Activist,Entrepreneur,or Caretaker? Negotiating Varieties of Women in Development

Abstract

Most studies examining gender and development programs in international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) consider how these organizations construct global policy agendas, or how such policies are implemented in local contexts. However, INGOs originate in specific countries. Drawing on the varieties of capitalism literature, this article analyzes the impact of “national gender imaginaries” on gender and development programs implemented by INGOs in Cambodia. Based on 43 in-depth interviews, I argue that INGOs from Scandinavia, the United States, and South Korea, informed by different gender imaginaries, pursue different ways of promoting women in development. Local Cambodian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), aware of this variation in national models among INGOs, employ distinct strategies to appeal to donors while adapting the models to the Cambodian context.

Keywords

gender and development international development NGOs Southeast Asia

At least since the 1995 Beijing United Nations World Conference on Women, women’s empowerment has been a prominent global policy issue. In 2016, the U.S. State Department alone contributed $1.34 billion in aid to promote gender-specific development initiatives. Such programs often are implemented through international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Much of the scholarly work on INGOs emphasizes how these organizations construct global policy agendas and/or how these policies are implemented in local contexts (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Neumann 2013). However, INGOs are not purely international entities, and global development programs do not move directly from the transnational arena to the site of implementation. Rather, INGOs originate and maintain offices in their home countries. Therefore, even as they pursue what might appear to be global policy priorities, INGOs have different ideas about what it means to “advance women,” due in large part to nationally distinct political and cultural histories. I call these ideas “national gender imaginaries” and ask two questions to explore their impact on how INGOs operate: Are there systematic differences in the kinds of gender programs that INGOs from different nations design and fund? If so, how does this variation impact local development actors?

To examine these questions, I draw on 43 in-depth interviews in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Specifically, I focus on the relationship between INGOs and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or what development scholars have described as “aid chains” (Watkins, Swidler, and Hannan 2012). Cambodia is a particularly interesting site for research on such chains because it is home to more than 2000 NGOs employing more than 25,000 practitioners (ADB 2011). Yet, in the current political context, the government represses INGOs that engage in programs addressing human rights and collective mobilization. This impacts the degree to which different INGOs are able to pursue their national gender imaginaries.

This research yields two significant findings. First, the different national gender imaginaries that inform the INGOs in my study manifest as three patterns of NGO women in development¹ programming: a Scandinavian model, promoting women’s rights and collective action; a U.S. model, supporting economic empowerment and health services; and a South Korean model, focusing on education programs for girls and support for mothers. Second, not only are many local NGOs aware of these differences among their INGO partners, they actively engage them. Local development practitioners apply distinct strategies to appeal to various INGO models of women and development; they also negotiate these imaginaries as they work to adapt them in the Cambodian context. I conceptualize these negotiations as either “matching strategies” or “adaptation strategies.” In demonstrating how different national imaginaries about what it means to “develop women” shape development programming on the ground, these findings point to the need for greater attention to the national context on studies of INGOs.

Interrupting the Global–Local Dichotomy

The majority of research on gender and NGOs tells a story about global similarity and local difference. Scholars focusing on the global level employ two dominant global theoretical frameworks, world polity and transnational activist networks (TANs), to explain how INGOs construct and diffuse global gender polices. World polity scholars contend that INGOs work in an international organizational field, alongside states and transnational corporations, in which global gender policies are specified and then disseminated to other parts of an emergent world society. This isomorphism results in a widely shared understanding of what constitutes “modern” or “good” gender policies and practices. For this reason, international development organizations enact similar globally legitimized ideas and organizational practices (Berkovitch 1999; Boli and Thomas 1999).

Research on TANs shows that INGOs work in transnational networks to share policy ideas across national contexts, connect with local women’s groups, create new policies, and pressure states and international institutions (Keck and Sikkink 1999; Htun and Weldon 2012; Hughes, Krook, and Paxton 2015). The focus in this work is on how supranational networks organize diverse constellations of actors in pursuit of shared goals. Despite the differences between these theoretical frameworks, scholars studying INGOs from a world polity and TANs perspective tend to see a high degree of consensus and shared goals among INGOs.

In contrast, literature investigating the local context of INGO activity asks how global ideas or organizational strategies are implemented on the ground. INGOs often need to modify their projects to resonate in host country contexts. Furthermore, while local development actors are sometimes constrained by global agendas, they also employ a variety of strategies to gain funding from international donor organizations, redefine programs on the ground, and adapt or resist international development agendas (Liu 2006; Neumann 2013). This research illuminates how the context of countries receiving gender development aid shapes the implementation of global models, underscoring the role of local actors.

However, missing from this global–local story is a systematic investigation of the national level, since INGOs originate from and are based in particular countries. The fact that INGOs construct projects in a global field to implement locally does not necessarily entail the erosion of national differences. I extend two different strands of research that employ the varieties of capitalism perspective to investigate these national differences.

