An Elusive Period for Development

Dear distinguished guests, here I would like to give you a short speech on a new thought for our development. It is stated that an inappropriate emphasis on the positive impacts of globalization, irrespective of culture, and little attention to gender inequalities are widely recognized as the key causes of the failure of development. A new idea is put forward to conceptualize the development in the article Dancing on the Edge. It is Women, Culture, and Development, WCD for short. WCD focuses on the economic still as a significant way to overcome the inequalities of women, while not make the economic privilege other aspects of people’s daily lives. It concentrates on women but not excludes men. This approach places women at the center in the development studies, with culture and political economy neck and neck.

In the review for common understanding of the category “woman”, it points out that the word of “woman” is saturated with inequalities and the common sense of imparities also needs more refinement. The argument “equal pay for equal work” has left other elements neglected, for example, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, etc. In the following, the intersectionality is engaged with to move through the discussions about “woman”. Providing several examples, particularly the actions of Cochabamba people and the Adivasis, it is clear that all the characteristics of neoliberal economic globalization, including “the easy movement of money and goods facilitated by a decrease of state controls, an increase in privatization, extensive use of the new information and communication technologies, flexibility in production, and a lack of accountability on the part of political and economic elites” (Bhavnani, 54), are un-natural and not inevitable. That demonstrates people of the Third World, particularly the women, can resist greater poverty. They have the ability to challenge and alter the course of globalization.

Next, the term “configurations” is prioritized to be chosen to make the discussions of the category “woman” more movement and fluidity. That wording, to a large extent, explains the metaphor of dancing when people explore through the tangle of power and inequalities. To configure, it is also what WCD means. Four organizations are chosen to epitomize the idea. SEWA, an Indian trade union for women, aims to empower the poor women to get full employment and self-reliance. The Xapuri Women’s Group from Brazil supports women’s rights, offers literacy and skills education and copes with domestic violence. Women in Black is a peace group in Israel/Palestine, which is committed to promoting peace against violence. The last one, Tostan, a nongovernment organization in Senegal, takes a lead in the widespread grassroots opposition to female genital mutilation. The above four women groups brings us meaningful social changes by integrating the WCD elements.

With many contradictions and realignments in our times, it is a period when an extreme urgency for a harmonized and sustainable way of development is demanding our world. Increasing depletion of natural resources and environmental pollution will make the current situation worse. What we rely on for existence and development becomes limited, riots are unavoidable when people tend to take everything by force. Then there would be no simply right or wrong, only the survival goes the most important. In other words, the short of material would result in the fall of the moral. It will severely jeopardize the world peace. Meanwhile, to eradicate the inequalities in gender, racism, culture, politics and economy for women is also pressing. The strength of women is more and more evident in development. Nowadays, women not only play a role of wife, mother, laborer in the family, but also a role of decision maker and performer in society. The whole life, including the men’s, can be directly or indirectly reflected in women’s life. In this sense, to ensure the women’s rights is equal to stabilizing the society.

However, the WCD theory can work to turn development into a tool for social justice? After all, there are too many inconsistencies in our lives. Let us leave it to time to examine. Thanks for listening.

Work Cited

Bhavnani, Kum-Kum. Bywater, Krista. Dancing on the Edge. New Zealand. 2007. Print