Editorial: Issue 33.4

This issue focuses on gender and minorities in the Global South and is very much concerned with practical outcomes. Linked to this is the pervasiveness of Western hegemony when it comes to development discourses about gender and sexual identity, pleasure, disability, and narratives about masculinity and the role of women. As many of the articles in this issue point out, “assisted” by neo-colonial Western values alone, practical outcomes can be ineffectual or insufficient. This can have wide-ranging effects, not only on the minority groups themselves, but also on food security, nutrition, domestic and local harmony, the lives and wellbeing of children, democracy, and the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, to name just a few areas. Over a decade after the publication of her seminal article, “Why is Development Work so Straight? Heteronormativity in the International Development Industry”, Susie Jolly examines whether the development sector is still heteronormative in regard to LGBTQ + and the pleasures of sexuality. She finds that while discussion around LGBTQI + has increased, funding and aid have not, and also that discussion tends to fall into homocolonial paradigm (Rahman 2020), whereby Western norms are uncritically imposed on queer minorities. Further, in discourse surrounding pleasure and sexuality, Jolly suggests that heteronormative and neocolonial influences are still pervasive, arguing that a stronger link between pleasure and politics needs to be made. Pilke and Waliyua reveal that, in Zambia, “despite the right to participation, few persons with disabilities have access to public decision-making structures”. Their article considers the causes of these barriers to disability, finding that, while political parties may favour diversity, ableist attitudes, which inhibit participation, persist. The article focuses on difficulties with voting, engaging in political candidature, and campaigning that can potentially deny Zambians with disabilities a political voice. Pilke and Waliyua suggest that it is not enough to import Western notions of “accessibility” into Zambian discourse; structural changes must be made locally to ensure that equity is achievable. Hillenbrand et al. look at how to practically change gender inequality in Burundi. Their paper considers two approaches: “gender transformative” and “gender sensitive”. They found that women in the gender sensitive groups experienced real improvements in communication within the household and reduced domestic conflict, while those in the gender transformative groups were able to realise greater access to household decision-making and finances. Here transformation is again situated firmly in local context and discourse, with this approach aimed at giving women the tools to envisage and actualise their own empowerment. Pamphilon et al. also consider the practical outcomes of intervention. They analyse the outcomes of an educational video on gender equity for farmers with low literacy in Papua New Guinea. The video was locally created and devised, to ensure that it was relevant for the farmers and their particular situation. The article discusses the concrete changes that arose as a consequence of the video, which was used not only to transform structural inequality within the target village, but also to provide new insights for the Australian co-authors from a decolonising perspective. Panda, Lund, and Pattanayak present a collaboration between universities in India and Norway, which developed entrepreneurial internships for women living in poverty in rural India. Their article underlines the importance of giving voices to local women in the development of local economy—particularly in terms developing a rapport with other local women farmers.