6. Supportive Environments and Change
6.1 Introduction
There are many different ‘rural women’ in New Zealand. In the same way as there is no one Maori perspective or one Pakeha perspective, there is no one rural women’s perspective. Rather, there are experiences and circumstances which rural women hold in common. Acknowledging both the shared experiences or circumstances and the differences has been raised as an important issue during the background research and interviews for this report.
Previous sections of this report have discussed the changes in women’s employment, women’s representation on formal decision making bodies, women’s experiences as consumers and their representation in the media. Although progress is being made, positive changes are occurring very slowly. In some cases, such as in the representation of women on conservation boards and crown health enterprise boards, the situation for women is not as good as it has been before. The inclusion of women in decision making processes has been identified as important to sustainable development and, potentially, enabling full advantage to be taken of the Uruguay GATT Round.
The previous sections have also discussed the diversification appearing within the agricultural sector and the variety of influences affecting rural New Zealand. Many issues — such as sustainable development, acknowledging and incorporating analysis of gender issues and the role and rights of indigenous peoples — are no longer marginal but are increasingly being incorporated as integral strands of decision making. This gradual integration means that multiple perspectives and realities are now more likely to be taken into account at both community level and by government bureaucracies when defining ‘how the world operates’ and in planning, developing ideas and making decisions.
The attendance and enthusiasm of more than 250 women at ‘Paddocks to Parliament’ — a conference for rural women in 1993 — is testament to women’s wish to share information about a range of topics including rural health, resource management, farm management, and small business issues. All of these issues are based on the knowledge of individuals and on community-based systems of support and information sharing. Overwhelmingly women from the conference recognised this and spoke of the wish to network, keep in contact, pass on skills and expertise to each other, at the same time as celebrating differences.
Changes in the international environment and the New Zealand economy and society are continuing. Governments are increasingly moving to encourage greater individual and family self-reliance. Implicit is the sense that community support, service delivery and action will occur to support such self-reliance. Initiatives by communities are growing along with demands on those communities.
Given these increasing demands on communities, in the course of preparing this report women asked how they could exercise individual choice while being aware of shared experiences and circumstances. How could the infrastructure of rural society be maintained while women exercise ‘choice’ in how they run their lives? How could the cultural traditions of rural pakeha New Zealand be respected and understood while not acting as a constraint on choice? The role of women in providing the support in rural communities, along with the support structures needed for women to exercise greater choice, requires considerably more investigation and analysis.
We are still attempting to understand the characteristics which contribute to effective community action. In doing so it is important to recognise that supportive community action results from conscious and planned decisions. The WHO, FAO and OECD have all identified the importance of specific support being given for community development, community ownership and personal skills development. It is now recognised that special provisions also need to be taken for women’s issues to be acknowledged.
6.2 Integration and special provisions
The integration of multiple perspectives does not happen by chance. For example Dr Clarence Beeby, who had a strong influence on New Zealand education, recently published an account of his years of involvement in education. Beeby reviewed gaps in the development of New Zealand’s education system after World War II and commented:
| Any suggestion that the sexes should be mixed for these subjects (cooking and woodwork) at the school level would have been regarded as ridiculous, if not vaguely improper. Old boy’s associations would have been horrified. After all these years, it’s impossible to say how far this model was imposed on the educational system by the structure and the demands of society in the 1940s, and how far the education system became an active instrument for codifying and intensifying the prejudices of earlier generations ... whatever ... I, for one, was determined that girls should have equal opportunity with boys in the school system, and that women who wanted to go on to a professional career should not be disadvantaged by their sex, but it was a long time before I began to see with any clarity that special provisions must be made to help them surmount the obstacles they would encounter just because they were females (Beeby, 1992:189). |
In this statement Dr Beeby is acknowledging the power and influence of existing networks which, while they may support the dominant group, exclude others. He identifies the need to take special steps for other voices, needs and perspectives to be heard — in this case girls and young women.
The acknowledgement that choice and a real say over individual or community development, with all the associated individual and social responsibilities, does not happen automatically is increasingly being reflected in problem solving approaches. This may be in health, agricultural or employment development. Three separate international bodies — the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) — have clarified the role of community support as part of multi-faceted development.
