The Gender of Expertise in Postcolonial Africa and South Asia

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H Challenging Modernity from the Perspective of Global History

The Gender of Expertise in Postcolonial Africa and South Asia

Event Details

Date

IV. Thursday, 11th September, 14:30-16:30
Location
K1073
Theme
H Challenging Modernity from the Perspective of Global History

Convenor

Maria Framke (University of Erfurt)
Rosalind Parr (Glasgow Caledonian University)

Chair

Eleonor Marcussen (Linnaeus University)

Commentator

Corinna Unger (European University Institute)

Panelists

Iris Schroeder (University of Erfurt)
Claire Nicolas (University of Basel)
Maria Framke (University of Erfurt)
Rosalind Parr (Glasgow Caledonian University)

Papers

Iris Schroeder

Gender, Voluntariness and social Scientists' Expertise in Postcolonial Ghana

Gender, Voluntariness and social Scientists' Expertise in Postcolonial Ghana

In the beginning of the 20th century, western social scientists started to intensely study contemporary colonial rule in Africa. While their many observations and expertises have already gained historians’ attention, especially, when it came to the reform projects meant to stabilize late colonial rule, the continuous importance and width of social scientists’ distinct contributions for the making of the postcolony has mostly been overlooked. In my contribution, I will discuss the case of Ghana, where social scientists actively supported many of the developmental endeavors and transformation projects of the newly independent state. In this vein, in Ghana, especially during the Nkrumah era, a mixed community of social scientists, coming from the US and Europe as well as from Ghana, gave advice to the Nkrumah government, since their surveys and their expertise was taken as a valuable resource for the feasibility of large scale reform endeavors. Against this background, I will draw my attention to the discursive strategies linked to voluntariness and gender. In the course of this, I will focus on the activities and strategies of some chosen Black US social scientists, male and female, who supported the postcolony’s particular developmentalism that was meant to pave the way to a future African modernity.
Claire Nicolas

‘Women are Capable!’ Racialised and Gendered Expertise in Africa-Based YWCA Leadership Training Projects (1961-1971)

‘Women are Capable!’ Racialised and Gendered Expertise in Africa-Based YWCA Leadership Training Projects (1961-1971)

This paper traces back knowledge production within the World-Young Women’s Christian Association in the 1960s. The World’s YWCA held a key position with regards to first hand expertise on women’s affairs among Geneva-based international organisations, ranging from the United Nations to the World Council of Churches. Its Mutual Service Committee especially, based in Geneva, played a central role in channelling a much sought after body of knowledge about women in independent Africa. Its work hinged on both Western women’s tours and reports by African members of the YWCA, as well as its long-term presence in most African anglophone countries. Through official and private correspondence as well as regional, continental and world meetings, YWCA members discussed about the future of women’s affairs, and especially the future of African women’s affairs. Using archival material from the Ghana national archives and the World-YWCA archives, this paper focuses on crossed expertise on women’s role for developing independent African States, through local and regional leadership training projects. To this end, this paper examines how expertise was built at the local level and transformed through international channels, via correspondence and international meetings (Salisbury 1961; Accra 1971). Examining the relationship between members (African Americans, white Europeans and Americans, Africans) allows for interpreting how race and class framed expertise in this women only international organisation.
Maria Framke

Women, Rural Development and the Question of Expertise in Postcolonial India: The Case of Dr Krishnabai Nimbkar

Women, Rural Development and the Question of Expertise in Postcolonial India: The Case of Dr Krishnabai Nimbkar

The presentation focuses on rural reconstruction work carried out by women for other women in the first two decades of postcolonial India. In my investigation of the social activism of Dr Krishnabai Nimbkar (1906–1997), I examine her efforts to enhance the health, education and economic opportunities for rural Indian women. Nimbkar, a staunch nationalist and medical doctor by training, engaged in social work in the late colonial period and subsequently emerged as an expert on women's welfare in the 1950s. In this capacity, she collaborated closely with the postcolonial state's community development programme and also participated in conferences of the Associated Country Women of the World in Toronto (1953) and Colombo (1957). In 1957, she assumed the position of ‘Specialist Women’s Programme’ in the Planning Research & Action Institute, a development initiative funded by the provincial government of Uttar Pradesh. At the institute, Nimbkar established and directed the women's section during the first five-year pilot project for the development of rural women. In focusing on the work of one activist-turned-expert, this presentation addresses two sets of inquiries. First, it analyses the nature and content of the pilot project for the development of rural women and Nimbkar’s understanding of her role in it. Second, it examines the impact of the process of 'scientisation' on the various social groups involved and targeted by the project.
Rosalind Parr

Clinic, nation, region, globe. Multi-scalar histories of birth control in and from early postcolonial South Asia

Clinic, nation, region, globe. Multi-scalar histories of birth control in and from early postcolonial South Asia

The recent historiography of birth control in South Asia has shifted attention to the early postcolonial period and highlighted the link between family planning and state-led ‘nation-building’ projects. Led primarily by women, postcolonial birth control initiatives generated funding, promoted scientific knowledge and administered family planning projects on the ground, usually as part of a wider focus on women’s health. Yet, as with all forms of ‘development’ in the Global South, postcolonial family planning was and remains open to the charge of ‘Westernisation’ and neo-colonialism due to its reliance on foreign donors and the prevalence of ideas seemingly originating elsewhere. Engaging with these critiques, this paper explores the crucial role of South Asian women’s expertise in postcolonial family planning and examines its implications for the history of birth control as a global phenomenon. Focussing on the 1950s and 1960s, it draws on the records of activist organisations such as the All-India Women’s Conference, the All-Pakistan Women’s Association and the All-Ceylon Women’s Conference as well as national family planning associations. The paper argues for a multi-scalar analysis that incorporates a range of spatial and imaginative contexts – including the clinic, the nation and the region – while remaining alert to global power dynamics. This, it will be suggested, offers a model for thinking through the constraints of decolonisation in development contexts shaped by colonial legacies and the evolving international order.

Abstract

This panel brings together African and South Asian histories of women’s expertise in the fields of development, social reform and academia. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the evolution of technocratic colonial and international development regimes made the issue of ‘expertise’ a central feature of decolonising societies. Although recent historiography has explored this phenomenon from multiple angles, the role of women as crucial agents of expertise in this context is under-represented. By contrast, this panel will specifically foreground women and employ the lens of gender to understand their interventions. Exploring the gender of expertise in a number of postcolonial locations, the panel addresses the key themes of voluntariness, state-civil society relations, race and the dynamics of multi-directional knowledge exchange. These themes will be examined through a variety of frames that take in individual careers, national imperatives, and transnational connections. Without flattening out the variety of the postcolonial world, the panel seeks to draw out similarities between different geographical contexts from a global historical perspective. This approach will offer insights into the crucial importance of women’s ‘expertise’ for our understanding of questions of power, continuity and change during decolonisation. By exploring marginalised, geographically- and historically-situated histories of expertise, the panel also addresses the Congress theme of ‘multivocality in global history’. Additionally, it grapples with questions of authorship and resistance in development history and, in doing so, addresses the Congress theme of ‘challenges to modernity’.