North America's Savior Approach To Development

Too often development efforts portray non-Western women as victims and subjects of vulnerability whom need ‘saving’. This paper addresses the ‘savior’ approach to development to demonstrate how North America has created false images of women in developing areas. Like wise, it explores the role of power/knowledge hierarchies, development discourse and NGOs role in the process. Development discourse and institutions tend to marginalize and disempower the Third World ‘other’. How could one resist that there is a way to ‘end poverty for women’ or ‘ensure access to education for young girls?’ The strength of development discourse comes from its power to seduce, to attract, and to please, but also to abuse, and to deceive (Peet, 1999). Development
practitioners are positioned within development discourse, where the North’s superiority over the South is often abused and Western-style development is the norm. Our encounters with, and depictions of our ‘subjects’ are therefore framed in terms of an us/them dichotomy in which ‘we’, the ‘Developed’, aid/develop/civilize/empower ‘them’, the ‘Developing’ (Peet, 1999). The language of development frames our views on the ‘Developing world’ and the role women play in their societies. The representations that come to shape development practices are a reflection of institutional and individual power. There are hierarchies of knowledge where certain kinds of knowledge declare higher standing and greater influence over the other. Knowledge about development that is validated internationally, for example, through publications in North American or European journals, receive a higher status than work published in the developing regions of the world, regardless of how relevant or closely connected it may be to the developmental problems of those regions. Power plays a vital role in determining how to approach development. Those higher in power have the chance to have their voices heard, where as those with less power are often silenced. Therefore, it is those in power that get to determine what development is, how it should be measured, how it is portrayed and who it is that needs ‘saving’. Foucault’s notion of truth regime plays a fundamental role in the process of determining who is assigned these degrading labels. In every society, there is a regime of truth; the types of discourse, which are accepted, and make function as true (Langdon, 2013). For Foucault, the notions of power and truth have a strong parallel. You cannot receive truth outside power; power decides what is true and what is not. Essentially power is everywhere, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and regimes of truth. Power in this sense, begins to blend together the line between what is real and what is not real. This notion is called Hyperreality and can be described as the following, An inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, particularly in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Hyperreality is seen as a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins. It involves creating a symbol or set of signifiers, which actually represent something that does not actually exist. Hyperreality in this case, is often exercised through out news and media outlets (Tiffan, 2001).

Hyperreality is a tool of western powers to enable them to dominate the world playing field, and to diffuse their knowledge and views of other people and cultures in an easy way. When the Western world frames women as vulnerable or marginalized, development practitioners, NGO’, international organizations and communities around the globe feel the need to ‘save’ these women. Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activist once stated, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together” (Queensland Aboriginal activist collective, 1970s). This quote addresses knowledge/power hierarchies by re-framing whom it is that decide whether one can or cannot contribute to a struggle and undermines the power dynamics of whose knowledge count. It reveals how decolonisation is a collective effort, and not a matter of one group “helping” another. This is crucial because mutual liberation must come from an honest commitment to the idea that we must all decolonise in order for genuine liberation to be possible (Langdon, 2013). This quote represents the significance of working together as one rather than creating a separation of us vs. them. Furthermore, Edward Said explored the ways in which power and knowledge combine to perpetuate ideas, such as Orientalism. Orientalism locks certain peoples into a set of interlocking stereotypes that solidify the European subject position as the knower of the world; all others must pass through this subject position frame in order to understand the world (Langdon, 2013). Linking Said’s analysis of Orientalism to the contemporary world and the marginalization and victimhood of women is the ultimate assumption that the ‘orient women’ must be saved.
