The plight of Women

Although Martin Storey's expertise is in oil, his heart in the primitive communities of the world. He says:

"Having worked in development (for UNIDO, the UN Organization for Industrial Development) and in relief (for Médicins Sans Frontières), and having traveled to many traditional places, especially in the tropics, I have long wondered whether development is a good thing or on the contrary a bad thing. I don't mean development as an ideal, but development as it ends up being, in relation to how things were before. I currently live in Australia where no sensible person (outside the government) could argue that development has brought much good to the aborigines. I've spent a bit of time in the highlands of Irian Jaya, where direct relatives of the Australian aborigines live literally in the stone age. What would development bring them and any other traditional society - to name just a few of some I've met and known: the Penans of Borneo, the Indians of the Orinoco/Amazon region, the Tuaregs, the pigmies of Central Africa, the Sherpas of Nepal ... and traditional village people from the world over - which is unarguably good?

My answer to this, after much thought which would take too much space to reproduce here, is: the main and perhaps only "good thing" about developed countries vs. undeveloped areas is the improvement of the condition of the woman. If there are such things as a "development index" and an index for the condition of the woman vs. man, I bet they correlate perfectly. "The condition of the woman", a French expression, is a wide-ranging term of course; it refers to education and job opportunities, salaries, access to family planning information, health services, basic human rights, opportunities to engage in certain activities (e.g. sports), to own certain assets (e.g. land), to live (widows in India), to have sexual pleasure (female circumcision), to chose a partner, a profession, etc, etc. The sad fate of Ms. Lawal, and the acquittal of her daughter's biological father for "lack of proof", are but an example of scenes that happen many times daily in many different places. Development alleviates these inequalities.

The women to whom Jacqui White mentions, if they work as porters, may come from casts or ethnic groups which specialize in that activity. If Jacqui had asked them, they would probably have answered that they were happy to carry, for they had work, which is better than not to have any (now that the money economy has superseded the barter trade in their country). Probably the best known are the Sherpas of the Himalayas, but there are people carrying heavy stuff in many parts of the world, and indeed, more often than not, they're women. Infants, mature, elderly...women. John Cleese had a joke in his "Fawlty Towers" series where even though he was young and strong, it was his elderly mother who was in charge of carrying the hotel guests' heavy suitcases up the stairs. In the "developing world", that is not funny, it's just life, the rule rather than the exception. Ten days ago I drove across the Ivory Coast and along all the roads, dirt roads, and tracks, people walk. Little girls, young women, elderly ones, all carry gracefully on their head huge loads: of wood, of laundry, of water, sometimes an animal. Meanwhile the men walk along with a machete or a gun swung on their shoulder, scrutinizing the edge of the fore st and pretending to hunt. Elsewhere men drink, gamble, do drugs of various noxiousness, while the women do the work. Another example: in many Asian countries including Bienvenido Macario's Philippines, the job of sweeping the streets in the blistering heat, constructions jobs in dubious safety conditions, etc...are again the lot of minuscule but tough women.

The generic recipe for development is: infrastructure, health, and education. Everything else follows, starting with a visible improvement in the condition, well-being, and happiness level of women. This notwithstanding, the worth of development does not necessarily imply the worth of development aid. Indeed, one often reads the correct statement that millions and billions of development aid money have done very little to develop any country in the long term, and possibly a lot to harm many countries and destroy many communities. There are many books on the subject, many of these written by aid or development career people. Just an example, but one well worth reading for people with an interest in agro-development or anyone paying taxes in North America is George Monbiot's No Man's Land, about aid in East Africa.

My comment: Despite the factors Martin mentions, figures show that aid has improved the lit of people in underdeveloped countries, As for the attitude toward women, there is the old joke about the American tourist in Mexico, angered when he saw a peasant riding his burro while his wife walked behind. He demanded : "Why are you, riding, while your wife has to walk?". The peasant replied: "It's very simple". "She doesn't have a burro". It is a question of attitude.

Martin did not mention Communist countries, where weeping the street was a woman's job. In a Prague hotel, an old woman carried by heavy bag upstairs. I wanted to take it, but she refused. If there were no bags to carry, she would have no job. Have things changed since the demise of communism?

Ronald Hilton - 9/10/02