 1999), they are less likely to condonecorruption or to be involved in bribery andcountries which have higher levels of represen-tation of women in parliament have lower lev-els of corruption. Swamy, Knack, Lee, andAzfar (2001, p. 15) handle the essentialist im-plication with delicacy, refering in their tenta-tive explanation to both sociobiologistaccounts based on women’s role in reproduc-tion, and to criminology research suggestingthat women are socialized into greater honesty,greater risk aversion, greater expectation ofbeing caught, greater respect for laws becauseof physical vulnerability and higher levels ofself-control, but it creeps back into the inter-pretation of this work by the Bank.The problem of essentialisms for policy is

that they suggest generalized and enduring be-havioral di!erences between genders that canbe relied on in gender di!erentiated policy.Thus women emerge as thrifty, responsible,altruistic, unselfish, hardworking, law-abiding,peace-loving and environment-friendly, andmen the converse. While Swamy et al. (2001)argues that the gender gap in crime in all so-cieties suggests that governance policies canrely on women remaining a force against cor-

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ruption, this gap is narrowing as gender rela-tions change. Women may be as good as theyappear, at least partly, because of their subor-dination.

(f) Epistemological strengths

Social science disciplines have di!erent the-ories of knowledge which implicitly or explicitlyguide research practice. Feminist epistemolo-gies have made important contributions togender analysis, a consequence of which is that,within development studies research, genderwork is often distinguished by a greater epis-temological awareness, if not by consensus.Examples of this are the debate about episte-mological privilege; 6 the promotion of reflex-ivity in research; and the recognition of thepolitics of speech and testimony.To say that ‘‘reliable knowledge is knowledge

from below’’ (Rose, 1994, p. 32) becausewomen have lived experiences of subordination(see also Sen & Grown, 1985) is to suggest justsuch a privileging. A similar approach to pov-erty might suggest that only the poor them-selves really know about poverty, and implicitlyinforms the Voices of the Poor project ofNarayan (2000, 2001) for the World Bank,which assumes that they have a special accessto the truth. 7 Arguments about the validity ofsuch a stance have ensured that uncritical rep-resentations of ‘‘women’s voices’’ are fre-quently challenged in ways that would greatlybenefit those working on poverty and devel-opment. Mosse’s work in western India is agood example of a critically reflexive approachto gender and participatory research (Mosse,1993) in which PRA activities are shown to beused as a public arena for o"cializing dis-courses of powerful individuals, representingpersonal views as community opinion. To ac-cord uncritical epistemological privilege towhat ‘‘the poor’’ are represented as saying isunwise, since they are, of course, diverse andinternally di!erentiated participants represent-ing complex positions and interests, and withexpectations of the research process itself—allof which patterns what is said. Speech is neverunmediated by the circumstances of, and au-diences for, speech. It is unfortunate that theVoices of the Poor volumes, and related litera-ture on the project (Petesch, 2001, p. 31; WorldBank, 1999) gives little discussion of the limi-tations of the research, and which a reflexiveawareness would involve, e.g., of how theidentities of the research teams, and respondent

expectations might a!ect what is said, how theauthors selected material to emphasize, and feltable to generalize from such material, and in-deed why the reader should accept the conceitof the book as simply a megaphone for thepoor, when perhaps it is more akin to a ven-triloquism of the poor. 8 Even the title of thefirst volume ‘‘Can anyone hear us?’’ implies adirect unmediated communication which erasesthe multiple interlocutors involved in the pro-duction of the work. The use of systematiccontent analysis is said by Narayan et al. to ‘‘letthe data speak for themselves’’ and that ‘‘thevoices of the poor may be amplified not muf-fled’’ (2000; p. 295). But content analysis,however systematic, cannot erase the e!ects ofresearchers. Discourse, meanings, representa-tions and talk are all resources, and researchactivities are all social processes which require acritical and reflexive engagement, i.e., one inwhich researchers consider how their presenceand their subjectivities are part of what getsfound out in research.‘‘Testimony’’ is one of the primary ways in

which we come to know. Yet testimony can-not be taken to be either independent of socialidentity, or conversely, completely determinedby identity in essentialized notions of, forexample, ‘‘women’s ways of knowing.’’ Fur-thermore the ability to ‘‘speak,’’ rather thanthe content of speech, is itself socially vari-able. Ardener (1975) developed the notion of‘‘mutedness’’ to refer to the silencing e!ects ofthe discursive exclusions experienced by thosedominated groups, such as women, who standin a di!erent relation to language and vo-cabulary, compared to dominant groups suchas males of particular ethnic groups. In a re-lated vein, Spivak (1988) famously argued thatsubaltern women cannot ‘‘speak.’’ 9 The im-plication here is that the speech of subordi-nated groups—in contexts from surveyrespondents to participants in political pro-cesses and bodies—cannot be taken at facevalue. Or, as Herring puts it,

data [need to be] recognised as products of social in-teractions and situated in a specific social matrix ofproduction. At the point of production, some individ-ual confronts another, both with interests and cogni-tive frames that a!ect the nature of the outcome(Herring, 2001, p. 91).

