FP2P had its #MeToo moment in early 2018. On 10 January, I summarized a lecture by Stefan Dercon, outgoing DFID chief economist, to my LSE Masters students, which included a striking section on 'Big Ideals, Big Thinkers, Big Egos'.²³ Based on a briefing he gave to the incoming DFID Minister Justine Greening, he neatly summarized and critiqued the big-name authors in development economics (Sen, Sachs, Easterly, and co) that a UK Secretary of State was likely to have quoted at her. I thought it provided a useful set of ideas about the 'big names', and in particular the flaws and limitations in their arguments. The list had a heavy male bias—out of ten big names featured in his opening slide, only one (Esther

²² Available at https://www.spectator.co.uk/2012/02/big-charity/.

²³ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/10-top-thinkers-on-development-summarized-in-700 words-by-stefan-dercon/.

Duflo) was a woman, and even she is a co-author with her partner, Abhijit Banerjee, and Dercon also mentioned Dambisa Moyo in his wider list. I duly noted in my post 'who's he missed out? Can there really be so few women or people from the South among the top tier?'

Upon posting, it immediately became clear that it was going to get a lot of hits. When I tweeted the link, Alice Evans, a lecturer at Kings College and occasional FP2P contributor, tweeted '#sausagefest. Ignores so many, e.g. Merilee Grindle. Judith Tendler. Emma Mawdsley. Nancy Birdsall. Andrea Cornwall'. I invited Alice to write a riposte to Stefan's 'male gaze', which she duly did,²⁴ astonishingly in time to go up the next day. The two posts provoked enormous interest, and generated the most visits of any month on the blog (by a distance), but at some personal cost. Various commenters accused me of sexism, and the whole exchange became acrimonious and deeply upsetting. My conclusion? Controversy may generate clicks, but neither Oxfam nor my personality are well suited to it.

#### **Handing Over the Stick: #PowerShifts**

In April 2019, FP2P embarked on its biggest change of direction in its 11 years of existence. With a small amount of funding from two US foundations, it began a project to partially convert the blog into a platform for writing, opinions, and ideas from the Global South.²⁵ The project, subsequently named #PowerShifts,²⁶ partly responds to the *zeitgeist*—international NGOs like Oxfam are increasingly (often justifiably) criticized for failing to cede power and decision making to grassroots organizations and individuals in the Global South. It also partly reflects my own desire to try something new and challenging—after 10 years, the blog was becoming a little stale and repetitive, at least for its author.

#PowerShifts coincides with this moment of change and is being run by Maria Faciolince, a Colombian-Antillean anthropologist.²⁷ The project began as an attempt to 'hand over the mic' to more southern contributors, aiming to open up a space (this time within the development bubble) for ideas and perspectives that reframe the way we think and talk about development issues in diverse regions, and that shift power towards critical voices and people-led initiatives from the Global South. Putting the perspectives of people and communities with lived experience of any issue at the centre of the discussion is crucial for understanding it;

²⁴ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/the-perils-of-male-bias-alice-evans-replies-toyesterdays-sausagefest/.

²⁵ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/were-changing-up-fp2p-heres-the-plan-but-we-haventgot-a-name-yet-please-help/.

²⁶ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/category/power-shifts/.

²⁷ CV available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariafaciolince/?originalSubdomain=es.

our proposal is that we should be doing more *listening* instead of talking among ourselves.

Development itself as a concept and practice is deeply embedded in power relationships, involving issues of representation and the ways in which we produce and validate knowledge. So it was no surprise that featuring more critical perspectives from the South led to some fascinating engagement around complex topics concerning representation, genuine participation, and what solidarity can mean in future iterations of the development and aid system. Important discussions around the 'geopolitics of voice' have emerged, exploring not only what is being said, but who is being heard and how we're talking, to fundamentally challenge dominant notions of 'authority' and 'expertise'. For example, a collaboration with the (Silent) Voices collective at the Governance in Conflict (GIC) network from the University of Ghent on a series of blogs called the 'Bukavu Series', dealt with research ethics and the violence of academic knowledge production.²⁸

The standard approach to 'raising' or 'tapping into' unheard voices has been, by and large, dictated in a top-down way from the northern Anglosphere. Being aware of the nuances and complexity of this, #PowerShifts is an effort to rebalance some of the asymmetries that continue to characterize a large chunk of development communications, and start making these conversations more horizontal, democratic, and centred on justice. But it comes with more questions than answers. How do we engage in genuine participation and mutual learning, without tokenizing or limiting inclusion to a mere invitation to 'sit at the table'? How can we nurture a spirit of collaboration and horizontal co-creation? How can we ensure these conversations create ripples in spaces of action and strengthen efforts to tackle the blind spots in local and global development?

We have begun exploring some possible pathways of co-creation alongside collectives such as 'Convivial Thinking',²⁹ in the academic sector, networks of youth activists such as the 'Global Changemakers',³⁰ and movements working to redesign funding structures within the development sector like #ShiftThePower.³¹ These include thinking of ways to facilitate genuine participation and access, which involve coming up with new formats to have conversations online and in person, steering away from the written word, and co-posting on several platforms. This has involved not only creating more content, but also compiling links, stories, videos, interviews, and databases as a series of #PowerShifts resources on various topics,

²⁸ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/?s=bukavu.

²⁹ Available at https://www.convivialthinking.org.

³⁰ Available at https://www.global-changemakers.net.

³¹ Available at https://www.alliancemagazine.org/feature/shiftthepower-rise-communityphilanthropy/.

ranging from perspectives of climate justice from the Global South,³² to exploring tools such as collective mapping,³³ to topics like reclaiming representation.³⁴

The project is set to run for two years. Although at the time of writing, we are only six months into its work, it is getting a good response and already changing the nature of the blog. So far, out of the fifty-two new contributors, all come from the Global South, with half coming from Africa. Over two-thirds of them are female. The editorial make-up of the content has had feminism, inequality, and activism as the top three thematic areas, with over a third of the posts directly addressing critical issues to rethink development. We have also seen a huge increase in southern engagement compared with the previous 6-month period (September 2018–March 2019): readership from Africa has risen by 80 per cent, Asia by 15 per cent, and South America 16 per cent. In due course we will have to decide whether to spin it off as an independent site, continue it in some way, or incorporate it into the daily functioning of FP2P.

#### Encouraging Debate

Individually authored posts may receive comments from readers, but the power imbalance is decidedly asymmetric: the author gets more space, a privileged position (original posts are seen as weightier than comments) and (if the author is also the blog's curator) has the option of the last word. Debates *between* authors are much more horizontal, and often attract considerable interest. Debate formats enlighten big debates and policy issues and allow practitioners and academics alike to take a step back from day-to-day routine and reflect. This is useful in particular for those field/operational staff who often have little time to access information on them.

Two of the most successful debates on FP2P covered the role of evidence and results³⁵ and private vs public provision of education.³⁶ On evidence and results, two senior DFID figures, Chris Whitty (Director of Research and Evidence) and Stefan Dercon (Chief Economist) took on two prominent academic critics of the 'results agenda', Chris Roche (Latrobe University) and Rosalind Eyben (IDS). Both sides came out roughly equal in a subsequent reader poll. I summarized the debate and reader reactions with some difficulty, as my sympathies were with the critics, but I had to acknowledge that the supporters of the results agenda had had

³² Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/powershifts-resources-lessons-from-the-global-southfor-surviving-the-climate-crisis/.

³³ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/powershifts-resources-collective-mapping/.

³⁴ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/powershifts-resources-reclaiming-representation/.

³⁵ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/the-evidence-debate-continues-chris-whitty-andstefan-dercon-respond/.

³⁶ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/education-wonkwar-the-final-salvo-kevin-watkinsresponds-to-justin-sandefur-on-public-v-private-and-the-reader-poll-is-still-open/.

the best of the argument.³⁷ Writing the summary also highlighted the additional contribution made by the numerous comments (seventy-five in all, many substantial), which among other things, emphasized the gulf between the debates and what those in charge of gathering results in aid agencies actually face—highly constrained resources, crazy time pressure, and the overwhelming need to feed the aid machine with 'results'. On public vs private education provision, Kevin Watkins of ODI took on Justin Sandefur of the Center for Global Development through two rounds of erudite and occasionally bruising exchanges—one participant commented ruefully 'I hadn't realized blogging was such a blood sport'—generating fifty-six comments from a range of practitioners and academics.

Multi-author debates are time consuming to organize and to participate in they work best when contributors respond swiftly to each other, and to comments from readers, which requires freeing up a considerable amount of time. Experts are often reluctant to be pigeon-holed as 'for' or 'against' a particular position. There is a tendency for antagonists to caricature their opponents' arguments (straw men) and to use cheap debating shots to score points, in addition to more dispassionate argument. But done well, debates attract readers and can be excellent at highlighting and comparing the different arguments around an issue. Some of the most searching discussions however take place around book reviews, which are usually popular on FP2P (although I fear that is because they save people time reading the actual books). Back-to-back reviews of new books on developmental success in China³⁸ and Bangladesh³⁹ triggered a third post comparing the two,⁴⁰ and a debate involving both authors and readers on the nature of development in those countries and the lessons for others. This kind of exchange shows the value of blogging in turning reading books from a passive to an active process.

#### Blogging vs Other Representations of Development

Over the years, I have been involved in a range of different roles in aid and development—as an activist, journalist, think-tank writer, scholar, civil servant, NGO researcher, and advocate. Each has involved talking and writing about development in different ways to different audiences through different media. Of all these blogging stands out as a form of continuous engagement with a specialist audience, in which ideas and arguments can evolve and be sharpened over time.

³⁷ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/so-what-do-i-take-away-from-the-great-evidencedebate-final-thoughts-for-now/.

³⁸ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/book-review-how-china-escaped-the-poverty-trap-byyuen-yuen-ang/.

³⁹ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/book-review-the-aid-lab-understanding-bangladeshsunexpected-success-by-naomi-hossain/.

⁴⁰ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/two-top-authors-compared-hossain-on-bangladeshand-ang-on-china/.

The conversation can be searching and bad ideas can be easily shot down, as I found when I road-tested a 2×2 matrix on fragility and conflict in the final stages of writing a book, *How Change Happens* (Green, 2016).⁴¹ The 2×2 never made it into the final text. At the same time, writing *How Change Happens* also revealed some of the limitations of blogging. I initially thought that a book could emerge from the blog in an organic way, pulling together the archive on particular issues and polishing it into a chapter form. That approach rapidly crashed and burned as I went back to a more traditional research and writing approach, although I did publish the draft text on the blog,⁴² and got some useful commentary (and advance publicity).

But the conversation is undeniably asymmetric—in this field, the blogger presents themselves as an 'expert', or else no-one will click through. It also reflects the broader distribution of power and influence in both society and academia: most international bloggers on development are, somewhat paradoxically, 'pale, male and stale' (old white men), although national-level blogging is much more diverse. Although readership surveys suggest FP2P's readership is evenly divided between men and women, comments and guest posts tend to come from men.⁴³ Despite such flaws, blogging is often less asymmetric than journalism, film, or book-writing that allows little or no space for the 'consumer' to comment, or even academic exchange with students that are cowed by the power hierarchies within universities. This is particularly true when comments on a post take on a life of their own, with different commenters actively discussing a topic among themselves. Then a blog can come to resemble something more like a community of practice. In the words of one commenter on the draft of this chapter 'I've received emails from think tanks, researchers, academics, and students after engaging with your blog. So it helps me share my research, and build networks, despite being junior'.

#### **The Individual and Institutional Benefits and Challenges**

Writing, uploading, and managing several 1,000 word posts a week is a considerable personal and institutional commitment, but has brought significant benefits. At a personal level, writing a blog post forces you to clarify and nail down your analysis and opinion of the books, papers, or conversations that fill the day, and then test that analysis with a group of peers. Over time, posts become a cumulative

⁴¹ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/fragility-v-conflict-can-you-help-me-populate-a-new-2x2-please/.

⁴² Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/first-draft-of-how-change-happens-now-ready-anyonewant-to-read-it/.

