Rethinking organisations: a feminist perspective

Aruna Rao and Rieky Stuart

In April 1996,24 women and men from Asia, Africa, Latin and North America, and Europe met for five days in Canada, to share their experience of helping organisations, especially development organisations, to include women in their programmes, and ensure equitable power relations between women and men. This article gives an account of some of the ideas and observations about organisational transformation which emerged at this conference.

In the past few years, those of us who work in development organisations have seen a number of brilliant and extremely useful efforts by individuals, both women and men, which have made a difference for women. Each of us could identify programmes, projects, and initiatives that have been quite stunning in their impact. But our impression is that these successes, important as they are, have mainly been accomplished by individuals who are often swimming against the flow in their own organisation. They succeed in spite of, and not because of, the way their organisations work.

The writers of this article chose organisational transformation as a focus for the Canada conference, and for our wider work, because organisations are such important arenas of human engagement. Whether they are small NGOs, government departments, universities, or for-profit companies, organisations are fundamental features of our societies, and very important ways of mobilising social energy. We need to think more deeply about organisations themselves. Trying to 'add gender' into their structure and work is not enough; we need to understand and re-conceptualise what an organisation is, and then we need to reinvent organisations and institutions of all kinds in all our societies.

It became clear at the conference that what we are aiming at is organisational transformation. We are not talking about organisational development, nor about organisational change. In the case of development organisations, we mean including women as architects and designers of programmes, and as agents, managers, and beneficiaries; and reshaping social institutions and organisations to include men and women's varied perspectives. We want to move organisations in a direction that can accommodate, cherish, and foster the creativity and the productivity of women, men, young, old, people of colour, people of differing ability. We want organisations to incorporate goals and values that are life-affirming, human-centred, and justice -oriented. We need to challenge and change the 'deep structures' of the organisations in which we work.

Theory and methodology

There are two conceptual 'lenses' that we have found very useful in our work, both theoretically and practically. One is organisational theory. There is a body of knowledge about what organisations are, how they work, and how they change, that has not been generally incorporated by development practitioners, including gender and development practitioners.

The second conceptual lens is more familiar: the learning from feminist theory and practice, from Women in Development (WID) initiatives, and the learning from attempts to apply a gender perspective to development. Using these two lenses together is very helpful in identifying promising approaches to organisational transformation.

Images of organisations

At the Canada conference, we began by asking people to share with us their images of and metaphors for organisations. We wanted them to think holistically about what an organisation is.

Organisations as onions

We ourselves have worked with a very wide range of development and other organisations, including Northern and Southern NGOs, bilateral and multilateral organisations, and for-profit organisations. The image that captures our experience of introducing a gender perspective in organisations is the peeling of an onion. An onion must be peeled to release its flavour, yet the process brings tears; and as you peel, you encounter layer after layer. Recognising that organisations, too, have many 'layers', helps to explain why strategies and activities focused on a single layer of the organisation may be necessary but may not be sufficient.

For example, one of the approaches to change in organisations is by developing gender policies. Sometimes the policies look marvellous, and are very useful for public relations purposes. But often they don't have many plans or resources attached to them; they sit and gather dust on the shelves. A policy on affirmative action is necessary, but not sufficient. The actual number of women, or old people, or young people, or people of colour in an organisation is important but more important is how they think and what they do. Gender parity and meeting diversity quotas may not change power relations which are structured by gender, race or class.

Similarly, initiatives which address a single aspect of the ways in which the organisation fails to consider women are necessary but not sufficient. Simply performing a gender analysis is not enough. We can know how women in general or specific groups of women are disadvantaged, in the organisation itself and in its work, but if we lack the capacity to change the situation, organisational transformation will not occur.

A third example is the use of performance indicators. These, too, are necessary but not sufficient, if performance is measured solely in terms of counting inputs, and does not focus on outcomes or impact. One of the famous jokes at Canadian CIDA is the response of some engineers when asked about the differential impact of their highway construction project on women and men: 'well, women walk on roads too' (personal communication). Even gender training and sensitisation are necessary but not sufficient, if participants are unable or unwilling to apply their learning.

