Headlines and Head-space: Challenging Gender Planning Orthodoxy in Area-based Urban Development

Abstract

Drawing the experience of a highly acclaimed area-based urban development initiative in Cato Manor Durban we ask whether in the context of the favourable political conditions such as those that prevailed in South Africa during the first post-apartheid decade rendered unnecessary an explicit gender planning focus at project level. In its design and documentation the Cato Manor Development Project (CMDP) was largely devoid or the compulsory headlines and headcounts of gender planning against which progress on gender awareness and womens participation are usually measured. Nevertheless during implementation the Cato Manor Development Association (CMDA) paid significant attention to gender relations and womens involvement. To explain this we argue for the importance of understanding history and the legacy of womens organisation as well as the impact of higher level policy on gender. With this in place we show how the efforts of politicised women at community level and the support of social justice advocates working within project structures rendered insignificant the lack of an explicit gender planning focus and allowed for the emergence of a gender head-space among the practitioners and partners involved. As such we argue that gender planning is not the only way in which development initiatives can bring positive change to the conditions of womens lives and lead to the transformation of gender relations. Indeed we show that even when a gender focus did begin to inform the Cato Manor initiative it was made more effective by the historical legacy of womens struggles in Cato Manor and the political and policy conditions in post-apartheid South Africa. (excerpt)