Institute of Development Studies

Sexuality and Development Workshop 2008

• Dates: 10 April 2008
• Location: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

How do development interventions impact on people’s sexualities? And how can development agencies move towards more constructive engagement with sexuality? These were the topic of discussion in IDS from 3-5 April, for more than 70 workshop participants from a range of activist groups, NGOs, universities, government bodies and donor organisations worldwide. Below are just some of the highlights.

Listen to workshop organiser Susie Jolly give an overview of the workshop and its main themes (mp3 11 minutes)

A poverty reduction programme pressuring people into family set ups they may not want

Kate Bedford (Kent University, UK) presented the World Bank supported ‘Family Strengthening and Social Capital Promotion Project in Argentina’ (2001-2006). This loan scheme aimed to strengthen the family and improve networks within poor communities, with the goal of reducing their vulnerability to poverty. One of the aims of the loan was to help people cope with poverty through increasing women's role in the labour market and men's role in household chores and childcare.

Increasing opportunities for women, and shifting the division of labour in the household can be a good thing. However, the programme reinforced a trend towards privatised, unpaid family labour as a solution to poverty, and it gave considerable clout to religious institutions which endorsed more traditional gender roles and the revival of the family.

Development programmes premised on family strengthening as a poverty strategy create more pressure on people to marry and/or stay within heterosexual family set ups – something which might make life more difficult for women facing domestic violence, or lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBT) who already face pressure to suppress their sexual desires and gender identities and conform to heterosexual relationship norms.

Making marriage more pleasurable, as well as opening possibilities to leave the relationship if people want to

Dorothy Akenova (INCRESE, Nigeria) explained how she had tried to make marriage better, especially for women, at the same time as opening possibilities to leave if people wanted to. Dorothy explained ‘My starting point was multiple orgasms’. Women have more physical capacity than men to experience multiple orgasms, yet in many contexts women are censored for expressing pleasure. Some women reported being beaten for making noises ‘like a prostitute’ while having sex with their husbands. They didn’t dare ask how their husbands knew what prostitutes sound like during sex, and instead were penalised for expressing pleasure.

INCRESE runs trainings for couples on communication and better sex for both women and men. Often the trainings improve the relationship, empower the women and can even lead to a drop in domestic violence. Sometimes however, when the individuals explore their own desires they may realise that what they do not want to be in the marriage, for example if they desire same sex relationships. INCRESE supports people seeking fulfilment rather than judging or trying to channel people into particular kinds of relationships.

HIV/AIDS and rights to sex and love

People living with HIV/AIDS want, and have the right to, sex and love as much as anyone else. And more openness about sexual relationships and desires of positive people can also create more possibilities for safer sex promotion.

Responses to HIV and AIDS have created huge opportunities for talking about sexuality and for creating space for ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM). However, many in the workshop felt that these kinds of labels trap people in boxes, reducing their identities to that of ‘risk group’ and reducing the aspects of their relationships to sex rather than love and other dimensions. Transgender people who may consider themselves to be women or a third sex are usually either completely excluded from development industry resources, or else included only under the category ‘MSM’ which does not match their self-perceptions.

It has been assumed that lesbians and women who have sex with other women have low risk of HIV transmission, however there has been a lack of research in this area. In addition many ‘lesbians’ also have other interactions which may put them at risk – whether relationships with men, or drug use, or facing sexual violence from men seeking to punish them for being lesbian. Lesbian activism should also be supported from a gender and rights perspective regardless of HIV risk.

Listen to Akshay Khanna's presentation: 'Taming of the shrewd melei chhele: (a) political economy of development's sexual subject' (mp3 37 minutes)

Sex work and misguided anti-trafficking efforts

Anti-trafficking policies may start with good intentions of helping people out of situations of forced labour, however they have often become focussed on raiding brothels and ‘rescuing’ women from the sex industry (male and transgender sex workers are less often targeted for rescue). Often women with irregular migration status are then deported, and others put into ‘rehabilitation’ programmes such as sewing where they earn less money and may be more vulnerable to sexual harassment.

These programmes may be motivated more by the desire to ‘save’ rather than a response to the realities of sex work. Meena Seshu (VAMP, India) and Nandinee Bandopadhyay (Durbar, India) reported how one NGO wanted to help women leave sex work by offering income generation alternatives. The sex worker organisations asked if any of their members wished to take part in this project, and several older women signed up – their incomes were declining due to client preference for younger women. Unfortunately the NGO, like the clients, refused them for being too old, wanting instead to save the young and ‘vulnerable’.

Sex workers themselves can be most effective in combating trafficking because they know who is new in the brothel or neighbourhood and who is underage or unwilling. Sex worker organisations may do a better job finding out if and how these people want to get out, instead of just handing them over to the police who, in many countries, are themselves the key perpetrators of violence and rape against sex workers.

Listen to Hard talk: How the development industry imagines sex work (Cheryl Overs, Nandinee Bandhopadhyay, Meena Seshu) (mp3 53 minutes)

The way forward

Several ways forward were proposed on the questions the workshop raised: More critical reflection by those of us working in development on our assumptions about people’s family set ups, relationships and sexual practices; More research on the connections between sexuality and macroeconomic, political and social structures; Challenging the power structures which pressure people into a limited and unequal set of relationship options; More rights based, democratic and participatory approaches which genuinely include sex workers, LGBT and people living with HIV and AIDS; And a move towards more affirmative approaches to sexuality which increase possibilities for pleasure and well-being at the same time as challenging violence.

Other podcasts from the workshop:

Susie Jolly is IDS Sexuality and Development Programme Convenor

Image: Andil Gosine