Week 5 reflection

In the readings this week, the role of women from various communities and backgrounds was discussed both in terms of their roles as activists, organizers and changemakers, but also in terms of how the international development community tries to position women to reach their own policy goals while still attempting to frame them as the agents of change, rather than pawns in their international policy games.  In Tuesday's reading regarding the Vietnamese American community of Versailles post-Katrina, the second-generation women discussed are described as active agents using their own knowledge and skills to inform and unite their neighbors.  They had to go up against a system that was institutionally rigged against them to try to save their families from the impacts of a dangerous landfill.  In contrast, the women of the Global South that are discussed in On Infertile Ground are discussed in relation to the stereotypes and Western projections forced upon them in regards to static victimhood, homogenous vulnerability, and the need to be saved by colonialist Western intervention.  Even via methods designed to help them by allowing them to practice reproductive autonomy, this line of thinking is contradictory because the international community has its own definition of what "responsible/empowering" reproductive choices are (i.e. having fewer or no children) whereas different women in different communities may believe that for them to have bodily autonomy, they should be able to have as many kids as they desire.  

This week, I found myself thinking a lot about what bodily autonomy really means in relation to different cultures with vastly different practices, beliefs, and values.  I am still concerned by the concept of development-led agency.  To me, it seemed to have a lot of negative connotations and consequences so I am still a little confused regarding whether the international development community believes that development-led agency is a good thing, a bad thing, or something trying to be good but that is inherently problematic.  It seems that development-led agency paints women as a homogenous group of poverty victims with limited life choices, yet this idea still tries to maintain that these seemingly static, vulnerable women are capable of completing school and committing to contraceptive practices.  While I obviously believe that women are capable of all that and more, it seems the international policymaking community discredits women the majority of the time, then gives them credit when it fits into one of their policy plans, such as counting on these women to use their contraceptives or take advantage of their new "freedom" through reproductive control by pursuing school or work.  I mostly dislike the concept of development-led agency because it is a conditional agency in which these women are expected to be sources of human capital, only given agency so that they can combat climate change to save the rest of the world (even though women in the Global South are the least responsible for GHG emissions) and so that they can become sources of future labor yields.  In this framework, it seems that empowering women is really just a side effect of trying to mobilize women to make choices that counteract that damage that everyone except them has caused.  

One of the main keywords from Tuesday's readings was environmental racism.  As demonstrated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, environmental racism determines if and where recovery efforts are focused as well as determines where toxic waste and debris are dumped.  Communities of color are often deemed as "sacrifice zones" in which debris from wealthier, whiter areas are dumped in dangerous proximity to lower income communities.  Environmental racism links pollution and toxic waste to race and is maintained through discriminatory policies and practices that result in poisoned air, land, and water.  In Thursday's introductory reading, we are introduced to the term neo-Malthusian.  These people believe that population growth is the main driver of environmental, social, and economic problems.  The theories based on these beliefs, however, have in the past led to coercive efforts by the international community to control population growth in the Global South through non-voluntary practices, racist practices, and human rights abuses.  Populationism is a slightly different, more updated version of neo-Malthusianism because it focuses on human rights-based solutions rather than coercive population control.  Populationism operates on the belief that the earth has a limit to how much life it can sustain, but that that issue can be addressed without coercive methods.  Another term referenced that I was previously unfamiliar with is the term sexual steward.  A sexual steward is an idealized woman who is responsible about her personal fertility and about the environment.  This woman is a monolith, as she is depicted as heterosexual, able to carry and raise children, and free to make choices without fear of violence.  This concept was designed to address an international development crisis regarding population growth and finding a framework through which to change reproductive behavior without seeming as coercive as population control methods.