Nancy Kachingwe
November 2019

I firmly believe an anti-racist feminist framework, anchored in decolonisation and committed to an anti-capitalist critique is necessary in this time.”
(Chandra Talpade Mohanty)

Within the development sector ‘theories of change’ have become a popular tool for strategic planning and programming. Across all development organisations, it is standard to introduce our project drafts and strategic plans with a technicolour Venn diagram outlining the thinking behind a set of actions that will achieve a particular set of social change outcomes. Considerable investments have been made into training and consultancies to help organisations develop supposedly effective theories of change. Of course, the logic behind theories of change isn’t particularly novel: we all are guided by some kind theory of change to explain our existing conditions and how to exit them, but the methodologies we use in or organisational work is intended to offer a more methodical way for organisations/communities/activists to come to collective agreement on the what where, who, where and how for our interventions. But theories of change, even with the best methodologies, will always be limited by often unconscious or explicit ideologies, biases, narratives or beliefs about the causes of the injustices, inequalities and violations that we are attempting to address.

Next year, the international feminist and women’s rights movements will come together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the ground breaking 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA). The consensus will likely be that while progress has been made across many indicators, one generation later, we are nowhere near the vision set out in the BPfA. Not only have too many gender inequalities persisted, but in the words of bell hooks: feminist movement has not created sustained feminist revolution. It has not ended patriarchy, eradicating sexism and sexist exploitation and oppression. And as a consequence, feminist gains are always at risk.[1] In that sense, Beijing+25 will implicitly be a review of how our theories of change across the Platform’s twelve points of action have borne out over the past decades. If 2020 is a year for reflecting and re-energising struggles, we will be asking how our problem analyses, strategies and organising needs to evolve towards a feminist revolution, whether we are in the right direction of travel and how not to lose ground on the gains won so far.

Intersectionality goes mainstream: In this moment, it will be important to celebrate the fact that the world has benefitted from an expanding and dynamic and body of feminist theorising, encouraged by the establishment of feminist/women’s/gender studies across academia, all of which has also been key to informing evolving approaches in gender and development.  We’ve moved from WID to GAD, from gender mainstreaming to empowerment, and have even gone through “including men and boys” along the way.[2] An important turning point since the 2000’s has been the integration of intersectional theory within women’s rights work, as a practical tool for recognising, interacting with and giving voice to the very many disenfranchised and invisibilised groups lumped into the category of ‘women’ and moving away from the dominant cis-heteronormative, Eurocentric, white, middle class, ableist conceptualisations of ‘women’ and ‘gender.’ Incorporating intersectionality in feminist work has been an exciting and challenging shift, forcing women’s rights spaces to encourage learning, open dialogues and represent interests across a wider range of gender identities. Intersectionality has not only offered a means to address the dynamics of privilege and exclusion, but as Patricia Collins and Sirma Bilge point out in their introductory book on the subject, is ‘an important tool linking theory with practice that can aid in the empowerment of communities and individuals.’[3]

Intersectionality as a term emerged from black feminist scholarship in the United States, but is nonetheless part of a long history of transnational feminist theory known variously as Third World/ postcolonial / decolonial feminism covering feminist scholar activists from formerly colonised countries, as well as from indigenous feminists and feminists of colour in the Global North. To use Sheila Nair’s description, postcolonialism “highlights the impact that colonial and imperial histories still have in shaping a colonial way of thinking about the world and how Western forms of knowledge and power marginalise the non-Western world.”[4].  In that sense Collins and Bilge point out, intersectionality was formed “within the context of social movements that faced crises of their times, primarily the challenges of colonialism, racism, sexism militarism and capitalist exploitation.”  Foluke Adebisi’s remark that decolonisation is more than just about “representation, inclusion, diversity and equality”[5] should be applied to our understanding of intersectionality as well in that the two are about naming and dismantling contemporary hegemonic systems of power that have their roots in and replicate global imperial and colonial histories. Similarly Sara Salem cautions, “Using intersectionality as an end rather than as a means to decolonize knowledge runs the risk of reproducing Western feminist assumptions and replacing an existing universality with a new one. Instead intersectionality needs to be taken further using decoloniality as a way to avoid the trap of creating a new universality[6].”

