In Gender & Development Work, Remember: Development itself is Gendered

Julie Sherbill is a first year Peace Corps Volunteer serving near Marrakech. Having lived in Turkey and worked for an international fellowship program, she believes well-designed cultural exchanges are crucial for a more peaceful and just world. As a Volunteer at a new site, you can often find Julie closing her eyes and repeating to herself over and over again that our value is based in relationships and not in productivity. Read more about her service on her blog: In the End, We’re All Shoes.

In Gender & Development Work, Remember: Development itself is Gendered

By Julie Sherbill

See if you can spot what these three anecdotes have in common. One is from home, and two are from my Peace Corps service so far.

• I am volunteering at the annual Human Rights Campaign (HRC) National Dinner, which is worth several hundred dollars a ticket. I am standing with my friend and fellow volunteer, an LGBT activist from Egypt, when an older white man, an attendee, approaches us. In a “father-son” type way, he grabs my friend’s shoulder and asks, “now how can we help the horrible situation for LGBT folks in the Arab world?” As the man walked away, my friend wondered aloud, “why did that question bother me so much?”
  
• At a training, as I’m drifting asleep, my friend wakes me up to tell me she’ll be leaving tomorrow. She talked with her husband in another city, who decided he is not comfortable with her sleeping out. “He loves me, he just doesn’t trust me,” my friend explained. I wanted to tell my friend to break off the relationship ASAP; I think she’ll be better off on her own, with freedom to do what she wants.
  
• I’m doing the PACA mapping activity with girls from the Dar Taliba. I tell them to color in green the spaces where they feel safe. In the next class, we discuss. I ask them “do you have anywhere to go where you feel safe?” No. The next questions on the sheet: “what does this say about your daily life in your community?” and “what are some next steps?” The questions felt leading, but I asked them anyway. The girls said, “well, we learned that our lives are boring, and we have no safe space.” Another girl chimed in, “no, but we have to thank God for all that we have, and we have enough.”

These individual anecdotes all remind me of the fine, fine line between empowerment and paternalism within even the most well-intentioned human rights work, including Gender & Development (GAD) work. In theory, helping people connect their own personal hardships to larger systems of inequality in society would empower them. Why then, when I want to tell someone that they don’t have privilege, does it feel like I’m taking their own agency away?

I think it’s because development work, both at home and abroad, has for so long been part of that same gendered framework that boxes people into inequality. Peace Corps, more specifically, emerged right at the end of the European colonial period, during a time when international (and domestic) development was even more patriarchal than it is today. We cannot take our work here out of this context—we should always be questioning how it colors our view throughout these 2+ years.

The Shadow of the Ugly American

My first instinct in helping, as you can see from my stories, is sympathy, which means “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.” Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” But sympathy isn’t productive—instead, it is reductive. It reduces and simplifies the people you’re trying to help.

If I spend more time just hanging out with my friend and hearing about her life, if I learn how the girls in the Dar Taliba do have fun without a designated “safe space”—I can begin to understand them as full, complicated human beings, instead of underprivileged projects. In time, I might even be able to empathize with others—that is, to see where they’re coming from, get how they’re feeling, and know if there’s a way I can actually help them (and vice versa). I might not end up accomplishing that much on paper, but at least I’ll have real friendships.

Yet even if I’m befriending people and learning the language, there are still a thousands ways I can be the Ugly American. This is now a pejorative trope that refers to “perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior of American citizens mainly abroad, but also at home.” Since Peace Corps was established to counter this very picture, it seems like the Ugly American’s shadow is always hanging over my head, reminding me of what I could so easily, and unintentionally, become.

Personally, like so many with privilege, I have been able to benefit from systems of class and race without ever having to acknowledge the concept at all. Every time I post pictures on facebook or random epiphanies on my blog, I’m wary of becoming like voluntourists whose primary goal is not to understand their host community, but rather, show that they understand it.

Gender and Development, but also Gendered Development

I need to find a way to work productively here, even with that Ugly American ego creeping in the context, threatening to envelope me. If I am going to make these years worthwhile, I need to be myself—my outspoken, feminist, and eager beaver self. But I need to recognize when that self is actually pushing other voices down rather than amplifying them.

As individual Volunteers with varying levels of privilege, we must critique the power structures that lead to gender disparities not only at our sites, but also within the context of our Peace Corps experience. How do our diverse backgrounds affect the way we see life, do work, and relate to people at our sites? As gender advocates, we cannot be selective in what we view through this lens.

I believe productive work doesn’t have to be tangible—it can lie in relationships, conversations, and individual shifts in mindset. That’s what I love about GAD’s approach to work; even if I don’t implement a girls’ empowerment camp, there is still value in my individual conversations surrounding gender. Similarly, critical conversations about gendered development are vital among Peace Corps Volunteers, as our individual services do not exist in vacuums. After all, isn’t it true that we can have a higher impact on our own Peace Corps community than the sites where we serve?

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Posted by Katie Bercegeay

Branching Out: Finding the Students that Want to Learn

Alyssa Meredith is a newly returned PCV who served in a rural Moroccan village near Zagora. Her interest areas include environmental awareness, women’s empowerment and healthy lifestyles. She helped lead the first day camp to happen at her town’s Dar Chabab and taught weekly classes at the Dar Taliba and Nedi Neswi. Her favorite pastime in Morocco was sunset walks in the djnan*. Branching Out: Finding the Students that Want to Learn By Alyssa Meredith

No Work in Sight

Many Peace Corps Volunteers have inevitably let the following phrase slip through their lips at some point in their service: “There’s no work in my site.” We all know this to be categorically untrue and yet the frustration of the slow seasons or the unreliability of certain students leads us to utter this hyperbole. So how does one master these feelings of helplessness when all you really want to do is “change the world”?

