Wendy Harcourt: CHALLENGING MAINSTREAMS

After four years of being the chair of the WIDE board, Wendy Hartcourt decided to resign. Daily Visions asked her about her experiences with WIDE.


by Mirjana Dokmanovic


How do you see the development of the WIDE network?
WIDE started after the Nairobi World Conference in 1985. Since then WIDE has passed different phases. It started as an initiative of enthusiastic women who wanted to support each other. After getting funds from the EU and moving its office from Ireland to Brussels, its work has been more focused on EU policy. WIDE focused on economic and trade issues from a gender perspective, and more and more started to tackle feminist issues.

In your presentation on Situating Feminisms in Europe Today, you have stressed the importance of challenging mainstream development, to raise questions and rethink alternatives. Development as perceived and practiced by global corporate actors is not working for all people, and it increases gender disparities and fundamentalism.
How can women counter these negative tendencies?
Women should not only work in women's movements, but should get into positions of political power, to be present on decision making places. Additionally, it is important to question where the money for women’s rights is, and where the money for NGOs goes.
We also need to sharpen critical thinking of development issues. Integration of feminist economics analytical thinking would help to develop alternatives to neoliberal policies.
It is also important to engage with other social movements, such as the European Social Forum and the World Social Forum, in which male approaches prevails.
In my book Body Politics in Development, I wanted to be honest about what is going on behind the scene. Development is created in big UN and corporate meetings. It is not a democratic process at all.

What can WIDE do? What can we do?
WIDE will continue to do critical analysis, and also build the capacity of women. It is important to work on development from feminist perspective, to be included in the trade debate, and to exchange different experiences to understand how we can respond better. After this conference, we should continue our debate in order to foster developing alternatives for the sake of all women and more just world.


Wendy is the Editor-in-Chief and Senior Adviser of the Development Journal of the Society for International Development. Born Australian, she moved to Great Britain in 1985 to finish her PhD studies at Oxford University. She jointed WIDE at the early stages of this network, and was a member of its Steering Group from 1987 to 1995.

This article was published in Daily Visions 11-10-2008

Highlights from day one: EUROPE versus WOMEN, part one

When you want to change the world, the first question to ask is 'who makes the decisions?' During the first day of the Wide conference, Amandine Bach challenged the conference participants to find these (in)visible forces in Europe. In a heated debate, Bach kept returning to that one important question: 'How can we challenge the main policy actors that shape women's position?'


By Mirjana Dokmanovic

Finding the answers to this question is not an easy task. To start with, the participants of the Parallel Session 'Europe, Europeans & European global players of today in the context of globalisation' had difficulties on agreeing about the concept of 'Europe'. Keywords started to buzz around the room: Democracy! Human rights! Diversity! But also: Migrants! Sexism! Fortress! Consumerism! And not to forget, a hypocritical attitude of paternalism toward the South. Europe shows itself as a social democracy, but it cannot hide the fact that Europe is first and foremost market oriented, in which corporations play a crucial role.

The session participants identified corporations, governments, and citizens as angles of a triangular constructed Europe. These many faces of Europe bring both opportunities and threats. It enables economic development, but at the same time, it produces unemployment, insecurity and demands opening up national economies to big European corporate players in favor of very small elite.
So, how can we, as feminists, react?



This article has been published in Daily Visions 10-10-2008