The agency and activism of women of the Global South in the struggle for independence as well as in rebuilding their societies after colonialism cannot be overemphasized. As newly independent states rolled strategic plans towards development and “modernization”, women activists and women’s groups ensured that certain critical aspects of nation-building that had been construed as the sole preserve of women were not left out of the various development agendas. Even if they initially were, the relentless efforts of women and women’s organizations in voluntarily pushing such agendas ensured that such initiatives caught the needed attention and eventually received the necessary state, and in some cases international support. Through earnest activism and networking, some initiatives later evolved and expanded across national and continental borders, garnering support in the process. These were some of the prominent themes that came to light during the two-day workshop in Erfurt, which aimed, among others, to highlight perspectives of Asian and African women and their agency in the global history of development.
Opening the first panel, JANA TSCHURENEV (Berlin) elaborated how initial approaches employed in rebuilding the Indian welfare state post-independence have continually impacted the coordination and implementation of early childhood care and education among other social welfare initiatives. Drawing on the pioneering initiative of the Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust (KGNMT) to implement training courses for rural social and care work, women’s voluntary work was professionalized on different levels to cater to the educational, health, economic and social needs of rural dwellers in post-colonial India. These programs brought social care and education to the doorsteps of hitherto marginalized societies, whilst putting human faces to the modernizing state in the villages. The KGNMT, together with similar NGOs, thus laid the “foundation” for the inclusion of such initiatives in national planning.
Broadening the scope to a transnational level, ROSALIND PARR (Glasgow) underscored the place of family planning in the histories of development and nation-building by exploring the commonalities in the introduction and promotion of family planning in India, Pakistan and Ceylon in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the networks that were established within and beyond this region. Parr linked family planning to economic and social development, but also highlighted the conservative opposition and indifference women activists encountered in all three countries, even at the state level. The variations in the extent of subsequent involvement by the states and the approaches employed in their eventual implementation of the agenda raise the questions of power dynamics and agency as well as those of coercion and emancipation, whilst illuminating the divergence in the goals of the state and civil society for the same cause.
CLAUDIA PRINZ (Berlin) through a global lens, explored how the agency of women was employed in different capacities in health education in the WHO-initiated Control of Diarrheal Diseases (CDD) program in the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on rural underprivileged populations, the CDD employed the individual agency of women in diverse capacities – as model mothers, health educators and consumers of the health promotion campaigns – and thus as tools for achieving primary healthcare ideals. Amidst the numerous institutional strategies adopted to trigger changes and influence policy formulation, the voluntary agency of women was crucial in effecting the needed adjustments to existing health care beliefs and traditions, and in controlling childhood diarrhea and resultant mortalities.
In her keynote address, ADWOA OPONG (Orange) traced the history and professionalization of social work in colonial and post-colonial Ghana and outlined its roles in the country during that era. She demonstrated this with the post-war social problem of juvenile delinquency, brought about by rapid urbanization. Initially considered a male problem, attempts at curbing it, targeted and prioritized men. The 1950s saw the active involvement of elite women activists and women’s groups in solving this and other social problems, as government tapped into their human capital and agency by increasing the recruitment of women social workers. This speaks to the recognition by the state of the potency of the agency of women in solving societal problems. The voluntary activism of the Federation of Gold Coast Women (FGCW), as prominent actors in this endeavor, was highlighted and exemplified by their numerous initiatives, amidst enormous opposition. This notwithstanding, the activism of women at the time, in the spirit of voluntariness, continued to gain prominence and yielded significant benefits for social change.
KIRSTEN KAMPHUIS (Münster) opened the second panel by exploring how the few surviving pieces of Indonesian women’s press between the 1920s and mid-1960s contribute to the historiography on the role of women in development. Analyzing newspapers and magazines of Indonesian women’s groups, she discovered how most of these writings and interpretations of development were influenced by the remarkable contribution of Raden Ajeng Kartini in promoting the development of girls and women, and how the development of the people and the society were prioritized even over the attainment of independence. Kamphuis pointed to the shift in the discourse on development in women’s magazines to more political undertones post-independence, highlighting two different terminologies used to depict development in both eras. Interpretations of development thus assume different meanings not only linguistically, but also contextually. This lends credence to the evolution of the activism and agency of women over time.
