Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 16 - Humanitarian organisations as gendered organisations

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024.
This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 16 - Humanitarian organisations as gendered organisations - contributed by Rianka Roy.

From the introduction
Humanitarian organisations are aid agencies and advocacy groups working internationally, nationally, and locally to support distressed populations. They bring together a range of activities and coalitions (Möller et al., 2020) among United Nations agencies, international and national non-government organisations, communities, and other bilateral groups. Humanitarian organisations can be ‘multi-mandated’, combining development work, emergency relief during natural disasters and conflicts, peacebuilding, and human rights work (Mosse, 2011; Harcourt, 2016). Although they provide aid to populations in crisis, quite paradoxically, humanitarian organisations themselves perpetuate structural inequities for both beneficiaries and aid workers, including volunteers, consultants, and staff (Terry, 1998; Roth, 2015).
Gender occupies an important place in the agenda and framework of humanitarian organisations. Women have significant representation among beneficiaries and aid workers (UN Women, 2014).
However, humanitarian organisations are gendered organisations. In 1990, Joan Acker first introduced the concept of gendered organisations, building on some similar preceding ideas (Kanter, 1977; Game and Pringle, 1984; Cockburn, 1985; Pringle, 1989). Shortly before Acker’s article, West and Zimmerman (1987) examined the performative aspects of gender and its entanglement with sexuality. They identified ‘doing gender’ as ‘a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities’ determining masculine and feminine ‘natures’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 126). Gender is constantly performed and discursively renewed within the same hierarchical structures (Butler, 1990).
In their operations, directions, meanings, and identities, gendered organisations embody a structural distinction between men and women. Typically, women get fewer privileges, benefits, and opportunities than men, who are considered ‘ideal workers’. With women’s overall underrepresentation in leadership positions, humanitarian organisations function as gendered organisations. Fund allotment for ‘women’s’ issues become secondary to competing concerns like war and terrorism (Kabeer, 1999; Purkayastha, 2018; Hardi, 2019). Gendered structures within humanitarian organisations also operate intersectionally, reflecting effects of class, caste, race, ethnicity, and religion (Roth, 2015; Krishnan, 2020).

Note on contributor
Rianka Roy is an assistant professor in sociology at Wake Forest University.
Her current research on Indian tech workers’ activism falls at the intersection of labour and labour movements, social movements, gender, and migration.
As a qualitative researcher, she borrows tools and insights from feminist and decolonial methodologies. Rianka completed her previous PhD program at Jadavpur University, India on social media surveillance. She also taught English literature at an undergraduate college in India before transitioning to Sociology.

Overviews are already available for the following chapters:
Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – a re-orientation

Humanitarianism and colonialism

Humanitarianism and the global Cold War, 1945–1991

Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation

Humanitarianism, development and peace: a southern perspective

Localisation and the humanitarian sector

Human rights and humanitarianism

Humanitarian organisations: behemoths and butterflies

Faith actors in humanitarianism: dynamics and inequalities

Diaspora assistance  

Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020)

Subversive humanitarianism

Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and the military

Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector