Abstract
Gender mainstreaming has become a ubiquitous goal within international development policy and projects. For example, the Sustainable Development Goals Fund has mainstreamed gender into all implementation and monitoring plans (UNDP, 2020). But has the international policy language of gender mainstreaming been adopted by the Indian state? In Gender, Development, and the State in India, Carole Spary masterfully pursues this central question through a multi-scalar analysis of (a) gendered discourses in development policy; (b) institutional structures these discourses emanate from, occupy and influence; (c) the subjectivities these discourses produce; and (d) agency of diverse actors responding to gendered development policy. Methodologically, Spary conducts a discourse analysis that is empirically supported by semi-structured interviews from ongoing fieldwork in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Spary adroitly navigates between India’s national Five-Year Plans (FYPs) (Sixth through Twelfth, ranging from 1980 to 2017), national policies promoting gender equality, annual plans and reports from specific government ministries (e.g., Ministry of Women and Child Development) and project reports and policies of subnational parastatal agencies (e.g., Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty).
Gender mainstreaming efforts within development policy domains have been most successful at the national scale. India’s Sixth FYP (1980–1985) was the first to distinguish women’s development as a specific development sector. However, economic liberalization in 1991 initiated a seismic shift in official gendered development discourse. Acknowledging the shortcomings of economic growth to address human development, the Eighth FYP framed women as ‘vulnerable’ dependents in need of a protectionist approach to development. The Ninth and Tenth FYPs emphasize individual entrepreneurship and self-employment, constituting a new paradigm of gendered development policy. Reimagining women’s capabilities to become self-reliant producers responsibilized women for their own lack of development and took the onus for transformative change off of the state, instead integrating gender into existing structures and programmes. Notably, the FYPs have historically suffered from a homogenization of gender identities and are absent intersectional considerations of class, caste, religion, etc. These policy documents echo hegemonic Western development discourses, fraught with representations of the ‘Third World Woman’ (Mohanty, 1988).
At the subnational scale, policy successes are specious at best. To illustrate this point, Spary deftly compares the articulation of gender-responsive development policy and projects in the Southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh by examining self-help groups (SHGs) aimed at increasing access to financial credit among marginalized populations. Regional political parties within both states became the main conduits for the articulation of gender discourses and gender-responsive development interventions (e.g., Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam [AIADMK], led by populist Jayalalithaa).
Among the most conceptually novel contributions of this monograph, Spary distinguishes three prominent discursive approaches guiding subnational policy-making processes around gender mainstreaming: (a) protective-paternalist; (b) competitive-capabilities; and (c) structural-transformative. In both states, competitive-capability discourses were most common. Tamil Nadu’s Mahalir Thittam (an SHG programme) is an example of this, which sought to facilitate the financial self-reliance of women, availing them institutional credit and savings schemes. In Andhra Pradesh, parastatal institutions could articulate a structural-transformative discourse of gendered development. For example, the Society for the Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) administered an SHG called Velugu, which functioned as a decentralized, community-based initiative focused on altering power relations as the most effective means of eliminating poverty. However, Spary asserts that the overall policy discourse and development programmes at the subnational scale are not consistent with a gender mainstreaming approach, concluding that the national and subnational case studies demonstrate ‘the limited ability of gender mainstreaming to capture intersectional inequalities, and diversity generally’ (p. 240). These case studies reflect a more integrationist approach to development with affirmative action policies, providing little structural transformation or paths to empowerment. Spary further claims that the ‘possibilities for a transformative gender mainstreaming at state level are highly questionable’ (p. 207).
As a project of recognition, interpellating women as both objects and agents of development has produced positive changes in democratic representation, with large numbers of SHG women contesting panchayat elections throughout Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. However, Spary’s cases prove Fraser’s (2000) admonition; the development politics of recognition have displaced and depoliticized radical struggles for redistribution.
A missed opportunity of this text is a substantial analysis of modern social movements and their influence on gender-responsive development policy beyond SHGs. Beginning in December 2019, the courageous, non-violent women of Shaheen Bagh occupying the streets of New Delhi to contest the passage of the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act were demonstrating agency across intersectional subject positions, most of which have been left behind by development processes. A principle objective of Spary’s book is to demonstrate ‘how women’s experience of fragmented citizenship also differs from state to state, how political geography or territory also informs women’s fragmented citizenship in India’ (p. 241, original emphasis). But confining analyses of agency to those enabled by the state’s gendered development discourses and interventions deemed neoliberal and integrationist fails to acknowledge the ‘political society’ negotiating and contesting subjectivities and possibilities within the development sphere (Chatterjee, 2004).
Spary’s monograph is essential reading for scholars whose interests lie at the intersection of gender, development, policy and discourse. Further, I view this book as indispensable reading for practitioners and policymakers in the sphere of gendered development policy in South Asia. In closing, Spary posits that bureaucrats would be wise to study gender and development policy closely in order to ensure a ‘gender-equitable future amid India’s rapidly changing and vast social, economic, cultural, and political landscape’ (p. 244). No doubt this book will serve as a useful resource for those who resist India’s current patriarchal, Hindu nationalist regime and wish to ‘do development’ better (Sultana, 2014), designing and implementing policies and projects that are sensitive to intersectional social differences.