Concerns with institutional capacity building tend to focus on changes to structures and incentive systems, ignoring the role of the individual in interpreting policy goals.
This paper examines how field workers use their discretion to interpret and implement policy in rural credit programmes in Bangladesh, looking in particular at differences in attitudes and practices between women and men field staff. These have a powerful effect upon the success of programmes in challenging the terms of gender relations.
Most often, field workers’ own biases undermine the more progressive aspects of policy and tend to reinforce dominant and conservative interpretations of women’s needs. But the paper notes there are no black and white distinctions between the behaviour of women and men field workers, and warns against making easy assumptions about gender-based solidarities and affinities.
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