Caught between decolonisation and depoliticization

Decolonisation is impossible, but we must make her possible, if we wish to survive this wretched night that this wretched earth has been plunged into by humanity. We must make her possible.[7] (Foluke I Adebisi)

Within the mainstream gender and development sector there has often been a disconnect between contemporary women’s rights NGOs and our pre-independence, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist antecedents and histories. And yet women’s rights activism in the Global South and amongst racialised populations in the Global North was historically embedded in anti-colonial, national liberation, civil rights and/or labour rights movements.[8] Of course, it is quite common to find attempts to retrieve the histories of women’s resistance to colonisation as freedom fighters, however, the highly political feminist activism of women freedom fighters, intellectuals and organisers within anti-colonial movements is much less referenced[9]. As Chandra Talpade Mohanty notes ‘histories of Third World women’s engagement with feminism are in short supply. There is a large body of work on “women in developing countries,” but this does not necessarily engage feminist questions. A substantial amount of scholarship has accumulated on women in liberation movements […] however this does not necessarily engage questions of feminist historiography.’[10] This missing component regarding South feminism and its anti-colonial/imperialist roots may be one factor in the much critiqued NGO-isation and de-politicisation of mainstream women’s rights organisations, many of whom up till recently shied away from or rejected the label of feminist.

As feminist activism in the South moved out of liberation and worker and peasant social movements into the post-independence ‘state feminism’ of the 60s and 70s and then onwards to the growing NGO sector in the 80s and 90s, the women’s rights priorities of Western donors (often committed feminists themselves) have shaped the agenda of gender and development work far more than the political economy approach of postcolonial feminists. Much of this may be attributed to the supposed ‘post-ideological’ / end of history moment following the fall of the the Soviet Union, and the end of the East-West Cold War.[11] Even in the Global South, women’s NGO organising has often left out the structural links between gender oppression and hyper-extractive capitalism, racism and militarism. The continued colonial economic system in which geographies are divided into poles of extraction and accumulation (North/South, rural/urban, household/market) tends not to be seen as a major contributing issue in perpetuating gender oppression and exploitation. This is not difficult to explain: in a terrain where former colonial powers are turned benefactors and saviours, where the new capitalist philanthropists have become self-appointed torch bearers for a new brand of global consumerist feminism, there is obvious discomfort and risk in taking an overtly anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist stance. Intersectionality in this context runs the risk of limiting demands to making the status quo more equitable and inclusive, rather than putting forward new visions to upend or uproot the status quo completely.

This is not a new phenomenon: it is useful to read Victoria Tauli Corpuz on the ground report on the battles fought at the Beijing Conference in 1995 around economic justice, indigenous rights or migrant women, of which this is but one telling extract:

“The economic justice caucus came up with a statement expressing disappointment over the failure of the PFA to address the root causes of women’s poverty and marginalisation. While feminisation of poverty is an oft repeated phrase in the PFA, the analysis of why this is so was sadly lacking. The statement by the Caucus accused the US and EU of consistently refusing to accept language in the PFA which directly linked economic policies to poverty. From the second to the last day, a big group of NGOs led by Latin Americans made a short noise barrage at the Conference to demonstrate their demand for economic justice issues to be accepted in the text.”[12]

In the past four decades, neoliberalism is the term used to describe the project of global capitalist expansion underway since the 1980s. For postcolonial feminists, neoliberalism has been nothing short of a form of recolonization—capital is able to move freely around the globe, have unfettered access to resources and women’s undervalued and unpaid labour and park its profits in bespoke jurisdictions out of the reach of tax and revenue authorities. In the meantime the neoliberal project has also sought to reduce the role of the state as a regulator, social provider and protector of human rights. Governments that have stood in the way of global capital have found themselves ostracised, sanctioned or overthrown. In a situation where independence, sovereignty or democracy mean little in terms of genuine autonomy or self-determination, and where capitalist expansion can only happen by shredding human rights as people protest their worsening circumstances, any hopes for the full emancipation of women, the dismantling of patriarchy or an end to ever new forms of gender based violence and women’s exploitation are futile.

Running without getting anywhere

Decolonising […] means to address the inadequate histories that shape the narratives that we are told and to reconfigure them on the basis of more adequate understandings. The purpose of this is to move beyond Euro-centred explanations that fail to acknowledge the significance of forms of colonial appropriation and displacement to the global polities that configure our world. There is no wealth or poverty in this world that does not have its roots in the colonial organisation of that world.”[13]

The need to frame our feminist theories of change in postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory has become more evident today, as we see the virulent resurgence and intensification of white nationalism, fascism, religious fundamentalism, misogyny and militarism on the one hand, and on the other, new social movements protesting various forms of racial, gender and worker oppression, corporate and state brutality, precarity, inequality and dispossession, often without their own theories of change. At both a theoretical and practical level, postcolonial feminists have demonstrated how women’s struggles and resistance in various areas—environmental justice, sexual and reproductive rights, labour rights, austerity, natural resource and food sovereignty–occur as outcomes of imperialist capitalist patriarchy’s interlocking systems of racial, class and gender oppression. 

It is therefore not enough to talk about theories of change to end gender inequality without addressing the imperial capitalist economic and social systems that rely on and reproduce that very oppression. It is vital to recognise that often the imaginaries that could define our feminist theories of change for gender self-determination in mainstream gender and development are often from the outset themselves colonised by what is deemed acceptable thought/discourses by the powers that be within neoliberal imperialism. When this is the case, theories of change become a tool for maintaining the status quo, rather than overturning it, pushing the possibilities of transformation and revolution further and further away. Claiming that we have incorporated intersectionality, while refusing to engage with questions of empire, colonialism and neocolonialism will sadly not be enough to achieve the feminist revolution that has eluded us for so long.

It is more high time we re-examined  the wealth of feminist knowledge and ideas that  have  too long been excluded, dismissed, forgotten, erased  or unsought to inform new theories of change. To conclude with  an excerpt from the Indigenous Women’s  statement  25 years ago  in Beijing in the Tauli Corpuz’s report:

 ‘Indigenous women and women of colour have been and continue to be victims of racism, colonisation, and imperialism. We believe that empowerment of women must be achieved within the context of “self-determination”, and we call for a dismantling of all forms of global oppression. The struggle for “gender equity” takes place outside the context of decolonisation and inherently precludes us from attaining true liberation. 

[1] Mohanty. C. T. 2003. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonising Theory, Practising Solidarity. Duke Univesity Press

[2] hooks b. 2000. Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre. 2nd edition. Pluto Press. London

[3] Beneria L., Berik G. & Floro M. (2016) Gender, Development and Globalisation: Economics as if all people Mattered. Second Edition. Routledge.

[4] Hill Collins P & Bilge S. 2016 Intersectionality

[5] Nair S. 2016. Introducing Postcolonialism in International Relations Theoryhttps://www.e-ir.info/2017/12/08/postcolonialism-in-international-relations-theory/

[6] Adebisi F. I. 2019. Decolonisation is Impossible: Truth and What the River Knows (Blog Post) https://folukeafrica.com/why-i-say-decolonisation-is-impossible/

[7] Sara Salem Postcolonial feminism and decolonizing intersectionality https://www.academia.edu/6789689/Decolonial_intersectionality_and_a_transnational_feminist_movement

[8] Adebisi F. I. 2019. Decolonisation is Impossible: Truth and What the River Knows (Blog Post) https://folukeafrica.com/why-i-say-decolonisation-is-impossible/

[9] Armstrong E. 2016. Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Foundation

[10] El-Malik, S. (2013). Intellectual Work ‘In-the-World’: Women’s Writing and Anti-Colonial Thought in Africa. Irish Studies in International Affairs, 24, 101-120. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/42912416

[11] Mohanty C. Feminisms Without Borders.

[12] D Jain

[13] Corpuz V. T. 1995 Depoliticising gender in Beijing (Online article) https://www.twn.my/title/gen-ch.htm

[14] Gurminder K Bhambra 2019. Whose Welfare? Colonial Regimes of Extraction and British Subjecthood (Lecture) https://youtu.be/SXP2qoaONK0