Institutional Variation and Organizational Behavior

The varieties of capitalism perspective contends that even while there are some global pressures toward convergence, nations also display persistent institutional differences in their political economies (Hall and Soskice 2001). These institutional differences, in turn, shape organizational behavior. For example, in their operations abroad multinational corporations often reflect the particular institutional characteristics of their home countries, as when a country’s relationship with labor unions at home dictates the influence unions have in host country contexts (Helfen, Schüßler, and Stevis 2016). However, to be effective, multinationals also need to adapt their operations abroad. This process can result in “institutional dualism,” with national- and local-level forces interacting to create new organizational strategies (Morgan and Kristensen 2006).

Scholars have extended this institutional perspective from the study of multinationals to the study of international civil society more broadly. This work shows the ways in which different national institutions and political cultures encourage distinct organizational behavior and identities among activist groups and INGOs (Bair and Palpacuer 2012; Bloodgood, Tremblay-Boire, and Prakash 2014; Hammack and Heydemann 2009). Sarah Stroup’s (2012) comparative study of British, U.S., and French INGOs demonstrates what she calls “varieties of activism.” Studying these organizations in their home country context, she finds they are deeply influenced by national political context, regulatory framework, availability of resources, and social networks. However, while Stroup documents variation among INGOs in the country of origin, she does not examine whether or how these institutional differences travel abroad. More broadly, this stream of research has not focused on the development field, or the case of gender and development more specifically.

National Varieties of Women in Development

Even a cursory glance at the development field shows an enormous variety of development initiatives that aim to improve the situation of women (Cornwall, Harrison, and Whitehead 2006). Why is there such an array of programs? I contend that INGOs have different priorities for the women in development work they do, and that these reflect the institutional and cultural context of the country of origin. Home country contexts provide INGOs with distinct ideas about what it means to improve the lives of women. To develop this argument, I draw on gendered welfare state research that shows how gender is deeply embedded in the institutional practices of nations (Mandel and Shalev 2009; Orloff 2006). The construction of social policies at the domestic level is impacted by different national imaginaries about how to enable and assess women’s advancement. Social policies also construct and structure gender identities and relations (Wohl 2014). For example, research shows that different parental leave and child care policies impact gender relations in the home (e.g., Orloff 2006). Yet, research has not investigated how these differences regarding gendered practices and institutions at home affect the work that INGOs do to address gender inequalities internationally. My research examines whether these national gender imaginaries shape the work of INGOs in the gender and development field.

This study builds on the gendered welfare state and varieties of capitalism literatures to explore how national gender imaginaries impact the development programs INGOs pursue in host countries. Moreover, I extend the literature on local NGOs by investigating how they interpret and negotiate these INGO differences as they struggle to navigate their own nation’s political and cultural context.

Foreign NGOs in Cambodia

Cambodia has one of the highest concentrations of NGOs in the world (Frewer 2013). After a long civil war ended in 1991, the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC) supported the creation of a liberal democratic state in Cambodia (Un 2011). During this transition, donors and development organizations from all over the world rushed in to aid Cambodia, triggering a massive expansion in the number of NGOs. Cambodia presents a case where multiple national donor priorities are at play. With multiple funding opportunities, most local NGOs in the Cambodian field receive funding from a variety of international donor organizations. Research documents the consequences for local NGOs of donor dependence and the strategies they employ in response to donor demands (Elbers and Arts 2011). Most local NGOs in my sample also had a steady stream of short-term foreign volunteers who helped to write grants and translate English-language proposals, often playing a part in interpreting different imaginaries.

However, Cambodia’s development field cannot be understood apart from Cambodia’s political context. During the UNTAC period, the United Nations (UN) assisted in the formation of a democracy with the help of local political elites. After the UN departed, those elites consolidated political power and now make up the Cambodian People Party (CPP) (Barma 2006). To minimize challenges to its continued rule, the CPP restricts development programs promoting voter accountability, human rights, and collective action.

The impact of repressive political environments like the one in Cambodia on development organizations is debated. On one hand, restrictive polities limit local organizations’ access to state resources, fostering dependence on international donors (Ron, Pandya, and Crow 2016). Additionally, repressive political situations constrain the number of projects that are acceptable, often privileging less radical groups and curbing activities that encourage mobilization. On the other hand, despite restrictions, research shows repressive governments can cause increased mobilization and foster NGO activity (Ray and Korteweg 1999). Thus, how a repressive polity influences development organizations must be determined empirically; it is essential to attend to the ways in which national donor priorities are negotiated by local actors in the Cambodian context.