⁴³ For discussions on gender and development blogging, see https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/whydo-so-few-women-write-or-comment-on-blogs/, and http://aidnography.blogspot.com/2012/03/iswriting-reflective-blogs-on.html.

archive of your work and thought, invaluable for responding to enquiries or overcoming memory loss. Emotionally, blogging is an antidote to the isolation that can accompany research. Professionally, a blog profile has proved an effective way to build a network. It has also stocked my bookshelves with free review copies.

Blogging is not for everyone of course. Conversations with Oxfam colleagues have shown that many find the informal tone and short format hard to manage my advice to would-be bloggers is to 'write like you talk', but that can be hard for those with a more academic background, or steeped in the rather formalized, 'broadcast' nature of NGO public communication (what development blogger Owen Barder caricatures as 'flogging not blogging').⁴⁴

Institutionally, Oxfam initially struggled with FP2P. NGOs have a default preference for personal anonymity and institutional control. The authorship of papers, if acknowledged at all, is buried in the small print. Egotism is frowned upon. Blogs, however, often benefit from having a personality and expressing doubt and ambiguity, asking questions rather than always claiming to know the answer. This makes institutional sign-off sometimes a contentious issue, especially when blogs depart from agreed institutional messaging, whether in tone or content, as it can create reputational risks (see 'Nairobi Swimming Pool'). Initially every FP2P post had to be signed off in advance by an Oxfam press officer. But as an early entrant to a relatively new field, the blog may have benefited from the lack of established procedures. After a few months, we agreed to abandon the practice (without telling anyone) and move from 'asking permission' to occasionally 'asking forgiveness' when I overstep the mark. My rule of thumb is that I should need to apologize once or twice a year—do so too often, and the blog risks being closed down; never get into trouble, and the blog is probably getting boring. The increasing institutionalization of social media in large organizations since then has probably made it harder for new blogs to improvise and evolve in this way.

As the readership built up, and anecdotal evidence of impact accumulated (for example in Oxfam's interactions with aid donors and governments), attitudes to FP2P became more positive. With many readers among staff in major aid institutions such as DFID and the World Bank, the blog provides an additional form of influence, alongside more formal channels of consultation, campaigns, and lobbying. As in academia, FP2P and other Oxfam blogs also play a useful role in boosting readership and downloads for its policy and research papers. World Bank research on economics blogging, published on the excellent LSE Impact blog⁴⁵ showed just how big the 'blogging effect' can be:

⁴⁴ Available at http://www.owen.org/blog/3150/.

⁴⁵ Available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/11/15/world-bankdissemination/.

Blogging about a paper causes a large increase in the number of abstract views and downloads in the same month: an average impact of an extra 70–95 abstract views in the case of Aid Watch⁴⁶ (now sadly defunct) and Chris Blattman,⁴⁷ 300 for Marginal Revolution,⁴⁸ and 450–470 for Freakonomics⁴⁹ and Krugman.⁵⁰ These increases are massive compared to the typical abstract views and downloads these papers get—one blog post in Freakonomics is equivalent to 3 years of abstract views! However, only a minority of readers click through—we estimate 1–2% of readers of the more popular blogs click on the links to view the abstracts, and 4% on a blog like Chris Blattman that likely has a more specialized (research-focused) readership.

Similar effects appear to be obtained from Twitter.⁵¹

But increased acceptance also brought new tensions to be managed, namely an urge to 'instrumentalize' the blog as a mouthpiece for the latest Oxfam policy paper or campaign. I cope with that by ensuring that Oxfam colleagues and papers regularly appear on the blog (after all, Oxfam pays my wages), but push (and support) authors not to write in the standard NGO finger-wagging style. Another tension surrounds 'snark' and conflict. Nothing attracts web hits like a good brawl, but neither I nor Oxfam are set up for this. My skin is too thin for the more brutal variety of exchanges on social media, and Oxfam needs to be careful not to alienate elements of its broad constituency. Even attempts at humour can be minefields: when over Christmas lunch, my team edited the ten commandments as if they had gone through Oxfam sign off,⁵² I was forced to apologize to the then Oxfam CEO for the offence caused (sample: 'You shall not commit adultery' [footnote: 'I know this represents something of a U-turn, but all this "you shall not" stuff goes completely against our new emphasis on positive frames; we have to transmit provocative optimism and possibility']).

In this respect, the existence of different blog formats may be important. Oxfam, like many NGOs, hosts a number of different blogs catering to different audiences. Compared to other NGO blogs, FP2P is unusual in being identified with a single author/curator, ranging widely in subject matter within a broad 'aid and development' envelope. Alternative formats include subject specific blogs, such as Oxfam's *The Real Geek* blog on issues around monitoring and evaluation, which has proved

⁴⁶ Available at http://www.nyudri.org/aidwatcharchive.

⁵¹ Available at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/05/18/who-gives-a-tweet-

860-downloads/. For other LSE Impact pieces on academic blogging see http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ impactofsocialsciences/?s=blogging.

⁵² Available at http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/christmas-special-what-happens-when-an-ngo-editsthe-ten-commandments/.

⁴⁷ Available at https://chrisblattman.com/.

unexpectedly popular.⁵³ One of NGOs' niches ought to be blogging 'from the field' in a way that communicates the reality of life in developing country communities to people who live elsewhere (mainly in rich countries). In practice, this has proved difficult. If these are crude 'thank you Oxfam for my new goat' type blogs, they probably won't reach many people—nuance and ambiguity is a good thing when trying to describe real life. But some of them can be extraordinarily powerful, like the blogs from Oxfam staffer Mohamed Ali during the Gaza blockade in 2009.⁵⁴

#### **Has Blogging Peaked?**

In September 2017, the most widely read of development bloggers, Chris Blattman, announced he was suspending operations.⁵⁵ Blattman made his decision due to writing commitments (a new book) and because 'few people read blogs anymore. Including me. I no longer feel the pressure to write often, because the person who comes directly to the page daily or weekly in search of something new is a dwindling breed. Most people reach blogs by Twitter and Facebook'. While it is not obvious why someone reading your post via Facebook should be any more or less of an incentive to keep writing than them coming directly to your website, it is likely that blogging, like other social media platforms, will have a finite lifespan. Bloggers falling by the wayside such as Blattman or Bill Easterly (who gave up blogging in 2011)⁵⁶ are not apparently being replaced by new names. Google Analytics suggests traffic to FP2P has levelled off, although it so far shows no sign of falling.

What is not clear, at least to this author, is what will replace it. Content remains king, and blogging generates the content that other social media (Twitter, Facebook) feed off. Possible new platforms to replace/complement written blogs include enhanced use of video and audio podcasts, moving from author-driven blogs to crowd-sourced question and answer formats such as Quora.com,⁵⁷ or even a retro return to personal email listserves.

In keeping with the FP2P ethos, I posted a draft of this chapter ⁵⁸ and received some excellent comments on the current state of blogging. One respondent who asked to remain anonymous observed:

I share your view that blogging enriches the discussion on development by being direct and conversational while bringing 'substance' and knowledge. In this

⁵³ Available at https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/topic/methodology/real-geek/.

⁵⁴ Available at https:// https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/harrowing-blogs-from-oxfam-staff-in-gaza/.

⁵⁵ Available at https://chrisblattman.com/2017/09/06/not-blogging-anymore/.

⁵⁶ Available at http://www.nyudri.org/aidwatcharchive/.

⁵⁷ Available at https://www.quora.com/.

⁵⁸ Available at https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/bloggings-getting-a-bit-old-whats-next-plus-my-firstvlog-for-your-ridicule/.

sense, blogging as a 'communication style' or 'modality' will not go away. It has actually contaminated the style of newspapers' articles and even the format of online newspapers—it is evident on media like *The Guardian*. What has however changed since the moment where blogs started to become successful in the mid-2000s is that nowadays the 'transaction costs' to open a blog are quite high. By costs I mean the investment needed to attract traffic to the blog. In a web much fuller of content—in particular commercial content—and where blogging has turned into a profession for some—with increasingly sophisticated strategies attracting readership is increasingly competitive for new entrants into the market. A blog—just like any other web product—needs a strong branding to be recognizable in the vast jungle of web content. But creating a brand from scratch is a costly endeavour. It is very unlikely that blogs in the future will act as aggregators of a community, like FP2P could do. Rather, a potential blogger now needs to feed off from an existing community or network. Hence the increasing popularity of platforms like Medium⁵⁹ that supposedly can help to draw traffic on one's articles by linking up with existing readerships interested in some topics. Overall my point is that FP2P's experience is not easily replicable nowadays. While blogging will not probably disappear soon—and organisations might wish to continue investing in it, exploiting their existing networks, for a number of reasons including those you highlight—individual blogs as platforms are likely to dwindle and maybe disappear.

Other commenters had similar concerns that blogs are losing their human, individual character as they become institutionalized: 'Blogs started off as a platform for individual expression, and are now being used by organisations for marketing (NGOs included).'

#### **Conclusion**

Oxfam's continued support for FP2P confirms my own opinion that blogging is a valuable addition to the repertoire of the public conversation on development and aid, enriching arguments and improving impact. It has the potential to put those interested in a given issue in more direct, disintermediated contact with others, while still retaining a place for knowledge and depth of analysis (unlike, say, Twitter). Although institutional cultures, whether in academia or aid institutions, often struggle to adapt to the rhythm and informality required by good blogging, both the wider evidence and my personal experience suggests the effort is worthwhile. I hope that this chapter makes that case, and offers some ideas for ways to strengthen the blogging culture in our organizations.

⁵⁹ Available at https://medium.com/.

#### **Acknowledgements**

I would like to thank Edward Bourque, Kevin Cook, Tobias Denskus, Alice Evans, Marı´a Faciolince, Greta Galeazzi, Matt Haikin, Patricia Lanigan, David Lewis, Amy Moran, Daniela Lloyd-Williams, Lucia Nass, Dennis Rodgers, and Michael Woolcock for their help with this chapter. Any errors are my own.

#### **References**

### **Playing for Change**

International Development and Digital Games

*Jolene Fisher*

#### **Introduction**

The first international development-oriented video game, *Food Force,* was launched in 2005 by the United Nations World Food Programme. The downloadable PC game, which was aimed at children ages 8–13, took players to a fictitious island to teach them about the challenges of addressing hunger crises through six different emergency-aid missions. *Food Force*, which was downloaded over 6 million times and played by approximately 10 million people, was considered a hit. Since then, over forty digital games have been created specifically as tools for international development.

These digital development games have been designed both to supplement and/or replace on-the-ground development projects in the Global South, and to raise support (both rhetorical and material) for development projects from audiences in the Global North. The latter type of game, which works to teach players what development *is* and *how* it should be accomplished, is especially of interest here. Like other mediated texts about development, these games have the potential to shape public discourse and support around development practice, perpetuating the growth of certain projects and approaches over others. But, unlike other mediated texts, the interactive nature of digital games can be used to allow players to feel they are actually part of the development process. Such was the case in the *Half the Sky Movement: The Game* (hereafter referred to as Half the Sky Game), which not only taught players about issues facing women and girls around the world, it allowed them to directly support various development projects aimed at addressing those issues through gameplay.

The Half the Sky Game, which ran from 2013–16, was one piece of the transmedia project the Half the Sky Movement, based on the book *Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide*, by journalists and husband and wife team, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009). The book, 'from two of our most fiercely moral voices', according to the jacket description, is a 'passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world' (see Half the Sky, n.d.). The authors' goal was to 'recruit' the reader into a worldwide movement to end what they refer to as the key moral challenge of our time.

But although the book reached many people (it was a national best-seller, was included on several 'Best Books of the Year' lists, and received broad mainstream media praise), Kristof and WuDunn wanted to find a way to reach 'beyond the converted'—the non-fiction reading, documentary watching, *New York Times* subscribing audience already alert to and interested in issues of global gender inequality. They found what they were looking for in a Facebook game that could capture a US-based, social-game playing audience, teach them about the issues facing women in the developing world, and present them with solutions that the players themselves could financially support. Over the course of three years, the Half the Sky Game brought in over 1 million players, raised just over US\$500,000 in sponsored and individual donations, and received numerous celebrity endorsements and media impressions. But what kind of development project was the Half the Sky Game engaging players in?