Organisations as icebergs

Another participant thought of organisations as icebergs: when you study an organisation, you may not see all that exists. Each organisation has unconscious or submerged values in its culture, and a history which influences its way of working. These unseen dimensions may move an organisation in a direction which you may not anticipate, if all you consider is what can be seen on the surface. In our discussions, we termed that which is not visible, 'deep structure'. In trying to transform organisations, we need to be more aware of what is unconscious or invisible, and what is conscious or visible, to resolve the tensions between the two.

Our first illustration of this comes from the findings of some work done in for-profit corporations in the US (Rapoport et al., forthcoming). This Ford Foundation-supported action-research carried out in three sites within the Xerox Corporation, Corning, and Tandem Corporations, used a work-family lens to introduce workplace innovations that helped to ease the personal situation of the employees while at the same time enhancing business goals. The research revealed that one set of characteristics and behaviour that was unconsciously valued in these organisations was heroism. A 'hero' — someone who will stay at the office working for 24 hours when the report is due, who can respond to an emergency and solve the problem — is noticed, has a high profile, feels valued, and is promoted.

In comparison, the report showed that skills such as preventing crises, building relationships, coordinating, thinking in advance, and helping things to move smoothly and calmly, were effectively invisible; they were undervalued, and not as likely to lead to promotion. The unconscious values, which reinforce 'heroic' behaviour and make the exercise of preventive skills invisible, are one example of what we called 'deep structure'.

Another example was given by a participant at the Canada conference. She told fellow participants that in her view, the visible purpose of the World Bank is development. But what is unacknowledged, is that the really important task is to move money — lots of it — on time. This is what people are rewarded for. Moving money on time and in big quantities may or may not be good development. There are tensions on many levels, including the amount of money that the multilateral agency thinks is appropriate to lend to a particular country, and the many definitions of 'good development' on the part of lender, beneficiary government, and NGOs of all kinds within the country (Conference, 1995).

A third example of the need to consider the deep structure of an organisation comes from the work we have been doing with BRAC, the well-known NGO in Bangladesh. A central goal of BRAC is the empowerment of the disadvantaged, particularly poor women. One of the ways this is put into practice is through a credit programme. The staff spend a lot of time giving out loans and collecting loan instalments, and this may occasionally be done quite coercively; coercion of poor women to make repayments is hardly empowerment. Thus, there is a tension between the espoused goals and values of the organisation and its way of working (personal experience, BRAC Gender Team, August 1996).

Focusing on three areas of deep structure

There are three areas of deep structure that participants believed to be of particular importance in looking at gender and organisational transformation.

The 'work:life' divide

First, in almost all organisations there is a dichotomy between paid work and everything else: family, community, life. Work is extremely important, both in the amount of time allocated to paid work, and in the meaning and shape it gives to people's lives. This is an aspect of modernisation that seems inseparable from organisations as we know them.

When we are at work, we are not supposed to be concerned with family or with community. When we look at an organisation's practice, we need to pay attention to evidence of expectations that staff should place their employment at the centre of their lives. This is very significant when trying to address gender inequality, because of women's current role as primary carers for the family.

The exercise of power

A second area of deep structure to look for concerns the practice of power. In almost all organisations, power is equated with control and hierarchy. One metaphor for this is to think of power as a pie: if I have more, you have less. The superior takes as much of the pie as he or she can get, and the subordinate has to be satisfied with less.

In examining this aspect of deep structure, one of the characteristics to look for is who has the information and how it is shared; organisations can spend a great deal of time worrying about information, because it is a source of power.