Methods

While this study investigates national gender imaginaries, the impact of these cannot be understood apart from the INGO policies, and especially the grant-making practices through which they are transferred. Development organizations work through “aid chains” in which bilateral agencies, companies, and foundations provide funding to INGOs. INGOs maintain “home offices” in their nation of origin and “branch offices” in nations where the organization implements projects. Then, INGOs typically fund local NGO partners to implement their projects on the ground (Watkins, Swidler, and Hannan 2012). Because of these funding structures, I strategically sampled by conducting interviews with staff in INGO branch offices, their local NGO partners, and bilateral organizations in Cambodia.

I conducted 43 in-depth interviews in 38 international and local development organizations working in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.^2,3 I recruited participants through previous contacts from my work in a local Cambodian NGO, as well as by cold calling directors and receiving referrals from interviewees.⁴ I selected INGO branch offices that supported programs or implemented training intended to empower or raise the status of Khmer women, had no religious affiliation, and had gained funding from their nation of origin’s bilateral agency in the past two years. Interviews took place in each bilateral agency country office, two INGOs from Korea, six INGOs from Sweden and Norway, and nine INGOs from the United States.⁵ Interviews also took place in 19 local NGOs funded by these INGOs and bilateral agencies.⁶

Interviewees held the position of NGO director, project manager, or grant writer. Interview conversations were largely in English, but conversational Khmer language skills did help me to build rapport. Interviews were open-ended, typically lasted 50-75 minutes, and revolved around formal organizational goals, grant making, home-branch office and local partner interactions, project design, interactions with the Cambodian state, and what staff saw as the needs of Khmer women. Typically, interviews took place in participant’s offices. All interviews, except for one,⁷ were recorded and transcribed with pseudonyms to ensure the confidentiality of individual and organizations. To supplement my interview data, I read financial summaries, organization histories, and project reports of all other INGOs supported by each bilateral agency in Cambodia.

I coded the interviews using a broadly inductive approach focused on two key themes: the types of programs funded by different nations, and the ways in which NGO practitioners described and/or responded to donor priorities. The patterns that emerged from this coding exercise are theorized in the following section. In presenting my findings, I use five ideal typical organizations, which represent key features of multiple NGOs that enact similar strategies. I call these organizations Khmer Women Unite, Gender Development Association, Women Against Violence, Development and Peace for Women, and Khmer Women and Youth Committee.

Three Varieties of Women in Development

For each of the regions below, I first examine the imaginaries that donors have about what it means to “develop women” and describe their grant-making practices. (See Table 1.) I describe the three varieties of “women in development” that these INGOs pursue as follows: women’s rights and collective action; economic empowerment and health services; and education and support for mothers.

Table 1:

Varieties of Women in Development

	Scandinavia	United States	South Korea
National gender imaginary	Women’s rights, collective action, and political participation	Measurable services and livelihood projects (Democracy INGO exceptions)	Girl’s education, and livelihood training for mothers
Size of grants for gender projects	Relatively small	Large to medium	Relatively small
Nature of local partnerships	Based on informal matching	Based on formal call for proposals often to implement specific projects	Based on invitation for proposals for projects addressing a general topic

Second, I examine how local NGOs negotiate different varieties of women in development programs in their own political context. I typologize the response of local NGOs as representing either “matching strategies” or “adaptation strategies.” In matching projects, local NGOs work with INGOs with donor gender imaginaries that map more directly onto their organization’s goals. In contrast, adaptation projects require more modification by local NGOs to produce programs in line with the donor imaginary.

Scandinavia: Collective Action for Women’s Rights

National Gender Imaginary

The Scandinavian gender imaginary underscores gender equality and women’s political participation. There is broad agreement that, while imperfect, Scandinavian nations are among the most gender egalitarian in the world, with policies that provide expansive child care, parental leave, and job flexibility (Orloff 2006). Furthermore, the development of these policies is tied to a long history of citizen participation, including worker and feminist movements (Hobson 2003; Lister 2009). Scandinavia has the highest union density in the world, as well as the highest rate of female participation in unions (Moghadam 2005). Finally, these nations also have high rates of female political representation (Estevez-Abe 2014).

Studies document that Scandinavian development aid is historically based in social movement activism, and Scandinavian international organizations are more likely than those from other nations to push for more active global civil society mobilization (Onsander 2007). My interviews provide evidence for this participatory model in women in development programming, as the Scandinavian-funded INGOs in my study stress the importance of women’s political participation and grassroots mobilization.⁸ For example, Vanna, the director of a Swedish INGO, explained:

Our INGO is responsible to our headquarters. Headquarters makes the strategic plan and is responsible to the Swedish government. They have chosen the rights-based approach. We see that working from the grassroots level to demand accountability from the state is most effective way of making change.⁹

Scandinavian INGOs view local women mobilizing for their rights as essential to women’s development. For Scandinavian donors, improving rights requires that women gain access to positions in the government and mobilize collectively to demand that the state pursue policies regarding domestic violence and reproductive health policies. Theary, a Norwegian INGO program manager explained, “We would like to see once or twice a year campaigns or rallies for women. . . . And, we would like to see a stronger network of women that are working together.”