IRIS SCHRÖDER (Erfurt) also contributed to the panel by highlighting the influential roles played by western social scientists in the development of Ghana post-independence. She described how the establishment of the School of Social Work and the Sociology Department at the University of Ghana in 1945 and 1950 respectively, attracted foreign social scientists to work as staff. She highlights the contributions of four of these social scientists – Adelaide Cromwell Hill, John Gibbs St. Clair Drake, Elisabeth Dewey Jones, and Silvia Ardyn Boone – to the establishment of various literacy campaigns, and to the preliminary surveys and resettlement efforts leading to the construction of the Volta Dam. She also underscored the various calls made by these experts through different media to citizens in building the new nation by making voluntary adjustments to their ways of living, thereby highlighting the outcomes of implicit appeals to voluntariness on development.
The penultimate panel featured MAHA ALI (Leiden), elaborating on the activism of Helena Benitez from the Philippines and Indira Gandhi from India as some of the strongest voices that represented the global south at the UN Conference for Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. Ali highlighted their strong resistance to policies and agenda that opposed the development of the Global South. With the audience and prominence they gained, they, together with other prominent activists of women’s organizations who were later delegated to the UN, pushed for the progress and development of women, an example being the calls for a ban on women working in mines in India. Ali argued that the dire situation of these women embodied the adverse effects of western industrialization, hence legitimizing the advocacy for its ban on international platforms. The positioning of these elite women activists in society aided in building mutually beneficial networks within and outside the region and was pivotal for their activism, especially on international platforms.
SU LIN LEWIS (Bristol) shed light on how the politics of development played out at two prominent Afro-Asia conferences in the 1950s and 1960s – the Colombo Conference (1958) and the Cairo Conference (1961). She juxtaposed the Colombo Conference, which unsuccessfully aimed to be apolitical, to the Cairo conference, which focused on political and economic independence, drawing out their commonalities and points of divergence. Commonalities such as the focus on women’s education, health and political participation, all crucial attributes of development could be traced in both conferences. She also highlighted the active roles played by Asian experts on the international front as important for legitimizing their work in the Global South. Both conferences served as platforms for women activists to network, form a united front against the West and exchange policy ideas on women’s development.
Closing the panel, AGNIESZKA SOBOCINSKA (London) took a closer gaze at the implementation angle of development planning, elucidating the discrepancies that usually occur between the intended and the actual achieved outcomes of such projects. Sobocinska situated project implementation as a salient part of development planning and underscored the site of implementation, with all its peculiarities, as very important elements in its realization, exemplifying her argument with the Australia-funded Freedom from Hunger Campaign (FFHC) fisheries project implemented in Indonesia. She analyzed the entire life cycle of the project from 1960 to its completion in 1971. It became evident that the implementation of the project failed, not only because of the bouts of rescoping which diverted resources from inland fishing that served the local community, but also, and more importantly, because of the failure to acknowledge the indispensable role played by Indonesian women in the fishing economy and to harness their expertise and knowledge of the local conditions. This questions the inclination of states to masculinize development, assigning women exclusively to sectors involving women and children.
The final panel opened with the presentation by MARIA FRAMKE (Erfurt), exploring the voluntary engagement of South Asian women activists in rural reconstruction programs and development schemes in India and Ceylon / Sri Lanka between the 1920s and 1970s. She focused on two women’s organizations – Bengal-based Saroj Nalini Dutt Memorial Association (SNDMA) and the Ceylonese Lanka Mahila Samiti (LMS). The pioneering focus of the SNDMA on rural women distinguished it from women’s organizations at the time, making it influential to the emergence of the LMS. These organizations focused primarily on health, education and sustainable livelihoods and recorded massive developmental strides in rural areas, partly with governmental and international support. The efforts to build international networks would birth the Associated Country Women of the World, which further championed the agenda of women’s development on a global scale. The resilience of these organizations through the Second World War and the transition to independence was also crucial in the achievement of these developmental milestones.