This chapter uses the Half the Sky Game as a case study to highlight the ways in which the narrative storytelling and procedural rhetoric of a game are used to frame for players a specific approach to development. In the case of this game, it is an approach based on empowering women in the 'developing world' via microfinance and small-scale business solutions. According to Kristof, bringing women and girls 'out of the margins, into the formal labor force' is the most important thing to do right now, at a global level (Lamont Hill, 2013). An analysis of the Half the Sky Game makes clear how the game works to teach players about the benefits of financial empowerment projects in an effort to turn them into 'hardcore activists' who would support the movement's cause through in-game donations.

But, while such an approach is in line with mainstream neoliberal development logic, it is at odds with feminist and critical development approaches, which argue financial-empowerment projects belie the structural changes necessary to actually end women's oppression and achieve gender equality. By situating this understanding of the game within the historical context of development discourse, it is clear how the game broadens the audience not only for the Half the Sky Movement specifically, but for a neoliberal approach to development more generally. Understanding what audiences are learning and supporting through digital development games like this one is an important area of study, especially as enthusiasm for digital games in international development continues to grow.

#### **Half the Sky Movement: The Game**

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn envisioned a digital game about women's oppression as a way to bring the ideas of the Half the Sky Movement to millions of people. According to a member of Games for Change, the New York-based nonprofit that directed the production of the game, Kristof and WuDunn 'kind of got infected with the virus of "Let's do games"'. They thought about it as a cool way to reach 'audiences that may not necessarily watch the [Half the Sky] documentary, or read [Kristof 's columns in] the *New York Times*'. A game would enable them to reach 'beyond the converted', as Kristof was fond of saying.

According to a member of the Games for Change team, what Kristof and WuDunn cared about most was reaching an audience in the 'West', because 'the way they think about change is first of all focusing on people in the US and Europe that could influence their government, that could contribute money … that's the whole way they think about it'. Thus, the game was designed specifically for a US-based audience that could provide both rhetorical and material support for the movement's projects. By designing the game for Facebook, the movement could encourage players to spread the word about what they learned and invite friends to join with them in the game as they take Radhika, the game's main character, on 'a journey from oppression to opportunity' (Half the Sky Trailer, 2013).

The Facebook platform also allowed players to donate directly to the Half the Sky Movement through in-game donations and purchases. The movement's ultimate goal was to convince players to engage in their specific brand of digital activism: 'We wanted to reach the widest audience possible, but turn a small percentage into real activists, into hardcore activists that would really make a difference in the real world by donating money,' said Asi Burak, president of Games for Change from 2010 to 2015 (Gamification Co., 2013).

The Half the Sky Game begins in India, where the player is introduced to the main character, Radhika. As the player progresses through the game, Radhika travels from her home in India to Kenya, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the United States. In each locale Radhika is introduced to new women and is tasked with helping them address the issues they face. She cannot travel forward in the game until she has unlocked the next location, accomplished via a series of factors that includes play-time and wait-time, task completion, in-game donations, and in-game purchases. After a minimal amount of play, players must either pay (via an in-game purchase) or wait 24-hours before continuing.

As the game progresses, the player has to complete various tasks. Some of these tasks involve built in mini-games, which mimic casual games like *Candy Crush* and ask players to connect a row of similar game pieces together; others involve narrative choices that determine the actions of characters in the game. Regardless of wait-time between sessions, it is often necessary to make in-game purchases (e.g. paying US\$2.00-\$5.00 to buy energy points) to continue gameplay. Thus, while the game appears to be free to play, only the first location, India, truly is.

The player quickly learns that Radhika is unable to afford medicine for her sick child and needs to find a way to earn money. As the player takes Radhika on her 'journey from oppression to opportunity' she regularly encounters a development narrative of self-help and economic empowerment. Radhika must find ways to earn money and support herself by selling mangoes in the market, applying for a microcredit loan, and buying a goat and selling its milk.

The player gets the chance to see Radhika pursue non-economic activities in India as she works on her reading skills with her children, volunteers at a local clinic, and joins a women's empowerment group; but the game's emphasis quickly returns to the topic of financial empowerment. For instance, the members of the women's empowerment group that Radhika joins are happy to have her there not only because they 'value their time together', but because now they will have the necessary number of people to secure a micro-loan, which Radhika will use to add a room onto her home.

Once Radhika has helped herself, she is able to support other women in her community and beyond. She begins by helping a young woman named Malika avoid early marriage by convincing her to join the women's empowerment group. At her first meeting, Malika is told to go and gather seeds from the forest that she can sell for money. Because Malika has done well, Radhika gives her a gift of money which Malika uses to take computer classes so she can better track her inventory and customers. Once Malika has proven her productive value to her family, they agree to let her postpone her marriage.

Radhika eventually leaves India in order to help women in other countries. In Kenya she helps a group of nurses decide if they will sell mosquito nets or give them away for free. She also works to organize a community discussion on gender and family planning after a local football match, but she is run out of town by an angry mob before the talk can occur. In Vietnam she helps buy back a young woman who was forced into sex trafficking, and she weaves fishing nets to sell to raise money for a community centre for trafficked girls. Interestingly, Radhika must compete against another woman in town who is already making and selling fishing nets in the community. In a meeting between the two women, Radhika gladly takes her on, noting that *her* nets will be the best one can buy. She soon makes a trip back home to India where she joins a friend in a new business venture making beaded clothing. Next, she's off to Afghanistan to help a group of women start a local newspaper and to organize them around a vote for women's right to own property. However, the vote fails and the player learns that political change is a long and cumbersome process.

When a woman back in India asks Radhika how she is able to travel the world and make 'big money', Radhika describes her hard work and sacrifice as 'the only solution'. Radhika is encouraged to run for local office and she tells her friends from the empowerment group that as part of her platform she will work to back microfinance and micro-saving initiatives in order to 'give everyone the opportunity I was given'. When asked to give a speech at the United Nations, Radhika discusses the oppression she has seen and the opportunities brought about when we invest in women to ensure they are healthier and smarter. While in the US, Radhika learns

that sex trafficking is a globally connected issue: not only does she meet victims from the US, she discovers that the girl she helped save in Vietnam has been sent to New York by traffickers. She encourages the victims to learn skills and empower themselves as she did.

As the game progresses, so does Radhika's capacity to solve more problems, both for herself and for others. Throughout the game, Radhika helps a variety of women, and some men, with a range of problems. The solution to these problems generally comes in one of three forms: individual economic empowerment (e.g. sell seeds, start a business); non-financial material resources (e.g. mosquito nets, cook stoves); and cultural or political change (e.g. family planning conversations, a vote to allow women to own property). In the course of the game, however, only the individual economic empowerment solutions and the non-financial material resources solutions prove consistently successful.

Throughout the game there are instances in which Radhika takes a political stance in an attempt to enact broad social change. This is seen specifically in her efforts to host a community conversation around family planning, in her campaign to run for local office, in her support for a law allowing Afghani women to own property, and in her speech at the United Nations. Although the importance of political organizing is presented to players through Radhika's successful run for office, the only outcome of her achievement comes in the form of speeches—one is on the importance of micro-lending practices, the other, at the UN, focuses on her own story of changing her life through hard work. Further, two of these cultural/political change solutions—hosting a community discussion around family planning and birth control in Kenya, and having a vote on women's right to own property in Afghanistan—are total failures. In the first, Radhika is run out of town before the discussion can take place, and in the second the vote does not pass. The player is shown the successful potential of community organizing when Radhika convinces others in her home town to join with her and take to the streets to protest against violence against women, which results in the arrest and imprisonment of a rapist. But more often players see that this approach does not result in successful outcomes.

Alternatively, the scenarios that involve financial empowerment always prove successful and lead to great gain for women at a variety of levels. It is through economic solutions (convincing other women to get a loan, going into business with them, selling a goat to them) that Radhika is able to most effectively help the women around her. While Radhika participates in a variety of activities, some of which bring groups of women together to fight for change in nuanced ways, the moments of actual change in the game—when the female players successfully transition from 'oppression' to 'opportunity'—are predicated on financial gain. Unlocking her own earning potential and building up a small business allowed Radhika to change her own life, and it is the key she presents to others along the way. Whether it is selling one of her goats to a pregnant woman in the market so that she too can make money off of its milk, helping her friend start a business beading clothes and employing other women in the village, or helping a young woman collect seeds and take a computer class to grow her profits, Radhika helps other women move towards the same path to empowerment and opportunity—one focused on individual economic gain via individual effort.

The game provides players with information on global issues the Half the Sky Movement has identified as key to women's oppression, such as the number of women living in poverty and the number of people infected with HIV. Yet there is little given in the way of context: the women facing these issues are in India, Kenya, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the US, but there is no explanation of regional differences regarding these issues; or of why certain women are in poverty while others are not; or how historical and current political and economic processes have impacted such issues. The player might gain a better sense of scale regarding the issues identified, but what she is unlikely to come away with is an understanding of the role asymmetrical North/South power structures play in contributing to the oppressive reality of women and exacerbating issues of inequality. Moreover, the game fails to provide any discussion of the well-documented negative effects of micro-lending practices, especially as they relate to women, as will be examined in a later section. Instead, micro-lending is presented as a critical component of women's empowerment.

#### Empowering Players

Thanks to the movement's professional marketing campaign, celebrity endorsements, and help from gaming giant Zygna (which included the game on its scrolling Z-Bar), one month after its release the Half the Sky Game's Facebook page had brought in 1,487,306 views and 547,511 people had installed the game. Although the Half the Sky Game eventually brought in over 1 million players, only a few thousand actually played the game all the way through. Thus, the majority of players only encountered the early storylines in the game, almost all of which are based on economic empowerment. The idea of political organizing and group action for social change, which comes much later in the game, would never be encountered by most. Instead, players would leave the game with a positive narrative of micro-lending and small business ventures as key to women's empowerment.

But money doesn't merely drive the storyline forward—it drives the gameplay itself.Without making a financial contribution via in-game donations or purchases it becomes impossible to continue to play. Players automatically unlock sponsored portions of a US\$500,000 donation by Johnson&Johnson and the Pearson Foundation simply by playing the game. But, they are also asked to facilitate the game's so-called 'virtual-to-real-life translation' by contributing personal donations to the game's non-profit partners. For instance, after Radhika prospers from buying a goat and selling its milk, the player is asked to help a woman in real life by purchasing a goat through Heifer International. WuDunn points to this as the 'social impact element' of the game: 'You aren't playing just for fun. You actually can have an impact' (Lamont Hill, 2013). According to WuDunn, the game has 'actually married the problems with the solutions', so players don't simply learn what is wrong in the world, they also learn how to fix it and are given direct access to act on that knowledge (Lamont Hill, 2013). By making a game for Facebook, the movement was able not only to access a new audience; they were able also to use that audience's playtime to generate real funds for their NGO-led projects.

As Kristof emphasized in an interview with HuffPo Live, a Facebook game is 'a very low barrier way to expose yourself to the issues' (Lamont Hill, 2013). The game creates an opportunity for engagement that requires little change in behaviour (in terms of time, money, energy, etc.) on the side of the player. And the players, most of whom were women in the US between the ages of 18 and 34, loved how easy it was to feel like they were doing good simply by playing the game. On Facebook, a player chosen to test the beta version of the game pre-launch wondered if this kind of easy impact could be real. Her post reads:

Hi guys. Is this for real??? Did I really just do this??? I've read all about the movement, etc. but by me playing a game, a school really receives one book??? Even if I don't have actual money to donate, myself ? Sorry for being so skeptical, but it seems too good to be true. If this is the case … I guarantee you on March 4th, I will be spreading the word about this game.