An example of this idea is North America’s view of Muslim women covering themselves. The assumption is Muslim women are ‘forced’ to cover themselves with a hijab. Although in some countries this is true, the assumption groups all Muslim women as one entity, oppressed. In reality, many Muslim women wear the hijab willingly and confidently. The hijab is simply a woman's assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in social interaction and has also been used as a political
tool. In a society built on false acquisitions and racist discourse, narcissism is central for the West’s self-image. For the West, narcissism allows massive self-love, implying that the West is the best and more superior than any other culture or society. They project their evil and blame others for doing the same thing they are doing. Thus, the Western world places their aggression and evil on ‘the other’ to deceive the world and make believe that they are the most ‘superior, civil and equal’ society on earth. By deceiving masses, they convince the West that liberalism is the only ideology of decency, and that if not liberal, you are not civilized. This implies that those outside liberal society are ‘evil, uncivilized and barbaric’. Mutua explains it as the following, Muslim societies, like all other non-Western societies, must modernize, democratize, liberalize, and adopt open, free market systems. The message is loud and clear. Islamic societies must Westernize or perish (Mutua,2002) It is problematic to group any religion, ethnicity or country as one group because it assumes an ahistorical, universal unity between people based on a generalized notion of their subordination. Instead of viewing women as socio-economic political groups within a particular local context, the meaning of being female is constrained to sexual orientation, bypassing social class and ethnic identities. What characterizes women as one group is their gender above everything else, indicating a uniform notion of sexual difference. As Mohanty stated, “because women are thus constituted as a coherent group, sexual difference becomes coterminous with female subordination, and power is automatically defined in binary terms: people who have it (men), and people who do not (women). Men exploit, and women are the exploited” (Mohanty, 1986). As suggested above, such this is both reductive and inefficient in creating development strategies to combat oppressions. All it has done is reinforce binary divisions between men and women (Mohanty, 1986). In addition to the power/knowledge hierarchies and the development discourse produced, NGOs play a chief role in the division of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. They often depict ‘Underdeveloped areas’ as passive, as victims of diseases, and associated with poverty and stagnation. The apathy of these countries stands in sharp contrast to the vitality and ‘success’ of the ‘developed areas’. These so called ‘developed’ areas are constantly expanding their technical knowledge and scientific knowledge, forever discovering something new. This in turn enables them to rescue the ‘underdeveloped areas’ from their ‘misery’, to deliver them from their primitiveness to modernity; to the era of ‘technical knowledge’, ‘scientific advances’, ‘greater production’, and ‘personal freedom and happiness for all mankind’ (Escobar, 2006). One the other hand, the identities of development have instilled a degree of inferiority, a longing to escape the underdeveloped state of affairs, a hierarchy where underdeveloped countries and peoples are the perpetual losers, to be endlessly reformed, reshaped and improved (Escobar, 2006). Development discourse embedded in colonial and neocolonial discourse and enshrined in the liberal discourse disempowers women (Langdon, 2013). The average third world woman defined in women and development literature has very specific attributes that are presented as essential to her character: she is ignorant, irrational, poor, uneducated, traditional, passive, and sexually oppressed (Mohanty 1991, 56, 72). So defined, the third world woman cannot be anything but a victim—of a similarly homogenized third world man, of universal sexism, of globalization, and of history (Mohanty 1991, 56, 72). The characterization of the third world woman as victims serves simultaneously to define that first world woman are liberated, rational, and competent (Mohanty 1991, 56). NGOs are significant actors in international development efforts, and exploring how Western NGOs are representing “Third World women” is essential.
If NGOs trust incorrect, generalizing image of “Third World women”, the solutions they promote for development will be inadequate. This is not only problematic for the women the NGOs are assisting, but also to the viewers around the world coming across the NGOs material who become manipulated by a distorted image of women ́s situation in the “Third World”. Continuously NGOs represent women as mothers and nurturers. Photos appear where they are shown with an infant or child who is often malnourished and suffering. Such women, usually very young mothers have sad eyes and helpless expressions. They are also found waiting for food or medical aid (Mohanty, 1986). These representations indorse the argument that mothers are ideal victims. Women come across as the most vulnerable face of disaster, which develops their ‘suitability’ for help. The excessive propaganda portrayed by these organizations disempowers women to act as their own agents of change and makes them believe they need external assistance to better their
lives. Development assistance programs for women do not encourage women into new ventures, to develop new social roles and skills, or to increase their independence. Rather most programs subliminally assume that the best place for a woman is in the home with children and indirectly supports the present status quo in the villages. It is assumed that women are too busy trying to survive with time for nothing else. At the same time, the act of survival is shown as heroic to make them worthy of help. In other words, the overall messages assume that women are concerned only with survival and not with political activism, or becoming their own agents of change. Portraying non-Western women as victims, whether in themselves or in contrast to Western women, reproduces the colonial perception of the backwardness of the ‘developing world’ and the advancement of the ‘developed’ world, while sidestepping the deep connected histories that shape current global inequalities. Such representations ‘freeze third world women in time, space, and history’ (Mohanty, 1986). If, in the past imperialism and colonialism played a pivotal role in connecting the world, the structures created continue to enhance this process through various institutions. The current representations of women naturalize, depoliticize and dehistoricise their lives and struggles without the over determined discourse that creates the third world, there would be no (singular and privileged) first world. Without the "third world woman," the particular self-presentation of Western women mentioned above would be problematical (Mohanty, 1986). The paternalist tendencies and stereotypes embedded in development discourse, power and knowledge hierarchies and the work of NGO’s further disempowering and marginalizing women. The current approach of development needs to be challenged and corrected. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring”.