These priorities mean donors support programs such as trainings that build women’s leadership and capacity in national and subnational politics; networking with grassroots women’s groups; training that increases public awareness about women’s issues and mobilization tactics; and gender mainstreaming programs that promote gender equality in NGO hiring practices. While Scandinavian donor organizations do support a few livelihood projects, these were described as a way to meet women’s basic needs so they can participate in leadership and rights trainings. To illustrate this, Sophy, the program manager of a Norwegian INGO stated, “Before we can ask them to think of our main goals like addressing politics, or fighting for gender equality . . . we do sometimes need to work on feeding the family or a regular income.”

Grant-Making

Because of this participatory model, Scandinavian INGOs supporting women in development programs only fund local NGOs and do not typically put out a public call for proposals. (See Figure 1.) Instead, they locate partners through personal connections, often working with the same NGO partners for years. These donors emphasize the fit of the local organizations’ strategies and goals with their own, allowing local NGOs leeway to design projects. Multiple Scandinavian INGO directors and program mangers describe the appeal of their flexible funding in interviews. Vanna, the Swedish INGO director, emphasized this point: “We are committed to long-term partnership and we do not direct our partners on what to do … We are here first to support, which means you don’t earmark projects and you don’t put exact specification on what you would like to see.” This was in contrast to other INGOs, which have specific requirements regarding the programming they support.

Figure 1:

Scandinavian Aid Chain

Scandinavian nations are generous compared to other developed countries, with higher development aid per capita than most developed nations. Yet, because of the small size of these states, the size of their grants is modest compared to the United States. Limited grant size means Scandinavian INGOs only support local NGOs that have other steady sources of funding, financial management capabilities, and a certain level of professionalization. These larger NGOs, in turn, support grassroots movements and smaller NGOs in rural areas. In addition, Scandinavian INGOs are similar to other donors in that they required partner organizations to report on some type of measurable outcome. Local NGOs receive funding from Scandinavian donors for three kinds of projects: activist projects, participatory projects, and neutral projects.

Matching

Activist Projects

Local NGOs that partner with Scandinavian donors must often navigate donor demands for women’s activism that can be very difficult to meet in the Cambodian political context. As the foreign grant writer for Khmer Women Unite (KWU), Donna, explained, “What’s a good idea in Oslo will get people arrested in Phnom Penh.” When I ask why her organization engages with Scandinavian donors despite the risks in doing so, Donna informs me that the young women in the organization where she volunteers are “brave activists,” and working with Scandinavian donors allows them to engage in movement activities that match their organization’s goals. The women working in KWU and organizations like it are far more likely to criticize the current regime and express their desire for change than local actors who work with other donors.

Khmer Women Unite implements trainings that promote women’s political participation on the national and subnational level. When asked to describe their trainings, the director of KWU, Srey, stated, “I want them to really unpack what is power in society, what is the problem for women, what is patriarchy, and why is the movement needed.” Furthermore, KWU engages directly in activist activities, which involve creating rallies for groups of women, such as garment workers or women protesting for land rights. However, as local women’s activist NGOs become known for engaging in collective action, their employees are at risk, and it is more difficult for them to access funding from donors other than those with origins in Scandinavia and other European nations. Consequently, local NGOs pursuing activist projects often have access to more modest funding than their counterparts. They also are more often victims of political persecution including arrests and intimidation.

Participatory Projects

Other local organizations with support from Scandinavian donors, like the Gender Development Association (GDA), express a commitment to improving women’s rights and political engagement. However, this takes the form of programs like women’s leadership trainings or networking projects for groups of women; they do not directly support or encourage political rallies. When asked to describe their trainings, GDA’s program manager, Chanthavy, stated, “We just coordinate and teach on women’s issues and how she can raise her status. . . . We want to make sure to empower the voice of the people at the grassroots and community level.”

While Chanthavy explained the need to propose projects to Scandinavian donors in terms of rights and advocacy, she noted that this language did not always resonate with their participants and could pose political risks:

Of course, we are using the rights-based approach, like the ideas that they [Scandinavian donors] say about bringing up women’s status but we are not using that word, rights, because I can say it to you but . . . it’s not the word that will always work for the Cambodian people and the situation.

In this way, the Gender Development Association finds a middle ground in which it promotes what it thinks is most important—women’s leadership and networking—but avoids “rights language” or activism promotion that might endanger its employees or engender a higher level of government scrutiny.

Adaptation

Neutral Projects

The Khmer Women and Youth Committee (KWYC) and Women Against Violence (WAV) also accept funding from Scandinavian donors, albeit to a lesser degree than Khmer Women Unite or the Gender Development Association. KWYC and WAV have extremely diverse funding portfolios, and a different approach to their engagement with Scandinavian donors. They apply for any project they think they can implement, meaning that an inordinate amount of time is spent applying for different grants. The program manager for KWYC, Sotheara, explained, “We need to find the way to link or to connect with their strategic plans for funding, and every donor is different.” This requires KWYC and WAV to design a range of projects. The staff work hard to become experts in what each different donor wants to support, so they can market their organizations’ programs accordingly. Foreign volunteers are instrumental in this process.

