Anne Marie Goetz

Who takes the credit? Gender, power, and control over loan use in rural credit programs in Bangladesh

Abstract Special credit institutions in Bangladesh have dramatically increased the credit available to poor rural women since the mid-1980s. Though this is intended to contribute to womens empowerment, few evaluations of loan use investigate whether women actually control this credit. Most often, womens continued high demand for loans and their manifestly high propensity to repay is taken as a proxy indicator for control and empowerment. This paper challenges this assumption by exploring variations in the degree to which women borrowers control their loans directly; reporting on recent research which finds a significant proportion of womens loans to be controlled by male relatives. The paper finds that a preoccupation with “credit performance” — measured primarily in terms of high repayment rates — affects the incentives of fieldworkers dispensing and recovering credit, in ways which may outweigh concerns to ensure that women develop meaningful control over their investment activities.

Hybrid Forms Of Accountability: Citizen engagement in institutions of public-sector oversight in India

The public sector institutions which are responsible for monitoring government performance are not normally open to citizen participation. Yet there is widespread dissatisfaction with the capacities of states to exercise self-restraining functions effectively, and a growing interest amongst citizens to inform, monitor, or participate directly in the workings of these oversight institutions. This paper examines two citizen-initiated efforts in India to engage with public sector oversight functions. In one case, citizens attempted to engage with administrative accountability institutions (monitoring efficiency and quality in the food subsidy system), and in the second, citizens challenged official auditing systems in local government by producing parallel accounts of local spending which contradicted official versions. Both cases involved citizens breaking away from the ‘vertical’ channels of accountability traditionally open to civil society (lobbying, voting), and insinuating themselves to previously closed ‘horizontal’ accountability functions (the states internal procedures for administrative review or financial auditing). We argue that for such ‘hybrid’ forms of accountability to be effective, it is important that citizens be given legal standing within institutions of public sector oversight, a continuous presence within the oversight agencys work, structured access to official documentary information, including spending records, and the right to issue dissenting perspectives directly to legislative bodies.

Women in politics & gender equity in policy: South Africa & Uganda

There are more women in politics in Uganda and South Africa today than in many more developed democracies. This significant achievement owes to explicit affirmative action interventions in political institutions and processes to favour womens participation. This article analyses these measures for their effectiveness in bringing more women into government, and for their impact on the perceived legitimacy of women in power. It goes on to stress that there is a difference between a numerical increase in women representatives, and the representation of womens interests in government decision‐making. The one does not automatically lead to the other, not just because individual women politicians cannot all be assumed to be concerned with gender equity, but because of institutionalised resistance to gender equity within the apparatus of governance. This problem is exacerbated in the context of structural adjustment, which rules out social welfare measures to subsidise womens reproductive contributions to the...

Democratizing Democracy: Feminist Perspectives

Increasing numbers of women have gained entry into the arena of representative politics in recent times. Yet the extent to which shifts in the sex ratio within formal democratic spaces translates into political influence, and into gains in policies that redress gendered inequities and inequalities remains uncertain. At the same time, a plethora of new democratic spaces have been created – whether through the promotion of ‘civil society organizations’ or the institutionalization of participatory governance mechanisms – which hold the prospect of democratizing other political spaces beyond those of formal politics. This study examines factors that constrain and enable womens political effectiveness in these different democratic arenas. We suggest that ‘engendering democracy’ by adding women or multiplying democratic spaces is necessary but not sufficient to address historically and culturally embedded forms of disadvantage that have been the focus for feminist politics. We suggest that an important, but neglected, determinant of political effectiveness is womens political apprenticeship –their experiences in political parties, civil society associations and the informal arenas in which political skills are learned and constituencies built. Enhancing the democratizing potential of womens political participation calls, we argue, for democratizing democracy itself: building new pathways into politics, fostering political learning and creating new forms of articulation across and beyond existing democratic spaces.

Managing organisational change: The gendered' organisation of space and time

Although the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) maintains a strong commitment to gender equity in its anti-poverty programs, a conservative external environment often impedes efforts to make its organizational structure consistent with this commitment. For example, BRACs approach to organizing its field operations has been to abolish the distinction between home and office. BRACs female employees live with male colleagues in their rural offices, travel long distances on bicycles and motorcycles, and reject the sari--practices that are antithetical to the prevailing culture and place tremendous pressure on these field workers. The high work intensity, need to work beyond normal business hours, and lack of on-site child care subjects married female employees to hostility from their husbands and relatives. Single female employees are often regarded as unmarriagable because of their divergent life-styles. Although BRAC makes provisions for employees to take leave for family responsibilities, staff who access this benefit are viewed as more committed to family than their work. The sexual activities of female--but not male--employees are scrutinized. Despite these contradictions, BRACs innovative arrangements model a new form of gender relations in rural areas. BRAC is enabling its young women employees to postpone marriage and demonstrate a nontraditional role. The extent to which BRAC should take responsibility for compensating for the constraints imposed on women by patriarchy remains problematic. Working conditions could be improved, however, by allowing women to be near their families, domesticating the work environment, and respecting womens personal lives.