CLAIRE NICOLAS (Geneva) spoke about the activities of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Ghana during the pre- and post-independence era. She highlighted Annie Jiagge as a very influential activist to this cause, and the 1951 YWCA conference in Kumasi as pivotal for streamlining the focus of the organization. The initial focus on rural work and the welfare of girls was later redirected into planning for girls in the urban areas, who had increased exponentially due to rural-urban migration. Nicolas emphasized the intense negotiations leading up to the construction of a women’s hostel in Accra for this purpose, and the rigorous lobbying for state, philanthropic and international support, especially from international branches of the YWCA. Additionally, leaders of the YWCA brought along their experiences gleaned from visits to YWCA hostels in the west into planning and executing this endeavor, all of which were instrumental to the realization of the project. By building a hostel to house adolescent girls and women who had either migrated for education or for socio-economic purposes, the YWCA contributed to abating the further deterioration of the social fabric through prostitution and other vices.
Key themes that ran through the panels and their ensuing discussions included decolonization, professionalization of voluntary work and the role of the state, the different interpretations of development as well as the framing of women in different capacities with regards to development. The positioning of voluntary work as a distinct level of social and care work rather than an intermediary level between state and non-state engagements was emphasized. Issues of class and elitism were also highlighted as ubiquitous phenomena among the women activists and leaders of the organizations. Although elitism facilitated networking and aided the garnering of international support, it tended to alienate leaders from the realities of the development recipients, thereby affecting the suitability of some interventions. The resilience and preparedness to shift focus in response to the ever-evolving nature of the (post)colonial states are also worthy of mention. The workshop thus presented voluntariness as an invaluable resource for development, and women as important drivers of development whose agency was pivotal in the building of the post-colonial states.
Conference overview:
Maria Framke (Erfurt) / Rosalind Parr (Glasgow): Welcome and Introduction
Panel I: Women’s Development Work
Agnieszka Sobocinska (London): Comment
Jana Tschurenev (Berlin): Foundation Layers: Women Volunteers, the Welfare State, and Early Childhood Care and Education in India, 1945 to 1975
Rosalind Parr (Glasgow): Transnational Family Planning Networks and Development in India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 1950s–1960s
Claudia Prinz (Berlin): Women in Health Education: Mothers, Teachers, Consumers?
Keynote Lecture:
Adwoa Opong (Orange): All that is meant by Citizenship: Women, Social Work, and Development in Ghana, 1945–1970s.
Panel II: Development Knowledge
Carolyn Taratko (Potsdam): Comment
Kirsten Kamphuis (Münster): Discourses of Development and Women’s Roles in Indonesian Women’s Magazines, 1920s–1960s
Iris Schröder (Erfurt): Gender, Voluntariness and Social Scientists’ Expertise in Postcolonial Ghana
Panel III: Development, Rights and Politics
Rosalind Parr (Glasgow): Comment
Maha Ali (Leiden): Framing Development as a Right: Asian Women at the United Nations
Su Lin Lewis (Bristol): The Politics of Development at Afro-Asian Women’s Conferences
Agnieszka Sobocinska (London): Illuminating the Implementation Gap: Gender, Resistance and International Development between Global North and Global South
Panel IV: Rural and Urban Spaces
Jana Tschurenev (Berlin): Comment
Maria Framke (Erfurt): Progress for Women through Volunteering? Development, Transnational Cooperation and Gender in Rural South Asia
Claire Nicolas (Geneva): Urban Migration, Social Development, and the Ghana Young Women’s Christian Association (1951–1961)