The Khmer Women and Youth Committee and Women Against Violence each have only one project funded by a Scandinavian INGO. In this case, support was sought for a project with diverse appeal—that is, one that fits with the priorities of Scandinavian donors as well as other INGOs. For example, one WAV program focuses on domestic violence by training village leaders and holding support groups for affected women. This project was proposed to the Scandinavian donor as one that would improve awareness of gender-based violence and support women standing against such violence, thereby advancing women’s rights. Yet, in contrast to the programming conducted by Khmer Women Unite and the Gender Development Association, Women Against Violence does not explicitly mobilize women or promote their access to the political system.

Many interviewees, including the director of Women Against Violence, explained that diverse funding sources provide their organizations with more financial security. When one grant runs out, they always have another one coming in, and ensuring this flow is simply a matter of adapting projects by using the right framing for the right donor. One local project manager explicated this process: He reported that his NGO often conducts the same women’s project for different donors but switches words like “community mobilization networks” to terms like “self-help groups,” according to donor priorities.

By avoiding programs that might be deemed activist, the Khmer Women and Youth Committee and Women Against Violence are able to access a wider variety of donor organizations. However, diverse donors also means contradictory demands. For example, Sotheara reported this can become particularly difficult when Scandinavian donors require gender mainstreaming across programs, while KWYC’s Korean donor is not interested in adapting the project it funds in order to meet this goal. However, no matter the local NGO’s strategy, any project receiving Scandinavian funding requires an emphasis, albeit more or less explicit, on women’s rights.

The United States: Individual Empowerment and Women’s Services

National Gender Imaginary

The U.S. gender imaginary emphasizes women’s individual empowerment and service provision. The United States also has a history of a strong women’s movement, but this movement has tended to center female labor force participation and individual equality. The United States has been a leader in passing sexual harassment policies and addressing occupational sex segregation (Zippel 2006). However, U.S.-based women’s organizations participate in politics as an interest group and lack the kind of political institutionalization found in Scandinavia (Orloff 2006). Furthermore, as compared with its Scandinavian counterparts, U.S. social policy can be described as a residual welfare state. Limited assistance is provided to the poorest families, paid maternity leave is not a legal entitlement, and child care is largely privatized, making access to care dependent on ability to pay (Estevez-Abe 2014). In short, the United States’ national gender imaginary supports the “universal breadwinner” model with a strong emphasis on women’s work (Fraser 1997). The privileging of market solutions and individual responsibility promotes a model of women’s empowerment through economic independence. This policy legacy is present in many of the women in development projects U.S.-funded INGOs support in Cambodia.

Previous research documents the emphasis that U.S.-based INGOs place on designing service-based programs with clear and measurable outcomes (Stroup 2012). In Cambodia, the U.S. vision for women in development stresses economic empowerment as well as two global issues promoted by the UN: women’s access to basic health services, and violence against women. The basic, individual rights language that U.S. grant makers use differs from the collective women’s rights language that Scandinavian donors promote. For instance, the United States promotes rights to livelihood and medical services, but it does not promote collective action. One U.S.-based INGO project manager, Heidi, described what U.S. funders are looking for:

We want to look at sexual reproductive health and access to safe services without financial barriers but we also want [to] work on women’s economic empowerment through agriculture. Yeah, working with individual women to empower them in their communities.

For INGOs based in the United States, a variety of women in development programs typically address economic empowerment and rights to livelihood; women’s health, including HIV services for entertainment workers and maternal health; human trafficking and migration; and gender-based violence prevention.

The United States also has a long history of promoting democracy abroad, which impacts its women in development programming. For example, there is a subsample of U.S. INGOs working to improve democracy and promote voting in Cambodia, and three of these organizations maintain programming for women. Yet, U.S. support for political engagement differs from the Scandinavian model described above. Scandinavian programs always contain a collective action component consistent with the Scandinavian focus on civil society grassroots advocacy, whether it be networking, consciousness-raising, or training women to be political leaders. This component is less prominent in U.S. programming, and framed differently (i.e., as “self-help groups” or “community education”).

The Gender Development Association is receiving support from a U.S. INGO to run a mentoring and leadership program for women seeking to enter national politics. As GDA’s program manager, Chanthavy, explained, “They are supporting us to focus on the upcoming national election and we are working to build women’s capacity. We empower them so that they are able to show that they are potential candidates.” However, the program manager in the U.S. INGO supporting GDA, Neary, critiqued the Cambodian government for verbally committing to women’s political participation but not making the necessary changes to include women in political parties. According to her, government officials often excuse this by saying that there are no qualified women, so the hope is that funding a program that trains women to be candidates in national elections will remedy this problem.