Addressing Sexual Violence in Internationally Mediated Peace Negotiations

Negotiated peace agreements rarely address the legacy of wartime sexual violence committed by state and non-state armed actors, even in cases where mass rape has been a prominent feature of the conflict. This article examines why this has been the case. It assesses the implications of UN Security Council resolution 1820 (June 2008), which calls for internationally mediated peace talks to address conflict-related sexual violence; advances reasons why doing so may contribute to more durable peace; and outlines where specific textual references to sexual violence in peace agreements could enhance the well-being of survivors and reduce the chances of brutal and widespread sexual violence persisting in the post-conflict period. The article focuses on five types (or elements) of peace agreement: (1) early-stage agreements covering humanitarian access and confidence-building measures; (2) ceasefires and ceasefire monitoring; (3) arrangements for demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) and longer-term security sector reform (SSR); (4) post-conflict justice institutions; and (5) provisions relating to reparations for victims of serious human rights abuses.

Manoeuvring Past Clientelism: Institutions and Incentives to Generate Constituencies in Support of Governance Reforms

Abstract This article develops a conceptual framework to indicate the type of resistance reform efforts may stimulate, and the factors shaping perceptions of risk involved in pursuing reform. It provides tools for identifying the room for manoeuvre by political elites, in terms of the extent that formal and informal institutions will accommodate change, and the chances of a positive response to reform from elites and civil society. It considers the incentives that drive politicians when weighing up reform options, the institutions that shape those incentives, and the impact that institutions, particularly informal ones, can have on the reform process. Rather than concentrate on the internal processes and mechanisms of institutions, however – as has perhaps too often been the case – the connections between state and society and the way these impact on reform are examined.Abstract This article develops a conceptual framework to indicate the type of resistance reform efforts may stimulate, and the factors shaping perceptions of risk involved in pursuing reform. It provides tools for identifying the room for manoeuvre by political elites, in terms of the extent that formal and informal institutions will accommodate change, and the chances of a positive response to reform from elites and civil society. It considers the incentives that drive politicians when weighing up reform options, the institutions that shape those incentives, and the impact that institutions, particularly informal ones, can have on the reform process. Rather than concentrate on the internal processes and mechanisms of institutions, however – as has perhaps too often been the case – the connections between state and society and the way these impact on reform are examined.

Agency and Accountability: Promoting Women's Participation in Peacebuilding

ABSTRACT This contribution reviews international policy and practices to engage women in formal peace talks, post-conflict elections, and economic recovery, and finds a combination of factors contributing to poor performance in promoting womens agency. The fact that the privileged category for post-conflict decisions are those groups capable of acting as “spoilers” has tended to exclude womens groups from the categories considered most important to involve in decision making. Exacerbating this exclusion is the reluctance of international decision makers to encourage affirmative action measures in these contexts. This carries through to the minimal-state approach to economic recovery efforts. Provisions are needed to foster and invite womens voice in decision making, and build more active-state approaches to womens livelihood recovery.

Too Much That Can't Be Said

In January 2014, Anne Marie Goetz took a position as professor of practice after working for eight years at the United Nations (UN). During her time at the UN, Anne Marie was the Chief Advisor for Peace and Security at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). She was at the forefront of advocating for women’s rights in the UN system’s work on conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. I first had the opportunity to interview Anne Marie in 2006 for my doctoral research and have over the years witnessed her efforts to create spaces for women’s voices to be heard at the UN Security Council and in peace talks and donor conferences for conflict-affected countries. Part of this work included prompting advances in how the Security Council addresses gender issues in its work. Anne Marie was a leader in the effort to re-think sexual violence in conflict not as a form of collateral damage but as a tactic of warfare that requires security-based, political and judicial – not just humanitarian – responses. She also helped to broaden the UN’s peacebuilding agenda in a sustained effort to make the promotion of gender equality a central component of post-conflict recovery and longterm conflict prevention. This can be seen in the language of Security Council resolution 1889 and in follow-up efforts at the UN to increase spending on women’s empowerment post-conflict. As feminist scholar and UN femocrat, Anne Marie has much to share about the work of the UN and its often contentious relationship with feminist scholarship. Over the course of two two-hour phone calls in July 2013, Anne Marie reflected on her work on the women, peace and security agenda, and her approach to the theory–practice divide, including during the years she spent as an academic in the UK prior to joining the UN.

Gender, security, and governance: the case of Sustainable Development Goal 16

ABSTRACT The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes among its 17 key objectives the goal of creating peaceful societies based on inclusive and effective governance. However, none of the targets included under this ‘peace and governance’ goal (Goal 16) call for specific measures to ensure womens equal participation in governance institutions and peace processes. This article identifies some of the reasons why gender-specific targets were not included, despite considerable advocacy by United Nations and civil society actors. These include: the relatively strong governance orientation of the gender-equality goal (Goal 5), the political tensions surrounding Goal 16 prior to its adoption, the compression necessitated by the merging of what had originally been two separate goals (on peace and governance, respectively), and the 2030 Agendas tendency to focus on ends rather than means. Despite the lack of gender-specific targets, we argue that if sex-disaggregated indicators are employed to measure progress in achieving the targets under Goal 16, gender-equality advocates will have a strong basis for demanding that efforts to improve governance address the systematic constraints and biases that confront womens ability to take part in public decision-making, receive justice, and contribute to the maintenance of peace.