Feminist and anti-colonial critique of development and “the expert”: Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)

Development has been a central issue for global women's movements in the second half of the 20th century. For instance, during the UN Decade for Women 1975-1985, it was one of the major themes, alongside equality and peace. Following the women in development (WID) approach, researchers and policymakers started considering the role of women in their developmental programs. However, also under the WID paradigm women were mostly seen as victims and recipients of development rather than as experts on socio-economic and material questions.
In the 1980s "Third World women" began to criticize these development policies from a feminist and anti-colonial perspective. In preparation for the third UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985, the international feminist network “Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era” (DAWN) emerged. At a time when feminism was mainly associated with white middle-class women, DAWN was the first network of feminist scholars and activists from the Global South, intervening in two ways: both in Eurocentric feminist politics and in gender-blind and neo-colonial development politics. DAWN’s approach was centering the lived realities and material conditions of poor women from the Global South, thereby questioning whose expertise and experience matter in developmental politics.
Drawing on archival documents, personal accounts, and published works, the paper analyses DAWN’s critique and their alternative vision of development. Further, the paper asks who spoke for the “women of the South” and what biographical trajectories DAWN’s founding members took. Researching the history of DAWN, their ideas, visions, and members, the paper contributes to a better understanding of feminist and Southern interventions in developmental politics, which marked the
second half of the 20th century.