Grant-Making

Last year, the U.S. bilateral agency gave $67 million to Cambodia, and much of this aid is disbursed through different types of contracts and grants to INGOs and/or international foundations (USAID 2018). This means U.S. grants often are some of the largest grants that INGOs can receive. Additionally, after years of “capacity development” from INGOs, local NGOs also occasionally directly receive funds from the U.S. bilateral agency. Typically, U.S. donor organizations announce specific projects and invite local NGOs to submit proposals. As Figure 2 shows, the U.S. bilateral aid agency maintains an office in Cambodia. Staff of U.S.-based INGOs explained that the projects they pursue often derive from a strategic development plan created in their organization’s home office, or they are based on grant proposals from the American bilateral agency. INGOs designate certain projects in calls for proposals. For example, if reproductive health is a specified development area, INGO branch offices working in-country might identify particular villages they believe need training. Then, they create a call for proposals and select a local NGO to implement that service. To access U.S. funding, local NGOs developed two types of projects: measurable projects and collaborative projects with INGOs.

Figure 2:

United States Aid Chain

Matching

INGO Collaborative Projects

Of my five model organizations, Development and Peace for Women (DPW) has the largest number of U.S. donors. This organization, and others like it, partner with larger INGOs to navigate the American bilateral agency’s complicated grant-making process.¹⁰ U.S. INGOs often work in collaboration with multiple INGOs and three or more local partners to implement different program aspects. DPW was implementing five projects at the time of my interview, providing services and livelihood trainings for sex workers, and financial skills and literacy training for garment workers. Interestingly, in addition to funding from the U.S. bilateral agency and a number of U.S. INGOs, this organization has U.S.-based corporate donors. DPW’s grant director described the appeal of working with U.S. donors on women’s issues, as he can further his organization’s goal of providing important services without attracting the attention of Cambodian political authorities.

Adaptation

Measurable Projects

As described above, local NGOs that strategically adapt programs to different grants have the most diverse funding. To gain U.S. funding, local NGOs implement particular services for women. Women Against Violence’s director, Mealea, explained that her organization’s overarching goal is to prevent violence against women. The one WAV project on domestic violence that is funded by the U.S. includes psychosocial support, shelters, community trainings, and small business loans for survivors. Mealea explained that the desire to accommodate U.S. funding priorities into her organization’s work is recent and driven in large part by the need to replace funding sources from other donors that were soon to expire. She reported being careful with the language of rights when writing proposals for her U.S. INGO donor. Psychological services were presented as a basic right and service that will support women:

So there is a barrier for us to announce ourselves, that we are a human rights organization; we just say that we provide this kind of support, this support, it’s based in basic rights, the way that they [U.S. INGO] tell us. We also do not make it public at all that we are human right organization . . . because then we will be on the list of the government.

In this statement, the contrast between the United States and Scandinavian conception of rights is clear. Mealea also reported that service-based projects are the easiest to evaluate since she can provide U.S. donors with a measurable output in the form of the precise number of women served.

In contrast with interviewees who have other funding sources, participants from local organizations with U.S. funding, including Women Against Violence and Development and Peace for Women, are less likely to mention the political situation in Cambodia or the state’s position. Local interviewees are aware that projects funded by U.S. donors require a rationale for women’s advancement that emphasizes individual rights, services and empowerment through livelihoods.

South Korea: Education and Carework

National Gender Imaginary

South Korea is an “emerging donor” in international development and is a much newer grantor than other countries in this study (Sato et al. 2011). Its bilateral donor agency is located in a prominent and newly built skyscraper in Phnom Penh, signifying its rising place in Cambodia’s political and economic scene. Social development through INGOs and NGOs takes a back seat to Korea’s main focus on infrastructure, government funding, and economic support. The Korean bilateral agency takes project proposals from, and provides grants directly to, the Cambodian government, which U.S. and Scandinavian donors do not. Nevertheless, Korean foundations do provide funding to INGOs, and at the time of my research, the Korean bilateral had recently started a local NGO funding stream in Cambodia.¹¹

Scholars describe South Korea as a “familialistic male breadwinner welfare regime” with strong female caretaking expectations and a sex-segregated labor market (Peng 2012). It is estimated that only 21 percent of working women in South Korea maintain well-paid positions while the rest are relegated to informal and temporary employment (Bonneuil and Kim 2017). Women are often expected to leave the labor force after they marry or have children (Peng 2012). The legacy of a male breadwinner model impacts Korea’s women and development programming, with some programs showing strong expectations that women should conduct care labor. However, South Korea has introduced changes in social policy in response to economic changes and low fertility rates (An 2013; Peng 2012). One such area of change has been in education. Education equality and early child education centers play an important role in South Korean social policy, and Korea has made great strides in gender parity in education (Briton and Lee 2001; Peng 2012). My interviewees explained that education also is prominent in South Korean development aid, because of the Korean government’s emphasis on it. In my data, gender-specific development projects funded by South Korea’s bilateral organization and Korean foundations support the education of girls and mothers.