For many players, the game was all about 'Unlocking donations by playing, and reminding myself how much help others need in the world'. Once players have provided financial support to the movement, either by unlocking sponsored donations through gameplay (which happens early on in the game), or making in-game donations and purchases, they often felt a sense of action and empowerment at having helped a 'real-life woman' in the Global South. As one player said on Twitter, 'I donated a book (for free!) to @RoomtoRead by playing for a short period of time. So empowering'. Other players on Twitter called the game 'an easy and fun way to create change', a way to make a 'real difference', a game that 'Empowers Women & Donates to Charity', a 'great way to make money for social causes', and 'something you can do right now … to help real-world women'. One player posted a screen shot from the game that read, 'You've reached the rank of community advocate!' with the added text, 'What I achieved last night before bed'.

But even when players didn't expect such direct real world impact, simply playing the game provided a sense of catharsis. In a Facebook post about her favourite in-game quest, saving a girl from a brothel, one player recounts that:

It was my favorite because those chapters in the book affected me so much. I wanted to help every girl and woman whose stories were told, but I really wanted to go out and rescue every single girl in every brothel and give her shelter and education and love and safety. I know that I didn't actually rescue anyone in the game, but … I don't know, I just felt better afterwards.

In the end, the opportunity the game presented to easily engage in the development process and participate in empowering women-in-need was well received by players.

The game engaged players in what Dingo (2012) refers to as the 'mega-rhetoric of empowerment'—a mainstreamed, naturalized discourse, in which it is assumed that women's empowerment is equal to women's financial security. Because the player has given money (either by directly donating funds herself or by unlocking material goods and services through gameplay) she can 'simply forget about the broader context of poverty and feel assuaged by his or her action' (Dingo, 2012: 177). But if the solution to women's empowerment is indeed financial support generated through gameplay, there is little reason to consider broader political action once this support has been given. Nor is there reason to critically consider the implications of the player's position within an asymmetrical global system. Instead, the positioning of the game player supports a hierarchy of expertise, power, and agency, which rests with the women who have the access, resources, and skills to play the game, and which constructs them as most capable of directing and impacting the lives of women throughout the Global South. In the game, individual players are asked to join in on the development process by generating the investments that will allow for the empowerment of women and girls in the real world. Players can help Radhika and real women get money and goods by donating directly to the nonprofits featured in the game, or by purchasing in-game goods necessary to continue gameplay. This emphasis on individual aid from those in the Global North aligns nicely with a broader neoliberal development agenda that 'reduces social change to entrepreneurship in a market-based system, and civic involvement and voice to clicktivism' (Wilkins and Enghel, 2013: 169).

The discourse around poor women and market participation that players learn and support through the game is not new. It is, in fact, reflective of the mainstream discourse within both the development industry and the corporate social responsibility field that promotes 'Gender Equality as Smart Economics'. This line of thinking advances a 'neoliberal economic policy agenda characterized by market fundamentalism, deregulation and corporate led-development' (Calkin, 2015; 296), while doing little to question or dismantle global and local power structures that create and reinforce gender inequality. Such a discourse shifts the responsibility of individual, communal, and even national level development directly onto poor women (Wilson, 2015). In this context, challenging issues of gender inequality, specifically the rates of poverty facing women in the developing world, is most effectively achieved through individual effort, self-help programmes, microcredit loans, and small business ventures—all of which the game reinforces.

The problem, of course, is that when the concept of individual empowerment is emphasized above all else, the constraints that social inequalities place on achieving individual success are erased, creating a depoliticized approach that supports a 'neoliberal project, in which market-based exchanges are assumed to be beneficial without serious critique' (Wilkins and Enghel, 2013: 170). To better understand this narrative of financial empowerment and gender equality seen in the game, the Half the Sky Movement must be situated within broader development discourse. The following section outlines the contemporary moment in which the game was conceived, and the historical context of gender and development that led to it.

#### **Women's Empowerment and Neoliberal Development: The Game in Context**

When Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn published their book, *Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide* in 2009, it quickly became a best-seller. The book—which highlighted issues facing women across the 'developing world'—received tremendous praise from readers, mainstream media outlets, celebrities, and key names in the world of international development scholarship (see for instance Nussbaum, 2009). The authors also received substantial backlash on a variety of issues, from the book's paternalism to its voyeurism (see North, 2012 for a round-up of critical voices). But praise and book sales outnumbered the critiques, and Kristof and WuDunn became prominent faces in the fight to empower women and girls on a global scale.

The year 2009 also saw the induction of Hillary Clinton as the United States Secretary of State. For Clinton, empowering women and girls was a central tenet of American foreign policy. As Clinton often noted, 'Putting women and girls at the center of our foreign policy is not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do' (Fleischman, 2014). By the mid-2000s, a similar focus was taking shape within a range of US-based social corporate responsibility departments, private foundations, nonprofits, and governmental organizations.

#### Gender Equality as Smart Economics

Empowering women and girls would come to be seen as key to solving a wide range of development problems, and the approach to empowerment set forth in these programmes—based on skills training, education, and microfinance created strong ties between development projects and the corporate sector. As a 2013 report by the Association of Women in Development notes, within funding

for women's rights three trends have emerged: a focus on empowering women and girls (at least rhetorically); the rapid growth of private corporations and foundations as development funders; and a general corporatization of development agendas (Arutynova and Clark, 2013).

This focus on empowering women and girls built, of course, on decades of work around issues of gender equality within the international development industry. Beginning with the push for the inclusion of women that led to the Women in Development (WID) movement of the 1970s—and later the Gender and Development (GAD) paradigm, a response to and critique of WID—the role of women and girls in international development would become a key point of discussion (although actual support for gender projects would remain limited). By the release of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 (in which promoting gender equality and empowering women was goal number three of eight) women and girls had become integral to the concept of development.

After years of sharp critique from feminist and other critical scholars on the failures to include women in development planning and projects (Boserup, 1970; Spivak, 1988; Mohanty et al., 1991; Cornwall et al., 2007;) the newfound focus on policy around women and girls would seem to be a victory. However, as Calkin (2015) noted, 'these ostensible gains require close feminist scrutiny because much of the gender equality policy discourse is so closely tied to the advancement of a neoliberal economic policy agenda characterized by market fundamentalism, deregulation and corporate-led development', a process that does little to achieve gender equality, and instead deepens it for its own gain (p. 296).

In 2006, the World Bank unveiled a new slogan for its gender and development approach: 'Gender Equality as Smart Economics.' The slogan epitomizes the framing of women and girls as an 'untapped resource' in development, emphasizing a return on investment in the form of economic growth to be made when women are given the resources necessary to access and participate in the global marketplace. Wilson (2015) argued that the notion of Smart Economics is 'premised on the assumption that women will always work harder, and be more productive, than their male counterparts; further they will use additional income more productively than men would' (p. 807). Thus, investing in women (in the form of skills training and micro-loans to be used towards small business ventures) and young girls (in the form of education as a precursor to employment) is seen as good business.

A range of private corporations and public institutions have since taken up a 'business case for gender equality', and numerous empowerment projects have been created through partnerships between nonprofit organizations and corporations, the numbers of which continue to grow (Calkin, 2015). Two prominent examples are The Girl Effect, launched in 2008 by the Nike Foundation, and the 10,000 Women initiative, launched in 2008 by Goldman Sachs. For large corporations looking to 'do good while doing well', investing in women and girls presents an appealing opportunity: these types of empowerment projects are seen as 'straightforward transactions, a matter of putting money directly into the hands of women and girls, training them in the arts of the market, and watching them flourish as they lift their families, communities, and national economies', all the while creating new markets and new sources of corporate profit (Cornwall, 2014: 131). But linking women's empowerment to women's market participation shifts the burden of responsibility for poverty alleviation onto these women, challenging and oppressing them in new ways, while a global market system deepens the divide between the haves and the have nots (Kabeer, 1994; Alvarez, 1999; Aguilar and Lacsaman, 2004; Karim, 2011; Wilson, 2015).

The Smart Economics approach is fuelled by a discourse on the underutilization of women's entrepreneurial potential. This framing of women is accomplished through 'an assemblage of transnational policy discourses, novel corporate investment priorities, biopolitical interventions, branding and marketing campaigns, [and] charitable events designed to produce a social movement for change and designer goods' (Koffman and Gill, 2013: 84). As outlined in the previous section, the Half the Sky Game works to further this discourse by calling on game players to support, both rhetorically and materially, an approach to women's empowerment built on individual economic gain.

This specific type of empowerment process calls on global corporations and already empowered individuals in the Global North—in this case, the game players—to invest in women and girls. But once they have made that initial investment, 'responsibility shifts entirely onto the individualized figure of the girl, as "she will do the rest"' (Wilson, 2015: 819). Such a framework ensures that critiques of global systems of power, and the disruptions that lead to global economic crises like the one seen in 2008, are made irrelevant (Wilson, 2015). Further, the role of capitalism and globalization in burdening women in the Global South, including the ways in which a focus on women's labour creates the flexible, low-wage labour markets necessary for the accumulation of global capital, is glossed over (Aguilar and Lacsamana, 2004; Pearson, 2005; Wilson, 2015).

The use of micro-finance as a path towards women's market participation is glorified within the game and within the broader discourse around women's empowerment. And yet, an extensive body of academic research illuminates the ways such a system oppresses women in the developing world, often benefiting the middle class at the expense of the poorest (Mayoux, 2010; Karim, 2011; Wilson, 2015). As Wilson (2015: 809) stated, 'microfinance epitomizes the neoliberal focus on the individual, and on moving up hierarchies rather than collectively challenging or dismantling them'. This in turn weakens potential solidarities across class and gender; and reinforces the idea that responsibility for poverty alleviation rests with individual, poor women rather than large institutional bodies and/or the state.

Further, the broad generalizations made about the positive relationship between economic growth and gender equality seen in the Smart Economics discourse is inaccurate at best and dishonest at worst. The relationship between the two is 'mediated by a variety of contextual factors' (Kabeer, 2016: 295). And while there have been numerous studies citing the benefits of gender equality for economic growth, 'reverse findings relating to the impact of economic growth on gender equality are far less consistent', and are found generally only in high-income countries (Kabeer, 2016: 299).

The Smart Economics framework presents a form of empowerment that actively works to 'train and shape bodies for particular forms of economic agency and participation' (Calkin, 2015: 302). It further works to 'actively reinforce and extend, existing patriarchal structures and gendered relationships of power' (Wilson, 2015: 808). As the model neoliberal subject 'is one who strategizes for her/himself among various social, political and economic options, not one who strives with others to alter or organize these options', a discourse like the one seen in the Half the Sky Game is useful for the expansion of a global market-based system, for it teaches players to expect women to work within the system, rather than ask players to critique the system itself (Brown, 2003: 15).

Bringing women and gender into the development discourse has been an arduous task, and the mainstream focus on gender inequality and issues facing women is something to celebrate. However, the current neoliberal discourse around women and girls is used to 'legitimize harmful neoliberal economic policies, empower corporate actors in the governance process, compound the invisibility of social reproduction and close off space for resistance by anti-capitalist feminists' (Calkin, 2015: 305). Such a discourse fails to question asymmetrical North/South power structures and economic flows that contribute to the difficult reality of women in the Global South. Women's inequality, instead of becoming a challenge to a system that is inherently unequal, is depoliticized and used to promote new market subjects (Elson, 1995; Karim, 2011).

#### Games as Ideological Tools

Through the creation of development oriented games like the Half the Sky Game, organizations are adding a new text to the discourse about development—framing for players how development should be carried out, on whom it should focus, and what the end goal should be. From a game studies perspective, video games are a perfect tool for generating and distributing such a message (Dovey and Kennedy, 2006). In creating the software for games, producers, designers, etc. construct realities for players that are filled with the value systems, world views, and norms of the designer, whether embedded in the games intentionally or not (Flanagan, 2006). The idea that technological systems, devices, and artefacts are value-laden is not new, or exclusive to games (Winner, 1977; Hughes, 1983; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; Latour, 1987). But games are an especially pertinent area of study as game designers, through the production of software, are 'in essence creating worldviews and worlds' that they ask players to interact with (Flanagan, 2006: 493). Further, embedding ideologies in games works well as players are called on to take them up via the specific subject positions constructed through virtual play. These virtual subject positions create a subtle, 'more flexible order where users of their own initiative adopt the identities required by the system' (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009: 193).

