Foreign Office advertising for Gender Advisers

[HavelockVetinari]

Has anyone seen the new job advert on Civil Service Jobs? It's advertising for 3 'gender advisers' and sounds distinctly ominous...

www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?jcode=1602232&csource=csalerts

The successful candidate will work closely with cross-government Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) teams in British Diplomatic missions overseas and other government departments in London to provide technical leadership, practical advice and input across the range of CSSF programmes, ensuring that they are in line with UK legal obligations and Ministerial priorities on gender/social development, whilst delivering the UK’s strategic priorities. They will also play a key role in shaping the CSSF’s gender advisory offer to its network of programme managers to ensure that staff are ‘gender confident’ in their day-to-day operations.

You will commission relevant research and analysis to inform programming decisions; lead or participate in CSSF annual reviews; capture, analyse and share lessons and best practice across the region on integrating gender into programmes; identify skills/ knowledge gaps across the network on gender issues; and work with CSSF stakeholders to design and deliver gender-sensitive programme training in the region.

It’s so depressing that after all those years fighting for single sex provisions woman are having to start doing it all over again.

What's strange about this? There have been jobs like this in the foreign office and overseas aid orgs for years. Poverty and conflict has a different effect on women, gender based violence is a huge issue. If the issue is the use of the word gender, it's generally used in this context to reflect the fact that there is huge cultural variance in the way women are effected and most people who work in the sector are trying to fight throws cultural effects.

Am I missing something specific or new about these jobs?

Gender-based violence? I think you mean sex-based violence @reddressblueshoes

To add context: i had a slightly similar component to a job previously. It involved things like analysing whether refugees needed single-sex healthcare provision, whether it was suitable to provide certain interventions to women only or if their husbands would prevent them attending making it better to have targeted 'family' interventions in the first instance, ensuring feminine hygiene was adequately addressed in packs given to people in camps. Mostly bog standard and practical things that were frequently missed.

Given the conflict mention, I'd say this probably would involve advising conflict advisors on including women in conflict interventions- in some cases, there are specific community interventions with male and female groups talking about after-effects of conflict on the community which are experienced differently.

And no, @spos I'm not talking about sex based violence. This is the whole bloody point of the gender and sex distinction. If you are looking at violence against women (VAW) in an overseas context from the bloody foreign office you have to be looking at gender, because the very context specific and cultural trappings of gender are usually even bigger drivers than sex based ones, and if you don't understand those- which people coming from outside generally don't- you're more likely to introduce programmes that harm women and girls, as has been evidenced in the past.

Sorry that should be @SPOFS

reddressblueshoes

Women are oppressed because of their sex.

context specific and cultural trappings of gender are usually even bigger drivers than sex based ones, and if you don't understand those- which people coming from outside generally don't- you're more likely to introduce programmes that harm women and girls, as has been evidenced

I find this very interesting (genuinely, not being goady), so does this mean that men (biological males) are also affected if they act according to the feminine gender norms? Or is it only biological females affected, and if so how do you distinguish between sex-based and gender-based oppression? Does that mean that women (biological females) that don't perform according to gender norms don't get oppressed / harmed? Can you provide links to the evidence would be interested to read about it.

The word 'gender' needs to be removed from public policy.

It is inaccurate, misleading and confusing.

The word 'gender' needs to be removed from public policy

Completely agree. It has at least 3 quite different and mutually exclusive meanings in colloquial use and context is very little help in determining which is meant. As a term with legal ramifications as in policy guidance it's a disaster.

"If you are looking at violence against women (VAW) in an overseas context from the bloody foreign office you have to be looking at gender, because the very context specific and cultural trappings of gender are usually even bigger drivers than sex based ones, "

COOL

Why aren't all the girls and women who live with these risks simply saying "I'm male" and it will all vanish POOF GONE in a puff of smoke.

Because

That isn't how it fuckign well works is it.

Jesus.

"The word 'gender' needs to be removed from public policy"

Also completely agree.

In this case it is being used to describe the cultural / sex roles enforced in different societies. The role you are expected to meet is based in your sex.

Women and girls are oppressed all over the world becasue they are female.

So would you say FGM is sex-based or gender-based? I mean, obviously it's both, but having an Intervention in the UK targeting all girls and deeming them at equal risk of FGM is clearly ludicrous. FGM affects women and girls in certain communities more than other because of cultural perceptions of what it is to be a woman which vary from place to place. Gender is a concept that allows for that distinction to be made.

@Ineedacupofteadesperately - it's more the case that women (and men) face specific risks based on both their sex and gender based cultural perspectives on what their role should be because of their sex. So for example, boys at risk of being kidnapped and used as soldiers, girls at risk of being kidnapped and sexually abused by militia, to use a really crude example. There should be interventions to deal with both, but there are subtleties that apply in both situations- there may be a perception that it is a good thing for a boy to learn to be a soldier, or that girls who are kidnapped are 'bad' girls who dressed a certain way, for example.

There are a category of risks that apply because of sex, and personally, broadly speaking, I think they're quite similar globally: women are at much greater risk of rape and sexual violence than men, at risk from maternal mortality and unsafe access to reproductive rights, etc etc. But there are specific practices relating to cultural gender norms that vary hugely from country to country.

It is really unhelpful and small minded to act as through the UKs own issues with how the concept of gender is being interpreted should throw out what has always been a very useful distinction to explain to people the difference between differences between the sexes that won't be changed - e.g. Need for maternity services for women - vs those that can, and can in fact be influenced by shifts in perception and culture, such as attitudes to women having access to contraception. I still think it's a useful distinction in the UK, though would appreciate people being clearer about what they mean, but I think it's an essential one when looking at working overseas and specifically implementing programmes overseas in totally different cultural contexts where perceptions of what it is to be male and female are huge drivers in the risks faced by women.