The Korean bilateral agency in Phnom Penh does not support activist projects or employ the language of rights. June, the representative from the Korean bilateral agency in Cambodia, stated:

From my experience, I feel other donor agencies, or maybe just Western donor agencies, are more friendly or favorable to civil activists and civil rights, like awareness or advocacy programs and civil rights, something like that, but we do not know or do anything about that.

This explicitly antiactivist and non–rights based framework is in stark contrast to the programs many Western donors emphasize.

Grant-Making

In terms of NGO funding, the Korean bilateral agency largely supports INGOs from Korea to implement development programs in Cambodia. These INGOs are typically not dedicated to women’s issues but rather are focused on children, with women’s services as a sub-project. For example, one Korean INGO in my sample implemented its programs without local partners in the child care and education sector. It also held parenting classes for mothers and trained women to be professional preschool or child care center teachers. Four local NGOs had been selected by the Korean bilateral agency in consultation with the Cambodian government to receive support as part of a pilot program. (See Figure 3.) Several NGOs selected were asked to design a project focusing on education. For this reason, I describe interactions between local NGOs and Korean donors as by invitation only.

Figure 3:

South Korean Aid Chain

Adaptation

Two local organizations in my sample received funding from the Korean bilateral agency. According to the local NGO directors I interviewed, all projects with Korean funding must involve education and be politically neutral. In the selection process, Korean donors invited those local NGOs recommended by the Cambodian government to apply for support. Consequently, local NGOs invited by Korean donors not only held expertise in women’s education but also enjoyed a positive relationship with the state. This selection mechanism did not leave space for “matching” on the part of local NGOs that might have wanted to seek the support of Korean INGOs on their own.

One of the organizations receiving these funds, Khmer Women and Youth Committee (KWYC), was invited to apply for Korean funding for an education project. It proposed a school scholarship for girls: If a family in KWYC’s target areas did not have the money to put their female child in school, the Korean bilateral agency’s funding would cover the female child’s school expenses. Sotheara explained that her organization’s mission is to advance young women’s opportunities, and she pursued this goal by crafting a project that accorded with the Korean bilateral agency’s criteria.

Women Against Violence (WAV) also receives funding from the Korean bilateral agency to support child care centers and early childhood education. In addition, WAV received funding from a Korean foundation that supported a program for maternal financial literacy and vocational training. Mealea informed me that this foundation also had requested government support in selecting local NGOs to fund. Overall, the women and development projects local NGOs implement for Korean donors highlight the high value Korean donors place on increasing education for girls and mothers. In addition, these programs have a radically different relationship with the government compared to local NGOs implementing Scandinavian-supported projects. These local organizations encounter the least government resistance and are most likely to have Cambodian government involvement in their projects.

Negotiating National Gender Imaginaries

Whether an NGO employs matching and adaptation strategies has distinct consequences for its programming and donors. The matching strategy refers to efforts on the part of local NGOs to identify and cultivate donors that match their organization’s goals. For example, Khmer Women Unite’s (KWU’s) staff includes political activists who see their work as protesting the gender inequalities and human rights injustices enacted by the Cambodian state—an orientation that accords well with the priorities of Scandinavian donors.

There is a recursive dynamic to this process. In interviews, staff described their interactions with Scandinavian donors as building their leadership skills and raising their consciousness. Thus, a consequence of these continued interactions is that, over time, local activists pursuing the matching strategy become more deeply embedded in a particular donor’s national imaginary. For example, the director of Khmer Women Unite, Srey, explained:

When I talk to foreigners, when they come to visit, especially older women . . . they talk about their generation of women overcoming patriarchy and how they did it. . . . They say it was a long journey but now they’ve achieved so much for women. It was really hard but now they have more gender equality in Scandinavian countries and we can too. . . . So, I feel like I’m not alone. We start with small projects and rallies, then we grow bigger; we’re on our long journey of advocacy, just like she was.

With a very specific terminology, Srey used the language of patriarchy and advocacy to talk about Cambodian society, unlike employees in agencies that continually adapt their own programs to reflect multiple donor goals and vocabularies. Continuous interactions with certain donor organizations shape the way local NGO employees interpret and describe women’s situation in Cambodian society. This may have consequences for local activists’ understandings of their own gendered identity.

The second strategy I identify is adaptation, which captures the ways in which organizations become adept at modifying their proposed programs to donor preferences. These organizations keep projects as politically neutral as possible and change their proposal language as necessary to appeal to different national gender imaginaries. For example, Women Against Violence’s director, Mealea stated:

You know, the . . . all of the different grant-making organizations—like the U.N., the Korean government, the American government, the Swedish government—they have very different ideas of services. They have their own agenda already. They raise funds from their nation and then they give it to us. Then, if we get their funds, we have to listen to them more, right?