Considered 'the media of Empire' in the twenty-first century, games often work in favour of global hypercapitalism as digital gameplay 'trains flexible personalities for flexible jobs, shapes subjects for militarized markets, and makes becoming a neoliberal subject fun' (Dyer-Witheford and De Peuter, 2009, xxix– xxx). In the case of the Half the Sky Game, it is about teaching players the benefits of neoliberal development and training them to appreciate and support such projects. In this way, games have the potential to 'shape work, learning, health care and more', including the field of international development (Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014: 3).

Game studies scholars argue that a textual, critically oriented analysis of games is necessary (Bogost, 2006; Flanagan, 2006; Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014; Fernandez-Vara, 2015). And an analysis of the ideological framing of development in digital games is necessary as a continued critique of the broader international development industry discourse (Escobar, 1984; Wilkins, 1999). Development oriented games, like any other mediated development narrative, work within a broader development discourse to frame our understanding of the field both in terms of the pertinent issues that should be addressed by the development industry and the best (or possible) solutions to them (Arce, 2003). This framing has important implications for the types of development projects carried out, the types of policies supported, and the kinds of solutions that gain acceptance (Hajer, 1995; Cornwall et al., 2007). As Cornwall et al. (2017) argued, 'The struggles for interpretive power are not struggles to get the language and representations right for their own sake, but because they are a critical part in the determination of policy' (p. 17). As seen in the analysis of the Half the Sky Game, digital development games work in favour of particular kinds of solutions, and they engage players in building direct support for them.

While players might have encountered a similar narrative of women's empowerment in other spaces, the Half the Sky Game is the first to present this discourse directly to a social-media gaming audience. Further, it is the first to link gameplay directly to the material support of these types of empowerment projects: players unlock sponsored donations simply by playing and are encouraged to make individual donations as part of the game's so-called virtual-to-real-world translation. Thus the game emphasizes both the importance of economic gain for women in the Global South and the need for economic support from women in the Global North. Approaches to empowerment that focus on financial exchange between individuals in the Global North and Global South reinforce the 'notion of personal agency and monetary exchange over a broader feminist understanding of the transnational contexts that make donations, charity work, and development programs in the first place' (Dingo, 2012: 177).

While the game narrative touches on a variety of gender related issues and presents the player with nuanced moments that begin to hint at the complexity of systemic problems like poverty and gender based violence, the overarching ideology embedded in the game is built on an approach to individual empowerment in which one must overcome structural, cultural, and personal barriers to achieve economic gain. The game was designed specifically to take this message 'beyond the converted'—to bring the issues of the Half the Sky Movement to an audience unfamiliar with them, and to directly connect solutions to problems so that players gain not only an understanding of what is happening in the world, but also a clear sense of what needs to be done to address the issues.

#### **Conclusion**

Despite over a decade of use, digital games are represented as innovative, revolutionary tools in popular discussions of development and social change. This framing of games is not unlike the narratives around Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) that positioned them as a 'magic solution' for development (Ogan et al., 2009: 667). Yet little research has actually examined the type of development these games support. As the global Serious Games industry—of which digital development games are a part—continues to grow rapidly (with a projected market value of US\$5 billion by 2020) we need to ask not whether development-oriented games are changing the world, but what type of change they encourage.

In the Half the Sky Game, and others like it, players are presented with an opportunity to feel they are engaging directly with the process of development: through gameplay, they learn that important gains are made when women participate in economic activities, and that such participation brings positive outcomes not only for the woman herself but for her community and the world at large. Further, players are able to generate material support for similar real-life projects by unlocking sponsored donations and contributing their own funds to the Half the Sky Movement. As such, the Half the Sky Game presents a novel way both to teach audiences about development and to encourage their participation in the process through individual aid.

However, as outlined in this chapter, the narrative that the game reinforces a mainstream, neoliberal approach to development that frames poor women as responsible for overcoming social, cultural, and economic obstacles in order to change their lives for the better—has negative implications for poor women in the Global South as it works to erase the root causes of inequality while framing women as an 'untapped resource'. Through the narrative of self-help and individual empowerment, the burden placed on poor women is increased.

Thanks to its Facebook-based game, the Half the Sky Movement was able to extend this narrative to 1 million gameplayers, as well as countless others who read the many media stories about the game. While the game was less than successful in turning gameplayers into 'hardcore activists' who would willingly donate their own money to the cause (only 10 per cent of all donations came from individuals), players were enthusiastic about the opportunity to support this brand of women's empowerment simply by playing.

Future research in this area should continue to give critical attention to the development ideologies embedded in games, as they are a growing channel for distributing development messages to a broad audience. But the political economic implications of the production of digital games for development should be examined as well. Thus far, the majority of digital development games have been created and supported by development institutions and commercial gaming companies situated in the Global North. As smaller game industries emerge throughout the world, it will be necessary to examine the ways in which production, knowledge, and technology hierarchies are disrupted, or reinforced.

#### **References**

### **Women Saving the World**

#### Narratives of Gender and Development on Global Radio

*Emily Le Roux-Rutledge*

#### **Introduction**

According to media scholar Marshall McLuhan, 'radio affects most people intimately, person to person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer and listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio—private experience … [It has the] power to turn the globe into a single echo chamber' (1964: 137). Not surprisingly, radio has long been used as a tool for development, including 'big D' development—the intentional practice of intervention in countries to achieve improvements or progress (Hart, 2001). This is true not just in those countries that we today think of as 'developing', but in 'developed' western economies as well. At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example radio was used in the United States to broadcast information to farmers and people in rural areas on topics such as weather, soil conditions, and crop prices (Hilliard, 2003), just as in the UK the BBC radio drama *The Archers* was used to deliver educational information to farmers in the 1950s about how to increase food production in post-war Britain.¹

#### **Radio and Development**

Although most radio stations in high-income countries today are primarily devoted to playing popular music in order to attract an audience and sell advertising, in low and lower-middle income countries radio is still a vital source of information (Hilliard, 2003; Locksley, 2009). It is more readily available than other forms of media; it is pervasive, portable, inexpensive, and efficient; and, unlike the internet, it can be easily understood by those with low levels of literacy (Manyozo, 2009). At least 75 per cent of households in so-called developing countries have

¹ Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5xGwGj4NgfGRJ1B2mFqg6QM/ frequently-asked-questions.

Emily Le Roux-Rutledge, *Women Saving the World*. In: *New Mediums, Better Messages?*. Edited by David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers, and Michael Woolcock, Oxford University Press. © Emily Le Roux-Rutledge (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198858751.003.0008

access to radio,² making it a preferred communication channel for organizations undertaking communication for development in many parts of the world.

Not all radio has equal reach, however. Radio stations range from the local to the global. At the local level, community radio is one kind of radio that has been particularly embraced by international development organizations and practitioners. It first took off in Latin America, later gaining ground in South East Asia and Africa (Manyozo, 2009). Indeed, since the 1990s, the number of community radio stations in the non-industrialized countries of Latin America, Africa, South and South East Asia, and the Pacific has exploded, with community radio growing faster than either state or commercial radio. In Africa, for example it grew, on average, 1,386 per cent between 2000 and 2006 (Myers, 2011).

Community radio is radio produced by a community, for a community, with 'community' meaning either a geographically bounded community, or a community of interest. Community radio stations are supposed to be not-for-profit, located within the communities they serve, and owned by those communities. Typically, community members who have been trained in radio production produce most of the content, and audience participation features prominently (Myers, 2011). Community radio stations are, however, often set up and funded by international NGOs, giving such NGOs a stake in the stations and the content they broadcast (Manyozo, 2009). Many stations even devote a portion of their broadcast to pre-packaged content made directly by international NGOs (LeRoux-Rutledge, 2007; LeRoux-Rutledge et al., 2011). These stations must walk a fine line between pleasing their NGO funders, and pleasing their local audiences (Manyozo, 2009; LeRoux-Rutledge, 2020). Because community radio has been seen by NGOs as a tool for development, it has been the subject of much scholarship and scrutiny within the international development field (UNESCO, 2001; Fraser and Restrepo-Estrada, 2002; Manyozo, 2009; Myers, 2011).

Far less attention has been paid, however, to global radio—transnational, publicly funded radio services, such as the BBC World Service or Voice of America, designed for an international audience (Street and Matelski, 1997). This may be because such radio services are not seen as actively contributing to 'big D' Development—although parts of them do. BBC Media Action, the BBC's international NGO, for example, has an explicit 'big D' Development remit to produce programmes on particular development issues in particular countries (Skuse et al., 2011).³ However, much of what the BBC World Service and other transnational radio services broadcast is not designed to actively achieve development goals.

It would be wrong, however, to assume that global radio conveys no messages about development. The premise of this volume is that knowledge about

² Available at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/ celebrations/international-days/world-radio-day-2013/statistics-on-radio/.

³ See BBC Media Action, available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/.

development takes different representational forms, and that often overlooked forms are worth exploring in order to better understand development as a complex global system of institutions and ideas. As such, this chapter will focus on the relatively unexplored format of global radio to see what insights it can yield about development—specifically, about women and development.

#### **Focusing on Women**

Some of the most crucial constituents of 'big D' development are women. Gender equality and women's empowerment have been at the top of the international development agenda for decades. In 1995, at the conclusion of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the United Nations adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action—a global blueprint containing strategic objectives to advance gender equality and women's empowerment.⁴ In 2000, 189 countries agreed on a set of Millennium Development Goals,⁵ and gender equality and women's empowerment were among the goals (United Nations, 2000); and when the Sustainable Development Goals replaced the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, gender equality and women's empowerment were again among the goals, as were a range of other gender-related targets.⁶

Radio, as a medium, has long been associated with the achievement of such goals (Hilliard, 2003). It has been regarded by international development organizations as a particularly good way to reach and empower women in rural areas, who may have little education and limited access to other forms of media. Echoing this idea, media scholars have pointed out radio's 'transgressive power', highlighting 'the subversive potential of unseen voices [to challenge] … conventional social norms' (Hilmes and Loviglio, 2001: xiii). Feminist scholars have similarly highlighted the medium's potential to contribute to a feminist public sphere, in which the 'private' sphere—traditionally associated with women—can be made public, women's interests can be represented and transformed, and forms of resistance and oppositional discourse can be set up (Jallov, 1992; Baehr and Gray, 1995; Mitchell, 1998, 2000). This feminist argument generally hinges on the idea that women can easily be both producers and consumers of radio (Mitchell, 1998). Indeed, the barriers to contributing on radio are rather lower than for television, film, or text-based media, and radio is easier to consume, as one can listen while devoting one's attention to other tasks. This is, perhaps, why radio has been seen as a good vehicle for bringing development issues concerning women to the fore (UNESCO, 2001; Gatua et al., 2010; Myers, 2011).

⁴ Available at https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/declar.htm.

⁵ Available at https://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/millennium.shtml.

⁶ Available at https://sdgs.un.org/goals.

#### **Women and Local Radio**

One of the preferred ways of using radio to foreground development issues concerning women has been, unsurprisingly, at the local level, through the establishment of women's community radio stations. UNESCO has been a leader in this endeavour, establishing various women's community stations—such as Radio *Muye* in the Caribbean—as part of its *Women Speaking to Women* project (2001). Other examples of women's community radio include *Moutse* Community Radio in South Africa (Gatua et al., 2010) and *Mama* FM in Uganda (Khamalwa, 2006)—and similar examples exist in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, DRC, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Jordan, Algeria, Indonesia, Fiji, India, Mexico, Haiti, and Peru (Solervicens, 2008). Even those community stations that are not run by and for women often see the inclusion of women's voices as key to their operation. Many community radio stations have at least one women's programme, and encourage women to become community journalists. Internews-funded community radio stations in South Sudan, for example, train female journalists and broadcast women's programmes (LeRoux-Rutledge, 2016), while Bush Radio in South Africa has a policy of not running training programmes in radio production for new community journalists unless at least 50 per cent of the trainees are women (UNESCO, 2001).