Ethnographic research is as subject to this asany other kind of research, but at least theethnographer has some sense of their own

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positionality and of the possible interests andframes of respondents. Even without the ex-tended time scale of ethnography, there is muchto be said for adopting the emphasis in SAPmethods on the importance experience of re-searchers face-to-face encounters with respon-dents—this indeed was one of the mostvaluable elements of the PRA innovations.

(g) Social and historical context

Harriss (2002) has already argued for theimportance for economic theory of the con-frontation with social reality. Knowledge aboutthe messy particularity of life in specific timesand places is an important counterpoint forthose concerned with generalization and the-ory, not only for the reasons given by Harriss,but also because seeking such knowledge en-tails di!erent training regimes and producesdistinctive research cultures of great value.While economists frequently use large-scaledata sets for comparative research on countriesthat they have little special knowledge of, this isuncommon in SAP where methodological tra-ditions emphasise the importance of context inexplanation. Indeed, it is the di!erence betweennoncontextual and contextual approacheswhich is seen by some as a better distinctionthan quantitative/quanlitative divide betweeneconomics and other disciplines (Hentschel,2001). These disciplines start from an assump-tion of the uniqueness of particular places andtimes, cultural specificity and historical back-ground. Their research training regimes there-fore give great prominence to fieldwork withdirect primary data collection and local lan-guage knowledge. Economists on the otherhand are inevitably more distanced, by the needto supervise enumerators dealing with verylarge numbers of respondents, from this intenserelation with respondents. Bringing the experi-ences of SAP researchers with their rich refer-ence points in intensive study into interactionwith economists is invaluable, and can serve asa safeguard against some flights of fancy ineconomists assumptions. 10 Where economicsneeds to simplify to proceed, because of boththe realities of large-scale data collection andalso the parsimoniousness of theorizing andexplaining, SAP brings back the complexity.Good examples of this, which relate to as-sumptions about women’s positions withinhouseholds, are the many studies which showhistorical change in household forms (e.g.,Vaughan, 1983), the overlapping but rarely

coterminous functions of households (e.g.,production, residence, reproduction), and thedemographic dynamism of household mem-bership (e.g., Francis, 1998). Economists are, ofcourse, not alone in decontextualizing research,and ‘‘pic ‘n mix’’ qualitative research is equallyunsatisfactory.While what follows points to the value of

largely qualitative research, this should not betaken to suggest that gender analytical work isonly qualitative; indeed the importance ofquantitative approaches are widely recognized.After all, without the census analysis of sexratios in India, for example, one of the majorgender issues confronting south Asia wouldhave remained unrecognized since it is only at avery large scale that adverse ratios can beidentified. 11 But a great many research ques-tions posed by gender analysis do demand in-depth methods of study which are beyond thereach of large-scale sample surveys. One obvi-ous example is the area glossed as ‘‘decisionmaking.’’ Heroic e!orts may be made to pro-duce simple indicators on this for use inquantitative surveys, but they produce little ofvalue because of the complexity of the inter-actions called ‘‘decision making’’ which canrarely be reduced to anything cut and driedenough for use in questionnaires. In general,‘‘why’’ and ‘‘how’’ questions need in-depth re-search, with the intensity of interaction thatlarge-scale surveys cannot approach and withan openendedness of interaction that is notpossible with the necessary simplifications oflarge surveys.

(h) The ‘‘telling’’ as well as the ‘‘typical’’

Clyde Mitchell (1993, p. 238) used thisphrase to indicate the role of case study work.Sample surveys claim to tell us somethingabout the populations they are taken to rep-resent and therefore typicality is important tothe forms of knowledge that we derive fromsurveys. The in-depth case study is di!erent,however, since it aims to be telling, i.e., toreveal processes and connections by a focuson the particular and the detailed, nestedwithin a broader context. Indeed, to be tell-ing, research may legitimately seek the atypi-cal, the unusual and the rare. For example, ina society where marriage is almost universal,case studies of individuals who have notmarried can be very revealing about theworkings of marriage systems. It is thereforemistaken to criticize case study work as being

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untypical (due to small numbers and sam-pling methods), and more appropriate tosupport case studies as both a complementaryand stand-alone method which increase theexplanatory range, the reliability and therelevance of gender and development re-search. Murray’s research in Lesotho (Mur-ray, 1981) was an early and importantexample of case study research which wastelling—in showing the domestic strength, re-silience and power of women despite virilocalmarriage and exclusion from descent groupideologies.Qualitative research is not always purpo-

sively sampled, and there are good reasons forsometimes using random sampling (to avoidbias, even if statistical analysis is not antici-pated), and for nesting case study work withina larger more quantitative analysis, but clearlythe appropriate sampling approach depends onobjectives.