Many local directors in this category felt their mission was so broad, such as making sure women and their children always have enough to eat, that the donor imaginary did not matter. Furthermore, there were many local organizations using this strategy that simply did not have the privilege of matching; because of financial insecurity, they had to apply widely for funding and could not limit themselves to applying for grants only from donors whose sensibilities aligned with their own goals. I used ideal typical organizations to illustrate these dynamics, but it is important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive. For example, some local NGOs explained they eschew Scandinavian funding because they want political stability while also diversifying their funding from other sources for the sake of financial security. Finally, when local NGO actors propose projects that align with these different models of women in development, donor organizations’ gender imaginaries are legitimized.

Conclusion

My first finding in this study points to the importance of distinct national gender imaginaries in shaping the women in development programs designed by INGOs. While important scholarly work has been done to document how global ideas and practices around gender diffuse via civil society actors, these studies underplay the variation that exists because of the national contexts in which such actors originate. Gender and development scholars have long argued not only that the concept of gender itself translates differently in distinct contexts, but that gender and development programs are gendered in their conception (Cornwall, Harrison, and Whitehead 2006). Yet, studies of NGOs typically focus on how gender programs are interpreted in recipient country contexts, implicitly assuming gender programming from donor nations to be monolithic. Building on previous varieties of capitalism literature, this study identifies three varieties of women in development, constructed within different donor gender imaginaries: a women’s rights and collective action model funded by Scandinavian countries, an economic empowerment and health services model funded by the United States, and an education and maternal support model funded by South Korean organizations.

Dominant gender understandings are deeply embedded in the institutional practices and cultural landscapes of nations (Orloff 2006). My findings demonstrate that what is being transmitted along aid chains is not only material resources but also discursive ones—that is, distinct gender imaginaries, or understandings of what it means and how to become a developed woman, which manifest as distinct varieties of women in development. This study has important implications for how we theorize gender and development. It points out that donor gender imaginaries profoundly influence program selection, and it shows the need to attend to the national varieties of gender programming to fully capture how programs are implemented and renegotiated in local contexts.

Revealing another layer of complexity, I also find that local NGOs are aware of and responsive to these three national varieties of women in development. Staff of local NGOs use two main strategies to negotiate variation among INGO imaginaries, the Cambodian context, and their own organizations’ goals: matching and adaptation. While scholars have noted that local NGOs often pursue multiple sources of funding because of financial constraints, I contend that local NGO responses to national varieties are not in every case strategic or pragmatic (Elbers and Arts 2011). I found that a perhaps underappreciated factor explaining why local NGOs develop a relationship with specific INGOs is a shared commitment, be it emergent or historical, to a particular understanding of, or approach toward, women in development. This second finding highlights the role of local NGOs in responding to and negotiating national varieties, impacting how gender programing plays out in local contexts.

Two interesting questions come up in my explication of the role of national gender imaginaries in INGO programming. First, further research is necessary to specify the full impact of national gender imaginaries on local NGO staff and NGO beneficiaries. Some NGO scholars contend that INGOs play a prominent role in holding states accountable to their populations (Htun and Weldon 2012). In contrast, other scholars argue that INGOs are too dependent on neoliberal states for financial support to sufficiently drive social change (Neumann 2013). Further studies of how local NGOs respond to national gender imaginaries may help adjudicate this debate.

Second, to what extent are my results shaped by specific characteristics of the Cambodian context? What differences would we see in a country with fewer NGOs or a less repressive government? In particular, one limitation is that my analysis focuses on donor organizations and their local partners to examine the existence of national gender imaginaries. However, in complex development fields like Cambodia’s, the interactions between the international donor organizations and the Cambodian government could have important consequences on program outcomes. Further research is needed to specify this relationship.

Nonetheless, my research shows that the national contexts of development donors, and specifically the national gender imaginaries they bring to the field, shape the work of INGOs. This study documents how the specific gender commitments of donor nations are promoted via development programs. While home country preferences impact what development projects are funded, NGOs in the host country play a critical role in adapting those projects to their own national context during implementation, impacting women in development in distinct ways.

Footnotes

Author’s Note:

Thank you to Jennifer Bair for her guidance and insights on multiple drafts of this article. I am also indebted to Sarah Corse for her constant support and advice, as well as my cohort, Pilar Plater, Sarah Johnson, and Elissa Zeno for the many conversations and helpful suggestions throughout our graduate writing class. Finally, many thanks to my remarkable NGO interviewees, my three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful critiques, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for the funding that made this research possible.

Notes

ORCID iD

Mary-Collier Wilks

Mary-Collier Wilks is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Virginia. She is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork comparing NGOs from the United States and Japan that implement gender and development programs in Cambodia.

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