Various research has explored the context, content, and impact of these kinds of community stations in low and lower-middle income countries (Jallov and Lwanga-Ntale, 2007; Kamal, 2007; Musubika, 2008; Manyozo, 2009; Myers, 2011; Sow, 2014; LeRoux-Rutledge, 2016, 2020). Such research details examples of how local community radio can provide a forum for public dialogue, in which powerful local actors can be held to account over issues that women deem to be a priority (Jallov and Lwanga-Ntale, 2007; Solervicens, 2008; Sow, 2014). For example, according to UNESCO, in Budikote, India, women were able to hold local authorities to account over broken water pipes impeding the village water supply by voicing their complaints on community radio. The pipes were promptly mended. Community radio can also provide a forum in which gendered narratives and norms in particular local contexts—on issues such as girls' and women's education, women's leadership, and violence against women—can be discussed and challenged (Myers, 2011; Sow, 2014; LeRoux-Rutledge, 2016, 2020). For example, in Tanzania, a woman who shared her story of domestic violence on community radio engendered a lively debate on air, and received an apology from her husband (Jallov and Lwanga-Ntale, 2007), while, in South Sudan, patriarchal gender narratives were recast in creative ways on community radio to argue for gender and development goals (LeRoux-Rutledge, 2016). At the same time, the constraints of community radio are well documented, including financial constraints (Musubika, 2008; Manyozo, 2009), restrictions on freedom of speech (Ibrahim, 2009), and tensions that may arise when women attempt to challenge the status quo (Kamal, 2007). While illuminating, this research is limited in scope, as it looks at radio content

with a specific women and development remit, aimed at a local audience in a so-called 'developing' country.

#### **Women and Global Radio**

Far less research has looked at radio content about women and development that does not have a specific development remit, and is aimed at a global audience. Why would such content be of interest? As previously mentioned, feminist scholars have highlighted the potential of radio to contribute to a feminist public sphere (Jallov, 1992; Baehr and Gray, 1995; Mitchell, 1998, 2000)—and that sphere is undoubtedly global as well as local. Indeed, as the McLuhan quote at the beginning of this chapter points out, radio has the 'power to turn the globe into a single echo chamber' (1964: 137). Moreover, global radio is less driven by 'big D' development processes, and so might reveal new insights into how we understand and represent women's role in development.

To that end, this chapter seeks to explore representations of women and development in a hitherto underexplored format: the global radio series. In order to understand what such a format tells us about representations of women and development, we will consider a relatively new, but far-reaching, global radio series that deals with women and development: the BBC's *100 Women* series*.*

#### **The BBC's** *100 Women* **Series**

Selected as the exemplar of a global radio series because of its large international audience, the BBC's *100 Women* is a radio series that goes out for two weeks, towards the end of the year, during what is called the BBC's 'women season'. It aims to reflct women's experiences around the world, and to celebrate their achievements. The series was launched in 2013, following the infamous gang rape of a female student on a Delhi bus, which, in the words of series editor Fiona Crack, 'prompted me and many other journalists to think about how we cover news stories about sexual violence and other issues that particularly affect women'.⁷ The *100 Women* series became, Crack says, 'a season inspired by our female audience who told us they wanted more voices like theirs to be heard on the BBC and for their experiences to be better reflected'. While a list of 100 Women is put out by the BBC at the start of each season, the *100 Women* series does not limit itself to their life stories, but rather covers a broad range of themes and issues that affect the lives of women around the world.

⁷ Available at https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/31/bbc-100-womenseries.

Content goes out on various platforms—most notably the BBC World Service, a radio station that reaches a weekly global audience of 269 million people, or 4 per cent of the world's population, 75 million of whom listen in English.⁸ This audience is diverse and international, and by no means confined to low or lower middle-income countries, with the USA and Canada among its top ten markets. The *100 Women* series is also available as a podcast. By July 2017, forty episodes were available on iTunes, from both the 2015 and 2016 seasons, which constitute the data for this chapter.

The *100 Women* series does not focus exclusively on women from so-called developing countries. It includes interviews with the likes of Hollywood actor Hilary Swank, American musician Alicia Keys, and American gymnast Simone Biles. However, many of the episodes and stories do look at the lives of women in, or from, low and lower middle-income countries—as defined by the World Bank.⁹ Out of the forty aforementioned episodes available on iTunes, exactly half mention a low, or lower middle-income country in either their programme title or description. These episodes were analysed in detail. The countries mentioned were: Bangladesh, El Salvador, The Gambia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kosovo, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Uganda. How is the BBC World Service's *100 Women* series representing women in and from these countries, and does it tell us anything about women's role in development that is potentially new?

#### **Analysing Media Content**

When analysing media content media scholars often draw on the concept of *framing*. A media *frame* can be understood to be 'a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events' (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987: 143). In other words, a frame is the *narrative* given to a sequence of events. Narratives play a powerful role in our culture, because they help us to construct meaning (Bruner, 1990). Media scholars Tewksbury and Scheufele (2009) point out that frames, or narratives, are often drawn on unconsciously by those who produce media content: 'Journalists, by definition, are working within the culture of their society and will therefore rely unconsciously on commonly shared frames' (Tewksbury and Scheufele, 2009: 24). The importance of such frames is that they suggest to an audience how to think about an issue (Tewksbury and Scheufele, 2009). As such, in analysing the content of the *100 Women* series, a narrative analysis was conducted, focusing explicitly on what Pan and Kosicki call 'script

⁸ Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/global-audience-measure.

⁹ Available at https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519.

structures' (1993) or what Schank and Abelson call 'story skeletons' (1995), to see if one more media frame could be identified.

#### **Two Narratives about Women: Local Phenomenon and Global Success**

The analysis suggested that two media frames, or narratives, about women and development were prominent in the BBC's *100 Women* series. In the first, a woman was depicted as a *local phenomenon* and in the second she was depicted as a *global success*.

#### Local Phenomenon Narrative

In the *local phenomenon* narrative, a young woman, or group of young women, from a low or lower middle-income country, motivated by a desire to forge their own path in the world, to help their family and to make a positive contribution to society, embark on a quest for employment or entrepreneurship in their country, in a traditionally male-dominated field. They work extremely hard, and are supported along the way by older female role models from their country, who have themselves been pioneers for gender equality in the chosen field. They are also helped by the private sector, and by supportive male partners, who believe in gender equality. They are not helped by the government, and must overcome this hurdle. At first, men in their society discourage them, then are astonished by them, and finally afford them a measure of respect. As their quest progresses, they grow in self-confidence and self-esteem. Their goal, although seemingly at odds with traditional views of femininity and motherhood, turns out to be entirely compatible with such views. The outcome of their quest is uncertain, but ultimately, they have laid the groundwork for the women of their country who will come after them.

An example of this frame, or narrative, can be found in the *100 Women* podcast *Young, Geeky and Black: Kampala.* The podcast is about 'girls, women, coding and development', and in the podcast a group of 'bright young women' in Kampala, whose 'enthusiasm is infectious' and who are 'brimming with ideas' for apps and tech start-ups, pitch their ideas at an event organized by a consortium of African and global universities. One group is designing an app that will tell farmers 'what to grow, how to grow it … how to breed animals, and about the market conditions in the different markets in Uganda'. Another group is developing an app for mothers, which 'diagnoses pneumonia in young children at a very early age'. A third group, called Afrigirl Tech, is developing an app for 'diagnosing sickle cell anaemia'. The male presenter of the programme explains that, 'for these coders, the motivation to help is often personal', and demonstrates with a story told by Afrigirl Tech's founders:

We had a friend who we lost, who had sickle cell anaemia, and he found out late that he had the disease. So if he had found out earlier and managed it earlier he would have lived longer … Our dream is to take this application to the health centres in the rural areas … [s]o at least a bigger percentage of the people will have access to this diagnosis*.*

What we see here is that girls are presented as passionate, altruistic saviours who are driving the development of their country. Indeed, when the presenter asks, 'What value do you [girls] bring to the coding scene?' the girls reinforce this vision of themselves, stating that girls 'really do things … which are not really for getting money, but for improving the community where they live'. They then go on to detail the 'hours of sacrifice' and personal financial investment they have put into developing their app.

The programme also interviews the female Director of Innovation for the consortium of universities hosting the tech start-up event. She is positioned as a mentor for the girls, saying:

We've called them to pitch because we believe in what they have to say. We need to get more girls switched on in terms of the change they themselves can create, believing they can solve their communities' problems.

The private sector is likewise positioned as a supportive partner. In a voice over, the presenter explains:

If there's external support, it's often in the form of prizes in innovation, competitions supported by international tech firms. Afrigirl Tech gets hardware and software support from Microsoft.

This support is not forthcoming from the government, however. The girls from Afrigirl Tech describe the government as having 'too much red tape' and ask rhetorically, '[W ]hat happens when [the money doesn't] come in? Does that mean you don't start?'

The programme then moves on to discuss what men think. 'I have been to hacka-thons where I'm the only girl present', one member of Afrigirl Tech relates:

I remember at one hack-a-thon, I heard them discuss, 'No, no, no, you know, when you put a girl on a team she won't actually do anything. … [Then] they found out that I could actually do something, and then they were looking at themselves and laughing at themselves.

She is quick to point out, however, that being a coder is not at odds with traditional views of femininity:

[T]his doesn't mean that you lose out the feminine side of you.  If it means heels, you put them on, and go out show the world what you can actually do.

When the presenter asks:

We all live in a culture where there's a lot of pressure on you as women to get married, have a baby. Ten years from now, do you think you will have time for all of this? Or will you be making babies and cooking for your husband instead of coding?

The Afrigirl Tech member replies:

[I]t should not get in the way of our dreams and our prospects, yeah? If you can get that partner who can support you, and they understand that you love coding, and this is what made you who you are—if you get a partner who's supportive, I think it's easy to balance.

The presenter concludes the story on a hopeful but uncertain note, saying, 'The girls have big ambitions, but, like many start-ups in Uganda, lack experience'. He ends the programme with the following reflection:

[D]uring my time in Uganda the thing that impressed me most was the energy, inspiration and effort young people are directing towards solving problems that matter … [E]ven if this generation of start-ups are not the ones who go on to bigger success, they are laying the groundwork for the future.

The same *local phenomenon* story structure is evident in the *100 Women* podcast *Jobs for the Girls—Part 1*, set in India. This programme follows the lives of not one, but several, women in India who are pursuing careers in traditionally male-dominated fields, working as mechanics, bouncers, pilots, computer gamers, firefighters, driving instructors, and taxi drivers. They are usually presented as either trying to forge their own path in life, or help their families, or both. For example, a female gamer interviewed for the programme talks about how gaming is her 'passion,' saying 'I will do anything that I have to do … cause [gaming is] the most important thing [to me]', while a female driving instructor's story is related thusly:

[S]he was a housewife when her husband was alive, and then in 2009 he died … [S]he sat at home for … six months thinking about her life, and she came to the decision that she needed to support her children, of course—bring them up—but [also] she needed to do something for which she can be proud. She didn't want to be dependent on others. She didn't want to live on charity… [S]he wanted to get into a respectable and respectful job.