A different way of thinking about power is as something we can create, add to, and build on. Instead of seeing power as a finite resource, power is infinite. For example, parents have almost complete power over their small children. Parents do not necessarily feel, as the child grows up and becomes more powerful, that they become less powerful. If their goal is to raise children who are strong, independent, responsible, and capable, then accomplishing this enhances the parents' own social power and prestige. This view of power stresses it as a source of energy, which has to be distributed to be useful: a very different view from that prevalent in most organisations; however, some use this understanding of power when they talk about 'self-managing teams', or about 'mentoring'.

Foci and ways of working

A third area of organisational deep structure is what we are tentatively calling the 'monoculture of instrumentality'. What we mean by this phrase is the tendency of organisations to focus narrowly on a single purpose, and on one course of action to get there. These limited objectives, ways of working, and perceptions are often indicated by the presence of departmental 'silos' which try to exist as independently as possible. For example, in BRAC, we might say that the 'monoculture' of credit and meeting credit targets drives out an attention to broader aspects of women's empowerment. Yet achieving credit targets is not the only way to foster women's empowerment.

To have more complex objectives for organisations is more challenging but also richer. A corporation normally has one goal: to earn profit. Adding to that the goals of being a good corporate citizen, a good employer, and environmentally sound, greatly complicates how that organisation works. But it may also make it richer in many dimensions, including its long-term profitability. Attention to the balance between family and work, in the Ford Foundation study, for example, also resulted in increased productivity in several cases.

Another aspect of monocultural thinking is that rationality is the only aspect of human intellect which is appropriate to the workplace. In fact, people in organisations do not operate only on the basis of intellect, but on intuition, emotions, the ego, and complex individual needs.

While the visible structure uses the language of intellect, merit, and accomplishment for all organisational processes and products, what may actually be driving decisions and actions are emotions and needs such as the desire for status and power.

Finally, if an organisation thinks too narrowly or instrumentally about accomplishing stated goals, it may undermine its ability to achieve those goals. Even if organisations believe, for example, that diversity of thought and equity among different groups represented on the staff enrich the organisation, they often also fear that such diversity is costly. That cost they see as a distraction from the main enterprise of the organisation. What they do not often see is the reward: greater resources and perspectives to tap in order to cope with external change and tackle internal problems.

Promoting change in the deep structure

Participants at the Conference had various ideas about approaches that had the potential to change aspects of the deep structure of organisations, in terms of gender issues:

Linking feminist goals to organisational values

First, the feminist goals of social transformation need to be linked to the espoused values of the organisation. Positive change will not come about if there is no direct connection between women's empowerment, gender transformation, and the explicit values of the organisation. For example, in BRAC, the Gender Programme focused on the organisation's goal of poverty alleviation and women's empowerment by working on programme and organisational quality. This meant addressing a range of issues concerning programme effectiveness, organisational systems and cultures, and the ability of the organisation to retain greater numbers of qualified women staff, as well as fostering better working relationships between male and female staff.

If, however, an intervention is linked solely to the narrower objectives of an organisation — effectiveness of the credit programme, for example — there may be very real short-term gains, but there is a danger in the long run that the goal of gender equity will be disregarded because it is not congruent with the real business of the organisation. Most if not all not-for-profit institutions have socially laudable goals. Therefore, linking these goals with gender equity objectives becomes a matter of judgement and creativity on the part of the change agent, who needs to use a variety of strategies to build support for organisational transformation. Organisations which are not run for profit may couch their motivations in language which suggests a commitment to social transformation; this potentially provides a lever with which to work.

Understanding multiple perspectives

Secondly, it is critical to start from where people are. Strategies must be negotiated, and spaces for change must be sought. We are all familiar with the multiple meanings attached to the concept of 'gender', and the many implications of these for different organisational contexts, and for different people. We must negotiate with members of the organisations, and discover what they see the issues to be regarding gender.

There will be a variety of factors to consider: where to start, what level on which to begin work, which strategies might work, and what needs to be negotiated with the various groups involved. Clearly, elegant formulations and theories of gender relations and women's disadvantage (even useful ones), may need to be modified to focus on the particular requirements of the organisational context.