Women, Gender, and Politics

N01 - Gendered Relations across Borders

Date: Jun 3 | Time: 08:30am to 10:00am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Khaoula Bengezi (York University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Luc Turgeon (University of Ottawa)

Volunteering Abroad from Home? Canadian International Development Volunteerism for Nepal during COVID-19: Shreya Ghimire (York University)
Abstract: International development volunteerism (IDV) continues to play a critical role in Canada’s development aid programming. In the aftermath of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the development sector adapted to international travel restrictions by offering Canadians online (rather than in-person) IDV placements. The nature and efficacy of these placements have yet to be addressed in the extant literature on IDV. To fill this gap, I examine the experiences of online volunteering via a sample of Canadian IDV placements drawn from Nepal. I analyze data from qualitative research interviews with Nepali development organization staff and Canadian volunteers to apprehend the characteristics of IDV during the crisis and interrogate how online placements resemble and depart from in-person ones. This paper offers a focussed intervention on a minimally-researched area within the IDV literature (Trifan & Dolezal, 2024), and—by conducting research with both Global North and South participants—seeks to correct tendencies in development studies scholarship to reify Global North/South and donor/recipient divides and neglect the relational nature of international development (Baillie Smith & Laurie, 2011). Moreover, while some scholars see potential in IDV to transcend the most bureaucratic, paternalistic, and economistic aspects of international development programming (Brown, 2018; Devereux, 2008), others highlight how IDV reinforces these dynamics and perpetuates unequal relationships between Global North volunteers and Global South partners (Schech et al., 2015; Tiessen, 2012). I adopt a feminist and critical humanitarian approach (Heron, 2007; Razack, 2004; Toomey, 2017) to the study of Canadian IDV programming to address this ambivalent space.

‘No Facilities for Women’: Examining the US Military’s Gendered Narratives on American Women War Correspondents on the Front Lines of the Korean War, 1950-1953.: Rebecca Crunden (Independant)
Abstract: This paper examines how US military officials in the early 1950s increasingly explained away women’s volunteer efforts in WWII as a temporary aid measure in extraordinary times and used this narrative to restrict and feminise women’s roles going forward despite opening up the military to women permanently in 1948. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, this gendered narrative of keeping women out of jobs ‘better suited to a man’ played a pivotal role in restricting American women’s access to, and participation in, the war effort. Female correspondents thus found themselves in the precarious position of not being part of the military whilst having to conform to their regulations. In examining the experiences of those women who managed to reach the front lines of the Korean War, we get a much more representative sense of how deeply the military used policy and imagery to shape and promote purportedly proper gender roles. The achievements of Marguerite Higgins, Pat Barham and Sarah Park – three of the mere handful of American women to even reach the warzone in Korea – illustrate at once the capabilities of female war correspondents while also demonstrating the lengths the US military used gender to delegitimise, constrain, remove or praise women in turn. By using a critical gendered analysis of the US military in the Korean War, this paper highlights the too often overlooked narrative within the US military of women correspondents’ roles at the time, the parallels this had to the broader attitudes within the American public towards working women, and ultimately illustrates how gendered discourse impacted military regulation regardless of how women conducted themselves and regardless of actual policy.