Reflections from a white woman working in development.
I suspect that the work I do creates harm…or at the most, that it doesn’t add value.
As a white woman in the development sector, I question whether my mere existence is a form of neocolonialism.
In my first year abroad, I worked at the Uganda Ministry of Health, training health workers on gender-based violence response, sexual harassment, and health and human rights. Despite having lived in the country for six months, foreigners and nationals alike assumed that I had the requisite knowledge to train professionals with far more education and experience than myself. I became a caricature of the know-it-all foreigner, masked behind my vision of “gender equality.”
In meetings, I was often the only white person in the room. I saw people turn their bodies to me when I spoke, overlooking my Ugandan colleagues, and automatically consider me a source of authority.
I was appalled by “expatriate culture.” I watched as white people preach participation, community engagement, and inclusive development, but ignore national colleagues. In one vivid memory, I addressed this hypocrisy at a social event. My Ugandan friend was publicizing his #ExportProductsNotPeople initiative, walking from Kampala to Addis Ababa to promote African development from Africans for Africans. While speaking about his initiative at a local bar, the audience of (only) white people spoke over him and asked “when will trivia start.?” When I called them out for their disrespect, I was told by a white man that they were only listening because I was “yelling.” Another white woman said that “she’s been working in Africa for 15 years with X INGO and while she understood where I’m coming from, my approach was poor.” She added that I “seem like I have a lot of feelings” and offered to talk to me if I would like.
Throughout this whole time, and despite the disappointing response, these individuals still gave me more attention throughout my one-minute rant than they did for my friend during his 15 minutes.
After reading White Fragility soon after this encounter, Robyn DiAngelo explained that when people attack how you say something, it is because they are uncomfortable with the message. Black women are most familiar with this phenomenon, as white people and men will tell them they are too angry or emotional when they speak. These individuals were uncomfortable being called out and resorted to condemning my delivery.
In the broader sector, we see white people dominating leadership positions and accepting promotions without inquiry as to whether there were equally or more qualified non-white specialists considered in the recruitment process. I often wonder whether white Europeans who have a laundry list of leadership and board positions already on their resume, somehow think “yes- I definitely need yet another title to prove I’ve made it.” It’s almost as if they hoard these positions in the same way white people have historically hoarded wealth and power.
As a recovering “white woman who constantly needs to interject,” I was taken aside early on by my supervisor and asked to take a step back in group conversations. This was essential in my practice as an ally, to continuously recognize how my presence can have negative impacts, no matter how many times I’ve shared #BLM posts on social media. This is my no means a proclamation that I have reached full “wokeness,” (allyship is a verb, not a noun) but rather an example of the responsibility that white people have in calling one another in to question their privilege, unchecked bias, and easy ascension into positions of power.
Coinciding with this critical self-reflection, I have seen the uptake of “feminism” and “intersectionality” in international development organizations. The popularization of this language is accompanied by a minimal grasp as to what those words mean in practice.
These organizations are often embedded with racist, patriarchal, capitalist, and neo-liberal practices: paying national and international staff disparate salaries, creating cultures of impunity for sexual abuse, promoting “poverty porn,” exacerbating the climate crisis by flying in international “experts,” depoliticizing local women’s movements, all while promoting “intersectional feminism.”
Although I support the destigmatized use of the word feminism, these organizations have applied it in a performative way. While preaching gender equality, they prioritize white women’s “expertise” over those of brown and Black women. They move US and European professionals around the world under the assumption that they can understand the political and social realities of any low- and middle-income country. They talk about “empowering” communities without analyzing the systems of the oppression that have created unequal systems in the first place. Moreover, they refuse to be held accountable for creating the conditions of a development sector in the first place — their own ancestors’ colonizing, proselytizing, and occupying of Black bodies.
I have come to a crossroads where I cannot decide if I should leave the sector. Unfortunately, throughout my job hunt, I am most often called back for interviews for international work. My efforts to find work in the domestic sector have been futile, as I am told that my international experience makes me unqualified for domestic work, highlighting a related and rant-worthy recognition of domestic US organizations’ ethnocentrism- somehow work in “developing countries” is not transferable to the US context.
Ultimately, I am inspired by what (hopefully) appears to be a global reckoning on racism in the development sector- new initiatives and efforts to call out white feminist CEOs, toxic cultures, and how to decolonize knowledge and activities. Hopefully, we can maintain this momentum to envision a more equitable, anti-racist sector under non-white leadership.