WHO page for Europe uses Gender in the sense it used to be meant ( and as feminists still use it >> sex role)

www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-determinants/gender

I agree >> get rid of it.

Women and girls are not oppressed due to feelz in their heads. The word is fucked. Get rid of it.

reddressblueshoes

IT IS NOT FEMINISTS WHO HAVE FUCKED UP WHAT GENDER MEANS. FEMINSITS ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE WORKED ON GENDER (SEX ROLE) FOR DECADES AND IDENTIFIED IT AS THE TOOL BY WHICH WOMEN AND GIRLS (AND MEN AND BOYS) ARE OPPRESSED.

GO AND TELL OFF THE TRANS ACTIVISTS.

Fuxake talk about telling your grandmother how to suck eggs.

IT IS NOT US YOU NEED TO ARGUE WITH. IT'S THE TRANS ACTIVISTS. GET ON TWITTER AND SEE WHAT RESPONSE THEY GIVE YOU.

And you CANNOT remove the gender role from the sex on which is is based.

Talking about gender role with no reference to sex is what certain activists are trying to do.

They say that oppression of women and girls is NOT sex based but baed on their "feminine" (enforced sex role) behaviours. This is arse about face, entirely.

If you are accusing FEMINISTS over the AGES of not understanding what SEX ROLE is and why it is THE tool by which girls and women are oppressed all over the world BECAUSE of their sex

Then I don't know what else to say really.

Those second wavers were thick as fucking shit weren't they.

Do universities still offer gender studies degrees?

Does they attract so much bile as well?

I think ^reddressblueshoes* is absolutely correct, esoecialky looking at the department in which these advisers will be based.

Ol, I'll ask again @NothingOnTellyAgain - what is the word that helps me make the distinction between biological sexual differences and the culturally acquired assumptions around that? Because feminists like me have been cheerily using gender to explain sex based discrimination for decades. Do you honestly think there's no distinction between how these perceptions play out country by country? Or do you just not care?

Of course women face discrimination, violence, abuse because they're women. But there's an actual distinction between the cause of that violence that is useful, otherwise how do you hope to address it? Talk to women in developing countries and understand their perspective: people have been fighting cultural perceptions and practices for years and making snide comments about how if they just said they were male it would go away is just showing your ignorance about what the world is like
outside the island you live in. Ive worked with women who have set up shelters for those fleeing domestic violence in countries where marital rape is still legal and even approved of: gender was a concept championed by feminists as an explanatory tool for decades. Just because it's been misappropriated doesn't mean you get to decide it no longer has explanatory power for those of us still using its original meaning.

Do you think I'm not a feminist? Seriously? I've run gender workshops, I've worked with victims of domestic violence, I don't currently live in the U.K. and I accept the trans issue might be the most important battle facing feminism in that context but I'm telling you that globally, the women who will be reached by the projects these roles are likely to work on, will most likely never have heard of the context. They will be dealing with cultural practices and norms and laws that are a million miles away from the fights people are having on twitter about pronouns.

And I'm not saying those arguments aren't important, I'm saying why the hell do a small group of western activists get to stop people using a concept like gender. It might be tainted in the U.K.: it's not being used that way amongst people working in international development/aid, at least not so far. So why don't those women get to have that difference, if it will mean interventions are better tailored for them?

I'm relatively new to all this but this:

So would you say FGM is sex-based or gender-based? I mean, obviously it's both

isn't bolleaux, surely? Female Genital Multilation is practised on females — you know, people with vaginas and clitorises and labia.

I work in international development, and here I think it is a proper use of the word gender. At least as it is commonly used in the sector. Gender expectations are imposed by men, because of sex, on women all across the world, and in that regards, there isn't anything particularly creepy about the use of the word gender.

Sorry, that should be is bolleaux!

REdshoes the problem is that we have had the word "gender", as a useful theoretical tool in the social sciences, used to describe the way in which different cultures use stereotypes to oppress people of the female sex, stolen from us by a group of men who want to use it to describe some amorphous internal feeling of pink fluffy femininity.

It's not the fault of feminists that this useful word has been stolen and bastardised to mean something else, to the point where it becomes meaningless.

I totally agree that it is vital that we have some sort of word to describe what the social sciences used to mean by gender. And personally, I don't think it's any accident that a group of incredibly, toxically misogynistic men have chosen this word, of all words, to steal, thus robbing us of the theoretical and explanatory framework in which to make sense of the means by which men (biological category) oppress women (biological category) using culturally and socially constructed ideologies about how women are "supposed" to be.

"Ol, I'll ask again @NothingOnTellyAgain - what is the word that helps me make the distinction between biological sexual differences and the culturally acquired assumptions around that? "

GO AND ASK THE TRANS RIGHTS ACTIVISTS WHO HAVE REDFINED THIS WORD FROM UNDER US.

I have NO ARGUMENT with your definition of it as that is WHAT IIT MEANS or used to
Like it or not, it does NOT any more.

Don't argue that with feminsits FFS go and tell of the TRAs and see how far you get.

This redefinition of the word has had SIGNIFICANT IMPACT for example in thre recording of crime stats in the UK and the placing of men convicted of rape in women's prisons, as one of the more extreme examples.

This is NOT the work of FEMINISTS FFS.

If and when these approaches get embedded here they WILL spread to the rest of the world and then where will women and girls be? FUCKED is where, with no way of measuring sex based oppression any more.

This is already happening.

DO NOT BLAME FEMINISTS FFS.