All of the women—regardless of whether their motivation is presented as primarily personal or family-oriented—are described by the female presenter of the programme as making an important social contribution, by 'stepping outside the box, defying gender stereotypes, and breaking down barriers in the world of work'. Moreover, for some, the social benefit of their work is stressed even further. For example, the female bouncers are credited with 'helping with security and safety' while the female firefighters are described by their training director as 'most dependable … [They don't even] bother for their life'. Their heroism and altruism is further emphasized in the following tale, related by the presenter:

[One of the female firefighters] is saying that—my God this is such a dare devilry it's is giving me goose bumps to hear what she's recounting—she's telling me about this huge factory fire in Jaipur … [T]he focal point of the fire was on the third floor of the building, and three women and three children were trapped inside and they were howling and shouting and screaming for help … [T]hey [the female firefighters] were outside on ladders and they thought, 'well it's either rescuing these women or we might even die', and they were prepared for that. And they finally tried to open the windows by breaking them and a lot of smoke came out … but finally they were able to make their way inside and rescue all six people. And that was really very, very satisfying*.*

Many of the tales recounted in *Jobs for the Girls—Part 1* position other, older women, as trailblazers and mentors. The segment on drivers includes an interview with 'the first female taxi driver in Rajasthan' and the 'first female driving instructor' who paved the way for others to follow. Similarly, the 'first woman firefighter in Rajasthan' relates her story:

When I first came here [to the government training institution] they refused to admit me. They said it was a hard job and a girl couldn't do it. They kept saying the Rajasthan [government] might have advertised posts for women firefighters but that we women couldn't be trained in Rajasthan. So I kept coming and pestering them and finally they gave in to my perseverance. I said that if men can do it, why can't women? You give me a chance and I'll prove it to you.

She is credited with 'convincing this institute [to open] training for firefighting to women'.

Again, commercial partners, like the Indian aviation industry, which hires 'a good percentage of female pilots' and the nightclub industry, which hires 'lady bouncers', are credited as being supportive, while the government is seen as bureaucratic and slow to change. Moreover, it is pointed out in the programme that many of the women profiled have supportive male partners. For example, the husband of the female mechanic interviewed is:

[V ]ery happy that his wife helps him and … very proud of the legacy that they have built, with educating their children, building a house of their own and then marrying them off—everything that the Indian social ladder kind of wants.

This husband is quoted as saying: 'Why should I feel any shame? She is my wife and we do everything together. I think of her as my equal.' Likewise, one of the female bouncers, whose sister is also a bouncer, explains:

[M]y husband has never restricted me, nor my sister's [husband]. We've both got very supportive husbands. They believe that we will always do the right thing. In fact my husband helped me to finish my school education, something my family did not.

As for other men in society, they may take time to come around, but are ultimately persuaded of the value of the women's work. The female gamer says:

At first it used to be like, 'Oh my God we have a girl; we're going to lose the game', and they were like, you know, 'Why is she even here? Go make a sandwich …' [but] recently one guy came and said that, 'I saw so many portfolios and I chose you because you knew how to game', and that was the day I was like, 'I own my respect'.

Similarly, the presenter describes how 'it took a bit of time for men to get used to the women firefighters, but they performed as well as the men and that helped them gain respect'.

Moreover, it is stressed throughout the programme that the work the women do builds their confidence. 'When she was at home she felt she was nobody, but when she started doing this, she's now very proud of the path that she's chosen for herself ', the presenter says of one of the female bouncers. Similarly, the story of a female taxi driver is summarized as follows:

[S]he used to earlier feel very scared of what the family [her in-laws] would think, so whatever she wanted to do there were always restrictions that the family imposed about how she should dress, where she should go, how many hours of the day can she spend outside … what she can do for her children. But now she says that, 'I have realized that … these are my own two hands, my own two legs, my own eyes and my own mind. I'll do what I want to do for my children and I'll dress the way I want to'.

Having said that, the programme again takes pains to imply that the work the women do is not incompatible with their traditional roles as wives and mothers. For example, one of the bouncers is described as being 'like any other traditional housewife: a mother who takes care of the house, a husband and her children'. Similarly, when the presenter asks the other bouncer:

[Y ]ou have really sweet daughter here who is drinking water from her bottle … [S]he's probably not even a year old, a little baby, so how do you manage with the children? Who takes care of the children when you go out [at] these odd hours at night to work?

The bouncer explains (interpreted by the presenter):

[A]ctually [she says] the job helps her take care of her daughter, because [she] is home during the day, so it's only a few hours at night when she needs someone to take care of the child, and her husband does that, which really helps. And she's decided not to do any other work during the day so she can be with the children.

Ultimately, while the programme acknowledges that there are still not many women in the professions it has showcased it implies that the women it has profiled are breaking ground for those who will follow.

Overall, one of the key features of the *local phenomenon* narrative is the extent to which it positions women as 'saviours' who simultaneously care for others, and drive development and social change. This will be discussed further in the concluding section of the chapter. Other examples from the BBC's *100 Women* series that use the *local phenomenon* frame—either entirely or in part—are *Jobs for the Girls—Part 2; Young, Geeky and Black: Accra; Business: India's changing gender balance; When Wangari Maathai Won the Nobel Peace Prize;* and *Interview: Sania Mirza—Tennis Player.*

#### Global Success Narrative

In the second frame, or narrative, a woman is depicted as a *global success*. In this narrative, a young woman from a low or lower middle-income country chooses to leave, or is forced to leave her country. She makes her way to a developed country, where she is startled to experience racism and prejudice. Nevertheless, through sheer determination, she excels in her education and goes on to pursue a career in a field that is male-dominated or not typical for those of her nationality or ethnicity. In the course of her career, she encounters prejudice, but achieves considerable professional success by working extremely hard. However, she never forgets the country of her birth, and—motivated by altruism and a sense of justice—she ultimately finds a way to help the people of her country.

A good example of this narrative is *Shriti Vedara: The 100 Women Interview*. In this programme, Shriti Vedara, chair of the UK's Santander bank, is interviewed about her life. 'Exiled from [her] country following Idi Amin's expulsion of all of Uganda's Asians', a voice over tells us at the beginning of the programme, she 'settled into a new home in India' and then, 'at the age of fifteen … asked to be sent to school in England to avoid … the risk of an arranged marriage'.

When she arrived in England, however, she explains she was:

… a little shocked and not entirely happy, it's fair to say. It was, you know, it was a lot more racist than it is now, and I hadn't really thought about that properly and sort of expected it and anticipated it.

As a consequences, she say 'I've never worked so hard [in school] … because I felt I had the weight of a nation, and I had to prove it for the nation, not just for me'. Similarly, as an Asian woman in the banking sector, she says:

For the early part of my career I spent so much time trying to be like a man, better than a man. I just had to work harder, be better, be tougher, be more determined and you know, I'm talking about the city [of London] in the 1980's … Ugh, I just worked so hard. I didn't show any vulnerability. I just had to do every single little thing better, just because that was the only way to prove that you could, you should be there.

The female presenter clarifies that the city of London—the heart of London's banking industry—was, in the 1980s 'a very sexist world … [with] very few women around, very few black faces around'.

Through her hard work and determination Shriti Vedara apparently achieved considerable professional success. According to a voice over, she gained 'a reputation as a dynamic and influential economist. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, when in office, had her at his top table', and she is now 'a leading voice in British business'.

In her own words, however, it's never been about 'succeeding; it's about 'I need to fix that. I need to make that problem go away'.' As such, Shriti Vedara echoes the idea, present in the *local phenomenon* narrative, that women are saviours who altruistically drive change. This is evidenced by a story she tells from her childhood:

I remember one of my earliest memories … is of my carer crying … [S]he was an amazingly wonderful … black woman … And I remember her crying because … she couldn't get her children, who were my friends by the way, into school, because she couldn't pay for them. And I think I understood some basic economics at the time, and [I] sort of said, 'I think my grandmother has money, so you know … we'll go and ask her'. And my grandmother didn't want to give her the money because her husband would drink and gamble it away, and I remember sitting there thinking, 'well that's not right, and we'll get them to school, and we'll take the money with us and we'll give it to the school at the time'. And so we used to go every month with my grandmother to pay the school fees for my [carer]'s children.

This kind of 'outcome' orientation is, Shriti Vedara claims, a trait particularly common among women:

I think … quite a lot of women are outcome focused. Why else would I take … [a] tiny fraction of what I was earning in the city, and go and do something [in the government]? Because I believed it; because I wanted to change it; because I wanted to make it better.

She goes on to opine that women leaders today:

[H]ave a core [that] I think a lot of women have, which is to focus more on the outcome than on their own political positioning, their own power, where they are on the corporate ladder. I think that women focus on outcomes more.

In her case, she ultimately used her success and influence to address the issue of universal education in Uganda. Picking up from her childhood story, she explains:

I remember when—oh gosh how many years later … I don't know. Thirty? … advising the treasury on debt relief for all developing countries, mainly in Africa. And the then-chancellor Gordon Brown was very interested in that subject that's actually how I met him—and we gave one hundred percent debt relief. And the first country that was picked was Uganda, because it had got itself organized. But everybody was concerned that they would take the money and use it … for corrupt things, so the deal that I was asked to negotiate with them is that they would spend every penny that was released to get every child into school for free. And I remember standing in the back of the hall in the IMF meetings, with that being announced, thinking 'what a strange world. Everything has come around full circle'.

A second example of the *global success* narrative can be seen in the programme *Interview: Alek Wek—Model.* AlekWek is described as*'*a New York based supermodel who spent years of her childhood fleeing from civil war'. A voice over explains how:

At the age of nine she walked for weeks through the bush in Southern Sudan with her family when her hometown was overrun by militia and government forces [and] sought asylum in London as a teenager.

In London, Alek Wek says, it was:

Very, very challenging. Children at school are not very pleasant. You know, they can be bullies. 'Midnight black' and, you know, 'long, skinny, lanky'. I got called everything … But I just threw myself into school.

She started working as a model at a time when, according to a voice over, 'dark skinned models were rare, and her debut was received with some enthusiasm and a lot of scepticism', but again, she threw herself into the work:

I was going back and forward [from] London [to New York] … I was travelling tremendously, every week or two … six, seven, eight hours in flight. That was really, really exhausting … [but] it was very crucial at the beginning to make sure that I was consistent, because … if you work, and then you do very well, and then you leave, you come back [and] it may not be the same. And then you can just be a one hit wonder. I knew, and I felt, that whatever I was going to choose, and do, and have a profession in—I better take it serious. I better work hard at it.

Today, according to the programme, she has 'revolutionised the way beauty is defined'. However, she apparently never forgot her home country of South Sudan and a voice over tells us that 'the plight of her people prompted Alek to become a global advocate for refugee rights, as one of the UN refugee agency's goodwill ambassadors'. When questioned about this by the presenter, Alek Wek explains:

To destroy a family and a community, [it] is very hard to put back together …. I got involved with the UNHCR, I would say, just witnessing it first hand. When the civil war broke out [in South Sudan] they were the ones that were there and helping save lives, giving … the basic necessities that a human being needs: shelter, food, safety you know. UNHCR [is] the biggest refugee agency in the world and they are in places that no one wants to go into.

She concludes, '[S]o much more [has] to be done to just help [refugees] because the refugees are like me and you'.

What we see is that, as with the *local phenomenon* narrative, the *global success* narrative positions women as saviours driving development and social change. Other programmes that use the *global success* frame—either entirely or in part—are: *Interview: Fatou Bensouda—Prosecutor, International Criminal Court; Health: Dr Comfort Momoh, midwife and FGM campaigner;* and *Rachida Dita: the 100 Women Interview.*

#### **The Problem With These Narratives**

How does this analysis of the BBC's global radio programme *100 Women* inform our understanding of the ways in which women's roles in development are presented for a global audience, and does it yield any new insight into our understanding of women and development? The first thing that comes across clearly is that both the *local phenomenon* and *global success* frames position women as 'saviours'.

The positioning of women as saviours in international development discourse has a somewhat complicated history. Academic literature on gender and development suggests that women in so-called developing countries have traditionally been presented as 'victims'. This depiction had its roots in colonialism, and was prominent in pre-1970s development discourse. At the time, the role that women played in international development was largely ignored, and development tended to be gender blind (Misra, 2000). When women were discussed, it was as recipients of welfare (Rowlands, 1997). Although other presentations of women within international development gained ground over subsequent decades, they never truly supplanted this one, which retained its prominence largely because of its ability to pull in financial resources (Win, 2004). For example, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the 'feminization of poverty' claim, which asserted that 70 per cent of the world's poor were women, became a rallying cry that arguably galvanized the international development community to devote significant resources to women (Chant, 2015).

