The thing about women and development

Another International Women’s Day has come and gone. Half of the world’s population last Saturday was honored and celebrated. But I often wonder if we really understand why, especially when it comes to global development.

You see, women are already bringing about development. I frankly didn’t realize that we weren’t, or that our empowerment is just a “tool” of development.

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Original artwork by Sylvia Drown. www.sylviadrown.com

My empowerment is not a hammer or a hoe or a hedge clippers. My existing power, and my vulnerability, is what makes development possible.

I think the unique strength of many (but not all) women (and many men)[i] is that we are adept at creating space. This is about guarding the conditions needed for development to occur, not the revenue flow or the latest “innovation” or the value-add.

Yesterday, I spent a long time talking with a friend who is working for a humanitarian organization in a war zone. He’s trying desperately to understand why the rug of his personal life has been pulled out from under him. I’ve known him a very long time. I can sense his pain, his distress over not knowing what to do next. My know-it-all self wants to shake him and say, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you…x, x, x?”

But I don’t.

Even though I love this person so much it hurts, even though I have my own strong ideas about what’s next on his path, this is not what I offer.

Only he can take the next steps. Only he can know what’s best for him.

It’s the same with development. I find that women often recognize more profoundly than men that development cannot be solely defined by economic means[ii] and that there are many steps, thoughtful conversations, and sideways approaches required.

Yes, I could offer my friend my “solutions” to his problem, but I don’t see that as my role. I offer something else—my full presence, my patience, and willingness to listen. This creates the space for four things to occur:

1)   I create the space for safety and acceptance.

Whatever is going on in my friend’s mind, whatever the circumstances, wherever he’s at – good or bad – it’s ok. He can bring his whole self to the space between us, where nothing is at risk of rejection. He can reveal where he feels “stuck.” It’s important, because without this, change isn’t possible.

2)   I create the space for story.

tumblr_mlbfgbguIw1r774bco1_500We are always forming narratives, but it is only in sharing them that they gain and lose their power over us. Last week I was honored to interview Leymah Gbowee for International Women’s Day. She shared with me that the first time she told the story of what happened to her and her family during the Liberian civil war, it took three hours. Only after this story was shared, she said, could she ask, “What next?”

3)   I create the space for possibility and expansion.

Sometimes, especially when I’m struggling, I have a hard time seeing the options in front of me. Then someone asks me a question, a really good question. A path that seemingly wasn’t there before suddenly opens up. I am invited to grapple, navigate, wrestle deeply. I become “unstuck.” Doubt fades.

4)   I create the space for collaboration.

So my friend and I have been dreaming about what we’ll do together post-current drama. I don’t know just yet that either my friend or I will commit to something big and exciting and out of our comfort zones, but the idea of putting our skills and passions together and having fun, sounds pretty great to us both. Our context obviously differs from people in other places or throughout history, but the work now is pretty much the same. It’s about planning, organizing, strategizing, responding – together.

I think the spaces that women create do the same for development.

Why do women tend to these spaces? Because we know struggle. Because we take inspiration from our own circumstances. Because we know intimately the timelessness and the universality of holding space for our truths to appear.

We as women are not inherently more moral, or benevolent. But perhaps we are less trapped by our egos because we’ve always had to strategize to have a place at the table. Perhaps we are not trapped by the mistakes of history. Perhaps we know that courage comes from turning towards one another and the isolation that comes from hanging desperately to our assumptions. Perhaps we’ve seen many, many times what happens that when a person starts to know the struggle is not just their own. The horizon reappears.

The thing about women and development is that we create the space for it to occur. We don’t let crooked and treacherous paths derail us or consume us. We affirm the dream.

And that is why our role in development should be celebrated.

____________________


[i] Caveated enough for you?

[ii] This might mean that with his new book, Bill Easterly has fully embraced the feminine, of which he should be very proud!

2 Comments

  1. the theme expounded in this write up affirms my perspective about the important role women play in development and every DAY in regular life situations…

    what struck me is how women move along life’s journey – time, history, structures and protocols…that in spite of these, a woman’s spirit have lived and moved beyond boundaries, outdone paradigms, outsmart “cultural correctness” and offer a dis-arming smile even while in pain… a woman’s sense and sensibility that always makes her stand amidst adversaries un-shaken…

    a “strength” probably innate of a woman – while in her fragile body resides abasement to wait and resilience to carry both physical “dis-ease” and the emotional “tear and wear” of everyday interactions.

    indeed, just how a woman is about a lot of beautiful contradictions and yet creative energies to make space and allow anything to be formed from there…

    so i would say the same of a work in development…where problems and issues over and over again needed not perfect structures, systems and strategies to solve them…. those issues and problems have names and only a woman has the ability to wait to know, listen and enter into the heart of issues for it to be transformed and re-named…

    perhaps, it is the innate nature in women that gives them the creative energy and ability bring to life new human beings that allows them the space to re-create ” a thing into something…
    and treat development not as a project but a “birthing” process…

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