新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Creating social spaces for transnational feminist advocacy: the Canadian International Development Agency, the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women and Philippine women's NGO

摘要：

The postauthoritarian democratisation process in the Philippines saw the rise of 'state feminism', which emphasised gender mainstreaming in government development planning. Various international development agencies, particularly the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), played an important role in harnessing the social capital of women's movements and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) for gender and development (GAD) programs in the post-Marcos era (1986-2002). This period was marked by a decline in the CIDA's direct assistance to women's NCOs in the Philippines and its shift to institutional capability-building of government agencies, particularly the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW). The article examines how local women's organisations have interpreted, engaged and negotiated transnational discursive practices on 'development', 'social capital', 'capacity-building' and 'gender mainstreaming.' The CIDA-funded Women NGOs Umbrella Project and Canadian aid the Negros Occidental province are used as case studies to illustrate issues and problems in transnational linkages between Philippine women NGOs, national and local governments and Canadian development agencies. Such transnational linkages, embodied in the interesting mix of 'gender mainstreaming' and 'critical engagement' between states, donor agencies and women NGOs, show the interpenetration of the 'global' and the 'local' and the blurring of boundaries between 'state' and 'civil' societies in the course of gender advocacy. At the same time, transnational processes and demands may concurrently create better understanding, as well as conflicts and tensions between state machinery, NGOs and social movements, thus defeating the original intentions of development projects sponsored by international donor agencies. In the Philippine experience, gender mainstreaming combines with transnational feminist alliances and advocacy to promote GAD and involves social and political processes that are embedded in specific sites at multiple scales (local, subregional, national, international) and institutions, both official and informal. These processes, as Kelly (2000, 12) argues, 'mediate and construct particular experience of globalization' or transcultural practices.' The practices of Philippine women's NGOs, in particular, are framed by various 'nodes' or 'grids of intersectionality' within 'scapes' or 'networks' of flows of ideas (Appadurai 1990) generated from various transnational agents and interpreted by local actors working within local cultural paradigms. The relevant 'ideoscapes' in this discussion involve elements of global discourses on 'WID and GAD', 'social capital', 'participation', and 'capacity-building' that have entered the lexicon of the ClDA and Philippine women's NGOs since the mid-1980s.