The WHO Ottawa Charter guidelines identify five interlocking elements as critical for promoting health. Coming from a completely different perspective and set of issues — rural and agricultural development — the FAO has worked through a similar set of guidelines for sustainable agriculture in the Den Bosch Declaration. Put side by side, connections between the two organisations’ attempts to think through constructive ways of addressing quite different issues are clear:
| Health | Sustainable Agriculture | ||
| Personal skills | Promoting human resource development | ||
| Supportive social and physical environments | Ensuring integrated community based resource planning and management | ||
| Strong community-based responsibility (and ownership) | Accelerating the development of rural organisations, people’s participation — especially rural women | ||
| Policy and legislation, locally and nationally, which supports community responsibility | Macro-economic policy context — appropriate mechanisms to connect government and non-government interests | ||
| Appropriate services (eg information and technology) to deliver and maintain policy | Providing support services and training for optimum use (on farm input, local natural resources especially energy) and to promote diversification | ||
| WHO Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986 | FAO Den Bosch Declaration, 1991 |
The OECD reported in 1992 on employment developments in rural areas. While employment appears to be quite distinct from health promotion or agricultural development, the methods adopted for effective development, the analysis of key steps and the need for a simple but multi-component framework are very similar. The OECD report noted the importance of human resource development, providing the basis for expanding entrepreneurial capabilities, being mixed with strengthening and supporting the local social and economic fabric. The report commented:
| resources ... include qualitative elements, such as the capacity of a community to positively manage change, and here human attributes are important: the level of education and training, the ability to behave in an entrepreneurial way, and the networks and institutions by which entrepreneurial dynamism can take hold and develop. These qualities make a crucial difference as the endowment of capital and natural resources alone will not sustain — or indeed make for — development (OECD, 1992:10). |
And,
| ultimately economic opportunity cannot be parachuted into a community. It must be developed from within (OECD, 1992). |
The words ‘community’ and ‘communities’ are often used as very generalised terms. There is very little analysis of what is meant by communities, how they operate and how they may differ from each other. For those interested in the ways in which societies and cultures operate there are many ways of describing communities. While there are several ways of viewing a community two basic definitions are often used. One approach is to define the ‘community as object’. Using this approach the community is viewed as a service unit made up of resources and opportunities, for example from commercial, housing, religious, occupational, educational and household sectors. Using this perspective members of a community tend to be seen as passive recipients of externally provided services.
The second approach defines communities as personal, active and self-determining. People see their community as an important social unit to which they belong. They have a shared history, their own way of life, a familiar place, familiar people, loyalties and symbols, along with similar plans, hopes and aspirations for the future. They see themselves as part of a community which will be able to decide and do things. This approach can be seen as ‘community as agent’ (Melser, 1983).
Consistent with these two definitions the OECD report on rural employment notes:
| For some rural areas there will be a continuing need for the public provision and maintenance of specific forms of material infrastructure, such as transport and communications. It is now recognised, however, that such provision must be accompanied by complementary policies which develop human resources and entrepreneurial capabilities. Regional policies should also examine new forms of infrastructure, including institutions and programmes that support the development of the social fabric. Education and training measures are vital in this respect (OECD, 1992:15). |
It is clear that agencies such as the OECD and FAO are now beginning to recognise that ignoring the second definition of ‘community’ produces undesirable results and works counter to effective development. Explicit as well as implicit in the discussion of all these agencies has been the recognition of women as key stakeholders in, and key actors in sustaining, communities.
There is no one right way of analysing the way the world functions. For example, there are many different disciplines (such as economics, sociology, and history) and each considers different aspects of the world important. Historians would be more interested in the timing and sequence of events than the details of monetary systems in any particular time period. Marxist sociologists might be more interested in the ownership of factories as the means of production, and feminist sociologists in the treatment and position of women. While there might be areas of considerable overlap in the explanations and descriptions that emerge, people using each discipline would have a different focus when studying or explaining local or global phenomena. None of the perspectives are any more ‘correct’ than the others.
The value of the models developed by the FAO, WHO and OECD is the integration of both personal and global directions. In the next section of this report, activities undertaken by and with women in a predominantly rural region of New Zealand (Southland) are explored as an example of what is possible when components of the FAO, WHO and OECD models are applied.
Contact for Enquiries
Rural Affairs Coordinator
Sector Performance Policy
MAF Policy
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
PO Box 2526
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 4 894 0675
Fax: +64 4 4 894 0745
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