As the first volunteer in my site, I struggled throughout my first year to establish myself and what my role in the community would be. I naturally attempted to start at my assigned workplace, the Dar Chabab*, but after having various classes quickly fizzle and ultimately spending countless hours sitting in an empty building, I decided to branch out and find somewhere new to work. If the students weren’t going to come to me, I would go to them.

Discovering the Nedi Neswi

One afternoon my host sister showed me her workbook with designs for djellabas and other traditional Moroccan clothes, and I realized that my town must have a Nedi Neswi*. So I stopped by to observe a class and introduce myself to the women that studied there. A couple of the ladies asked me some questions about English in between copying down the day’s patterns and I mentioned that I’d be happy to teach a class if more people were interested. They jumped at the opportunity, and I began teaching beginner’s English along with aerobics.

An English lesson at the Nedi on the alphabet and animals

Many (myself included at times) may question the wisdom of teaching these rural women English when they may not even know the more commonly used French or even standard Arabic and probably won’t have much chance to use what they learn. However, these ladies have a right to an education, an opportunity that may have been denied to them as a young student, and no matter their age or status, we should encourage their eagerness to learn. Additionally, the Nedi is a place for these women to get out of the house and socialize with their friends. It is a safe space for women to express themselves, to gather and to learn, and because of this, I continue to seek out work at the Nedi so that these women have access to these opportunities.

Expanding My Work Site

Attendance at my Nedi classes waxed and waned throughout the seasons, but it also opened up some new opportunities for work. After class one afternoon, two women approached me and asked if I could replicate the class in their village since they actually lived a few kilometers up the road. While I did not relish dealing with the logistical concerns teaching this class would require, I agreed because my week was pretty empty at this point, and I figured that I should be doing something useful with my time. Meeting these women was perhaps the best moment of my service because it led to some of my most fulfilling work. The people in this douar* live just far enough away from the central action in town that they aren’t able to participate in most of the local functions, especially the women. Because of this, I found that these students were especially eager to learn and I had higher attendance rates and better participation than any of my previous efforts.

View of the village where I taught life skills atop a 300 year old kasbah

I started with similar classes that focused on English and exercise and saw some encouraging progress in my students. They even wanted to continue during Ramadan which was quite a feat while we were all fasting in the brutal heat. Through this class I met one of my future counterparts. She confided in me that although she had dropped out of school early, she still wanted to work and to do something with her life. She suggested the idea of working together to teach younger students in the coming fall. When Peace Corps advertised the life skills training, I thought it would be a great way to move forward.

Focusing on Women’s Empowerment

We decided to make the new life skills class  an exclusively female class because we wanted these girls to be able to truly discuss their feelings and to find confidants and role models among their peers. Using the life skills curriculum as our base, we wove in themes of women’s empowerment to give the women additional examples of strong women. We talked about Fatima Al Fihri and the assets that helped her create the world’s oldest university in Fes. We drew community maps and discussed how the spaces available may or may not be open to women and how these buildings reflect the community’s values. When the curriculum presented a story about Nelson Mandela and surviving tough times, we paired it with the story of Malala Yousafzai and read about her speech to the UN highlighting girls’ education.

Working in another douar offered me additional opportunities for work, expanded my community network, introduced new people to the idea of Peace Corps, and gave me an excuse to do some exercise each week as I make the trek to and from class. Over the course of my service, I had to convince myself that it was okay to leave behind the classes that weren’t productive and find the people that wanted to work with me. As a new volunteer, if you find yourself at a loss to start classes, I’d encourage you to branch out and find a new base for your work by getting to know the people in another douar.

Moroccan Arabic References

*djnan: palmary

*Dar Chabab: youth center

*djellaba: traditional hooded robe worn by Moroccans

*Nedi Neswi: women’s center, usually a space for the women to learn traditional skills such as sewing or classical Arabic

*douar: village

--- Posted by Katie Bercegeay

Sexual Assault Awareness Month Reflections & Resources 2017

While Sexual Assault Awareness Month has come to an end, the need to spread awareness and advocate against sexual harassment, violence, and "rape culture" has not.

Here is a short list of resources shared among Peace Corps Morocco Volunteers and Moroccan peers throughout the month of April. Let's continue to stand up for respectful treatment of all persons, including ourselves, and challenge others to do the same each day.

On challenging the normalization of sexual harassment and assault:

• A worthwhile TED Talk by Susan Pavlou
• A new series of short videos illustrating everyday sexual harassment

On coping & self-care:

• How People Cope, from Yale's Sexual Harassment and Assault Response & Education center
• Maintaining Self-Care during SAAM

On sexual harassment as a PCV in Morocco:

• Resources used to facilitate an after-hours session on sexual harassment at in-service training (IST) in March 2017, including proactive and reactive language (Darija) and coping mechanisms.

On how to advocate and educate at site:

• Breaking the Silence Toolkit, video and resources available in English, Arabic, and French
• Men as Partners Toolkit, available in English and Arabic

Know of other resources you'd like to add to this list? Have suggestions for how we can better support each other in dealing with harassment while at site? Need an ear? Let us know.

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Posted by Katie Bercegeay