(i) Scale variations

A number of development puzzles reveal acontradiction that appears to be associatedwith di!ering analytical scales. One is the gen-erally favorable view of the relationship be-tween economic growth and poverty reductionat a macro scale, and the markedly less favor-able view of this relationship which emergesfrom micro studies (see Palmer-Jones, 1993).Another example, in the gender field, is therelationship between poverty and gender whichappears rather di!erent at di!erent levels ofanalysis. In the long historical term, genderequity has generally risen as poverty has de-clined, but in the contemporary world this re-lationship is complex. While some hold that‘‘When economic development raises incomesand reduces poverty, gender inequalities oftennarrow’’ (World Bank, 2001, p. 18), there isalso evidence from micro studies for changed,and sometimes deepened, gender inequalities inthe short to medium term, associated withpoverty reduction (Jackson, 1996; Razavi,1999). These perspectives maintain in valuabletension. Small-scale, in-depth studies contrib-ute important insights, from a viewpoint situ-ated somewhat closer to the lived experience ofpeople in developing countries, and researcherswith such styles should be engaged in a mutu-ally critical dialogue with researchers of large-scale data relationships. Furthermore, a recentstatistical review of gender and poverty in 10developing countries concludes that in coun-

tries where women are consistently worse o!than men, cultural and institutional factors areresponsible (Quisumbing, Haddad, & Pena,2001), which adds further weight to the argu-ment for more research on gender and povertylinkages by those disciplines best equipped toanalyze such factors.In conclusion, this section has argued that

excellence in development research requiressupport for sociology, anthropology and poli-tics, not only in association with economicsresearch but in pursuit of their own researchagendas which are increasingly relevant to de-velopment goals. I have suggested that thesedisciplines have conceptual and methodologicalstrengths which are particularly suited to cur-rent gender research priorities. Contradictionsarising between disciplines should be celebratedas a springboard to further research, and theimportance of surprise and argument in re-search cultures acknowledged rather thanavoided. Finally, I see multidisciplinarity as aform of triangulation, for where disciplines,from their di!erent vantage points, find agree-ment, is likely to be firm ground for policyinterventions.

5. CONCLUSION: GENDER ANALYSISAND WOMEN RESEARCHERS

It used to be thought that the gender com-position of development organizations was es-sentially an equal opportunities issue, quiteseparate from the implementation of policyand practice. But gender identities of sta! indevelopment agencies have been shown to af-fect the ways policy is implemented, for ex-ample, women sta! use their discretion indi!erent ways, and therefore the gender com-position of an organization is directly related tohow it works. This is not, however, an argu-ment about women being inherently better atdoing gender work, simply a recognition thatthe experiences of women often shapes theirapproach to their work in distinctive wayswhich leads to distinctive understandings ofdevelopment priorities and ways of workingwith others. Researchers identities a!ect theresearch they choose to do and the manner ofits execution.This is, of course, no surprise to sociologists

of science, who have shown how women havebeen excluded as ‘‘knowers’’ and connectedthis to how the supposed universal person of‘‘man’’ in science, was actually a male subject

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with a particular gender identity. These genderbased clusions matter because, as Rose argues,the social practices of women, grounded in thecaring parts of the economy, gives rise todistinctive approaches to knowledge andtherefore to their conduct of research. 12

Haraway (1989), for example, showed how inthe field of primatology male scientists inter-preted primate behavior to emphasize aggres-sion of males as functional to the evolution ofthe species, whilst a later generation of womenprimatolgists began to challenge this accountwith their careful observation of primate be-havior in the wild, and emphasize the impor-tance of females in groups, cooperation ratherthan aggression as conferring selective advan-tage, and the importance of time spent onfeeding and survival rather than sexual domi-nation.The connections between gender identities of

researchers and the character and content oftheir research is complex and varies with dif-ferent branches of science, but it is no accidentthat most gender research is done by womenresearchers. 13 This is because of the valueswhich we all bring to our research, and a degreeof identification between women across culturesand classes. Furthermore, pragmatically, thegender agenda has also created a niche of im-plicit positive discrimination for women re-searchers, in an otherwise male-dominatedworld, which has also created incentives forwomen researchers to take up gender fields ofresearch. One interesting, admittedly anecdotal,observation on the marriage of economics andgender analysis is that in general the family ofeconomics is decidedly cool about the match, 14

and there seem to be particular disciplinary

di"culties faced by women gender analystswithin economics, a striking number of whichseem to face disciplinary rejection, evidenced bymoves to sociology or geography departments.A broadening of development research beyondeconomics may therefore have a serendipitouse!ect on gender balance amongst developmentresearchers.I am suggesting here that the gender com-

