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Short Summary |
This paper explores some thorny issues in feminist
research. One set of issues revolves around the tension between the
need to analyse structural conditions of gender subordination while
avoiding stereotypical representations of women as passive victims.
Using examples from ongoing research on men and women's work in the
cashew sector in Mozambique, the paper explores women's subordinate
position within power structures at different levels - household,
community and nation - but at the same time analyses the strategies
which women employ as they seek to further their interests, thereby
illustrating women's agency and 'room for manoeuvre'. Another set
of overlapping issues concerns the tendency of policy to generalise
and oversimplify the complexity and diversity of these social and
political realities. The paper analyses earlier research findings
and policy discourses in the cashew sector, both of which have been
dominated by external agencies such as the World Bank. It concludes
that the use of in-depth qualitative research, combined with gender-disaggregated
livelihoods analysis has an important role in giving women voice,
and can be usefully employed to inform policy and intervention in
the cashew sector. However, the challenges are to escape neo-liberal
prescriptions and to prevent complexity and diversity from being ignored
in the implementation process. (Paper prepared for the International
Workshop Feminist Fables and Gender Myths: Repositioning Gender in
Development Policy and Practice, Institute of Development Studies,
Sussex, 2-4 July 2003)
Author's note: This is a draft, please do not cite without author's
permission.
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