The problem with this presentation of women as 'victims', however, is that, in drawing attention to the structural inequalities they face, it arguably downplays their agency, and can thus be viewed as post-colonial and patriarchal (Mohanty, 1988; Cornwall and Anyidoho, 2010; Grosser and van der Gaag, 2013; Chant, 2016). Moreover, it homogenizes women in development contexts, representing them as a single, powerless group, and ignoring profound differences in their realities and experiences (Mohanty, 1988).

The alternative that emerged in the 1970s was the 'saviour' depiction, which presented women as hardworking agents, central to development. This idea took off after Ester Boserup critiqued the pre-existing discourse about women, and encouraged policymakers to incorporate women into the development process (1970). In the 'saviour' story, women are seen as an untapped resource, which need only be invested in by NGOs and development agencies. Because of their intrinsic community-mindedness and altruism, women will, with a little bit of investment, lift themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty—so the story goes (Chant, 2016).

This presentation of women, while perhaps responding to some of the critiques of the 'victim' presentation, is also problematic, according to post-colonial feminist scholars. The problem lies in the fact that, in positioning women as saviours, it instrumentalizes them as tools for development, and suggests they are all inherently noble and self-sacrificing (Cornwall *e*t al*.*, 2007; Chant, 2016). It also appears to let men off the hook, as men are not perceived to have the same altruistic qualities as women, and therefore cannot be expected to work collaboratively towards poverty alleviation (Chant, 2016). The depiction further positions women as active choice-makers, ignoring many of the structural barriers—such as cultural norms and practices—that restrict their choices (Cornwall and Edwards, 2010); and last, it ignores a more human-rights-based rationale for equality between men and women, which briefly gained ground in the 1990s before being watered down in favour of an instrumentalist argument for women's empowerment (Cornwall et al., 2007; Cornwall, 2014; Chant, 2016).

In addition, both depictions have been criticized for ignoring women's actual voices and the diversity of women's experiences. This is part of a general critique of international development, which has been seen as a top-down process, far removed from the everyday realities of women's lives (Wallace and Porter, 2013).

So, how transformative is the BBC's *100 Women* global radio series as a medium of representation for stories of women and development? One thing it arguably does well is foreground women's voices—a trait it shares with community radio. Admittedly, they are not always the voices of the most marginalized women in society, but women are at the centre of the story. Interestingly, this, at times, makes the 'big D' Development initiatives undertaken by formal international development institutions seem almost irrelevant. The BBC's *100 Women* series actually changes the 'saviour' narrative somewhat, largely eliminating the role of development organizations, so that women become the engines of 'small d' development—a broad, historically complex process of change, naturally occurring under capitalism.

And yet, despite decentralizing development institutions in the narratives it presents, the BBC's *100 Women* series still depicts women as saviours. It thus appears that, in this instance, global radio, far from being a 'transgressive power' with 'the subversive potential' to challenge conventional social norms (Hilmes and Loviglio, 2001: xiii), merely reproduces many of the existing tropes about women and development. It seems that both the journalists creating the *100 Women* series, and the women themselves, have been influenced by commonly shared narratives about women—leading to stories in which women are presented as altruistically driving development for the benefit of society.

Potentially problematic is the seeming ease with which the women in the series are depicted taking on new economic roles and responsibilities, while simultaneously managing old. Nowhere is there an acknowledgement of the double burden this places on women to continue their unpaid domestic labour while taking on paid work—something feminists have long commented on (Hochschild, 1989; Va¨a¨na¨nen *et al.*, 2005).

Also potentially problematic is the way in which men in the series are depicted, either as supportive male partners—who are ostensibly just waiting around for empowered women to view as equals—or as patriarchal gatekeepers—who are eventually brought around by women's outstanding performance in traditionally male dominated fields. Both of these depictions suggest that women's fates ultimately hang on the grace and favour of men.

Finally, potentially problematic is the way in which multinational corporations and the private sector are positioned in the series as the ideal institutional partners for women undertaking development. Organizations such as Microsoft are portrayed as philanthropic benefactors, seeding innovation. This is a trend that has been noted in the literature, as international development has, in general, seen a shift in emphasis from the nation state to the private sector over the last 20 years (Cornwall and Edwards, 2015). This too has been critiqued by post-colonial feminist scholars. According to Chant (2016: 14), it represents:

[A] disturbing deflection of the spotlight from market enterprises … which have played a major part in entrenching and intensifying poverty in the Global South … Instead, through their ostensibly philanthropic gestures, corporates have managed, on the surface, to rise to the exalted rank of 'saviours' dedicated to liberating girls.

#### **Conclusion**

Despite laudable aims, the *100 Women* series does not appear to have majorly subverted the tropes about women and development currently prevalent in today's development discourse. Rather, it has reproduced the 'saviour' narrative about women and development currently in vogue, along with a number of other accompanying problems.

What does this mean for the potential of global radio to replicate some of the successes of community radio, and contribute to a feminist public sphere? As previously noted, community radio provides a public forum for community members to air their problems and concerns, and to hold powerful local actors to account. Community radio, which is situated in the community it serves, often with a 'big D' Development remit, has the power not only to *represent* women, but also to spur communities to *action.* Global radio series like the BBC's *100 Women* series, while similarly representing women, are farther removed from local communities, and do not have a 'big D' Development remit. As such, they may lack the capacity, or the concern, to spur people to action in quite the same way.

One could, however, imagine a scenario in which global radio spurred its audience—the *global* community—to action, and was able to hold powerful *global* actors to account. According to feminist theory, such an outcome would be possible if the series set up forms of resistance and oppositional discourse that could act as a rallying cry for the global community; however, herein lies the paradox. While, on the one hand, the series *has* set up oppositional discourse in relation to context specific narratives about the kinds of jobs women can do, the kinds of successes they can achieve, and the kinds of leadership positions they can hold in particular local cultures, it has, on the other hand, reproduced and reified a larger global meta-narrative about gender and development, prominent in international development discourse. By continuing to produce stories depicting women in 'saviour' roles, it may therefore be undermining its ability to say something truly transformational in the global feminist public sphere.

#### **References**

### **'Being in the spotlight is not something we are used to'**

Awkward Encounters in *The Guardian*'s Katine Initiative

*Ben Jones*

#### **Introduction**

The Katine initiative was a major development initiative that ran from 2007 to 2011. It was located in Katine sub-county in eastern Uganda and sponsored by readers of *The Guardian* and Barclays Bank and implemented by the nongovernmental organization (NGO) AMREF (African Medical Research Foundation). Over four years, more than £2.5 million was channelled into development work in the sub-county. Journalists from the newspaper—sports writers, feature editors, staff from the health and environment desks—went to Katine and described what they saw. The sub-county was also visited by politicians, business leaders, development experts, and even the English Premier League Trophy (as part of a football tournament). The novelty of the partnership was recognized for the way it brought development to a wider audience, and the website won the 2008 International Visual Communications Association's Clarion award and the 2008 One World Media 'new media award'. *The Guardian*, Barclays, and AMREF also won the 2010 Coffey International Award for Excellence recognizing the positive impact the project had had in promoting the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals.

This public recognition needs to be understood against what turned out to be a difficult relationship. The initiative trained a spotlight on the NGO, and this was often an uncomfortable experience for those involved. Parts of the project were picked apart by journalists and bloggers. In some cases, the NGO changed its approach because of the focus of a particular reporter, with new elements being introduced because they worked in media terms. *The Guardian* was both funding and reporting on the project, and so the words of journalists, and what appeared on the website, influenced the way the project worked out on the ground. A senior manager at AMREF told me that 'being in the spotlight is not something we are used to' and described the experience as a 'healing process'.¹ A fieldworker commented that 'with this project every small bit of what you do in the community is on the website' and that 'a newspaper is always on the watch, twenty-four hours … they see what you are implementing, [if ] you try to divert a bit there is a big question'.²

This particular chapter looks at examples of this scrutiny and how this was difficult for the NGO to deal with. I give examples of what happened when stories of things going wrong appeared on the website and of commentators questioning the competence and ethics of the NGO. I also show the relative power of journalists and how this shaped aspects of the project—an example that runs counter to much of the literature on journalism and NGOs (where NGOs are assumed to have the upper hand) (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Franks, 2008; Polman, 2010; Powers, 2013). Amid these discussions of conflict in the project, I also point to the ways the relationship grew more settled at higher levels and, in some ways, less critical over time. Over the course of the project, managers at the NGO got better at dealing with the demands of *The Guardian*, a change that can be read against a broader story of AMREF becoming more interested in the field of advocacy. A change that also shifted power towards those parts of the non-governmental organization dealing with media and policy work.

Before looking at the project in more detail, I discuss some of the assumptions that characterize studies of NGOs and journalism. I then introduce the Katine initiative and my own relationship to the project, before moving on to examples from the field.

#### **NGOs and Journalism**

Until very recently, NGOs have exercised a good degree of authorship over how their work appears in mainstream media.³ In many of the places where they work, they are assumed to be the good guys in contexts where most of the actors are a problem: corrupt governments, militias, armies, big business. While academic work has been critical of NGOs, the sector has been given a relatively easy time by mainstream journalism. As Polman (2010) argues, 'journalists scarcely question aid organizations' and often struggle to see the work of NGOs in a critical light. Lugo-Ocando and Nguyen, in a harshly worded critique of the way journalists work with the development sector, suggest that 'not much has been done to

¹ Interview with management, Kampala country office, 1 July 2010.

² Interview with field staff, Katine office, 5 July 2010. By 'divert', the respondent meant 'diverge' from the project place, rather than anything that might imply corruption.

³ The crisis that came to the fore in 2018 surrounding the use of sex workers by OXFAM staff in Haiti—and other stories of abuse and corruption in the sector—illustrates how 'shocking' this sort of behaviour appears when set against the more usual way the work of non-governmental organizations working in humanitarian situations is reported.

investigate how the media and aid agencies … interact with each other in shaping the agenda on international development' and that the current state of affairs is 'opaque, superficial and ideologically biased … an example of a failure of transparency and accountability' (Lugo-Ocando and Nguyen, 2017: 71–3). Rothmyer (2011: 4) goes as far as to suggest that reporters writing about the developing world can be found 'routinely following the lead of press-savvy aid groups on topics such as war victims and refugees'.⁴ NGOs are often presented as skilful in managing journalists, while journalists reporting on development issues come across as both dependent and sympathetic in their dealings with NGOs.

In the following section, I develop these ideas and discuss both the increasing sophistication with which NGOs approach their work with the media, and look at the ways in which scholars have understood the position of journalists reporting on development issues. I also question assumptions made above about the dependence and sympathy of journalists or the apparent sophistication of 'press-savvy' NGOs. The relationship between *The Guardian* and AMREF was not really a story of vulnerable journalists being taken in by a press-savvy NGO, or of an aid organization charming a particular journalist into producing uncritical or unquestioning reporting. Even when the outcome is relatively uncritical, this is not always arrived at unquestioningly or easily.

Publicity is at the heart of the NGO enterprise, and good publicity is important for obvious reasons—fundraising, awareness, market share (Smith and Yanacopulos, 2004; Powers, 2013, 2016; Van Leuven and Joye, 2014). Smaller NGOs often concentrate publicity around raising money; larger international NGOs rely on publicity for awareness raising and campaigning and policy work (Yanacopulos, 2005).⁵ As Powers observes, the identity of larger international NGOs is increasingly tied to their interest in global policy agendas (Powers, 2016) and campaigning NGOs like OXFAM and ActionAid have professional press and publicity divisions, with journalists on the staff, where success is measured, in large part in media terms (Jones, 2016). NGOs are involved in a more complex 'production and reception of development's public faces' beyond the image of the starving child or the empowered mother. In many ways NGOs have become more like media organizations.

This leads to a first set of observations around the sophistication of NGOs in their relationship to the media. Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group has argued that 'NGOs are taking on more and more functions of news

⁴ Scholars working in the NGO sector have noted examples of NGOs being criticized by the media, although this is more than outweighed by accounts that are largely supportive (cf. Lewis, 2007: 10–12).