position and organizational cultures of re-search institutes and structures make adi!erence to the successful pursuit of genderresearch and development objectives. Increas-ing the numbers of women researchers is im-portant, and furthermore, such researchersshould not be concentrated in junior positionsalone, since ‘‘information about women tendsto receive policy recognition in proportion tothe social and political significance of the ‘in-former’’’ (Goetz, 1994, p. 28). Capacity-build-ing work through scholarship programs,training and research partnerships must includetraining in sociology, anthropology and poli-tics, and cognate disciplines, and e!orts shouldbe concentrated on building such expertise indeveloping country research institutes anduniversities.A shift of emphasis toward SAP is unlikely to

be easy for institutions dominated by econom-ics, for the parties to a bargain need to see thatthe benefits of cooperation outweigh the dis-advantages; SAP scholars have much experi-ence of tokenism, and for their part economistsmay be satisfied with the status quo and un-convinced by the advantages of a properlyequal relationship with other social sciencedisciplines. This collection of papers aims tocontribute to a change of heart.

NOTES

1. Gender analysis as used here is not the same asfeminism, which is, at root, a conviction that women aregenerally disadvantaged in relation to men and thatpolitical mobilization must change this (Moore, 1988).While gender analysis di!ers from feminist research—innot assuming the disadvantage of women and detach-ment from political mobilization—it does carry with it aconcern for social justice, and is clearly linked tofeminism through the identities of researchers andthrough important methodological shared ground whichis discussed further. In light of this distinction, it is alittle confusing that the first body of work I discuss istermed feminist economics, but I stick to this term sinceit is in general usage.

2. Sen’s model has not escaped critique—see Agarwal(1997) and Kabeer (1994).

3. I am interested in an apparent di!erence betweenmultilaterals and bilaterals in this regard though—whyis it that the former have remained dominated to a muchgreater extent by economics than the latter?

4. At the Global Development Network Annual Meet-ing, 2001.

5. Recently, economic philosophers have also begun towork on the value of social relations as goods in

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themselves rather than as means to ends (Sugden, 2000,etc.).

6. I.e., the extent to which one accords analyticalprivilege to certain voices because they are believed tohave a di!erent, and superior, knowledges.

7. This has two implications, one for the way in whichresearch is conducted, and two, for who conductsresearch; the latter is taken up in the last part of thispaper.

8. There are only a few sentences remarking on theinfluence of NGOs in India and Bangladesh (Narayan,2000, p. 7), on the unrepresentativeness of the data, theunderrepresentation of the very poor, and the demandsof the fieldwork. The description of the process leaves astrong impression of the intense influence of researchteams on the data production process, although it is saidthat ‘‘researchers we were careful to distinguish betweentheir own opinions and interpretations and what wasactually said’’ (2000, p. 16). Community data wereaggregated to district data and then to national reports,involving yet more actors and authors. Yet in the end‘‘the words of poor people themselves’’ are used tocommunicate what has been agreed to be the messagebecause their voices are ‘‘more direct, vivid, powerfuland authentic than ours’’ (2000, p. 18).

9. Both the British colonists, against sati, and theHindu theological elite in favor of it, denied women avoice or subjectivity. Unlike the subaltern studieshistorians, busy trying to recover the subaltern voice,Spivak declared the subaltern to be unable to express aseparate and countersubjectivity because of subordina-tion itself.

10. Jokes about economists often turn on their as-sumptions. For example, a chemist, a physicist and aneconomist were shipwrecked on an island, where a canof baked beans was fortunately washed up one day. Thechemist said ‘Lets soak it in sea water until it corrodes’,the physicist said ‘Lets heat it up until it bursts’, and theeconomist said ‘Lets assume a can opener. . .’.

11. See for example, The Professional Geographer, 47,(1995), collection of papers on ‘‘Should women count?’’.

12. She adopts a ‘‘constrained essentialism’’ in makingthis case. For example, when women primatologistscame into the study of primates they clearly took a moreempathetic and emotional approach to their subjects—Jane Goodall formed strong relationships with her apesand Diane Fossey also had very strong and protectiverelationships with them. This is not irrational—butcould be argued to o!er a kind of superrationality, of abetter science.

13. Of course, men can and should do gender researchof all types, but it is likely that they will do thisdi!erently.

14. While Nobel prizewinners in economics mayindeed tend to be interdisciplinary, it also seems to bethe case that interdisciplinarity may be especially prob-lematic in development economics. Ruttan recentlyobserved of the postwar generation of developmenteconomists, that ‘‘professional opinion did not dealkindly with the reputations of development economistswho made a serious e!ort to incorporate knowledgefrom the other social science disciplines into develop-ment theory or into the analysis of the developmentprocess’’ (Ruttan, 2001, p. 17).

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