Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

Development Discourse on Gender and

Communication in Strategies for Social
Change

by Karin Gwinn Wilkins

In this paper, I explore institutional discourse on the role of gender in constructions

of development communication beneficiaries and on the process of social change
facilitated through communication intervention. Analyses are based on descrip-
tions of health, nutrition, and population projects implemented by several organi-
zations since 1975. Since the Decade for Women, development communication
projects have focused their attention on women and other marginal groups, whereas
USAID has replaced informing strategies with persuasion approaches that target
women as reproducers to consume products and services available through the
private sector.

Development communication efforts, along with other development strategies,

have failed to improve the conditions of women on a global scale. Compared with
men, women are disproportionately subject to poverty, illiteracy, domestic vio-
lence, discrimination, and barriers to senior professional positions, even in devel-
opment organizations (Harbour & Twist, 1996). As a group marginalized from
global, national, and community power structures, women constitute a target more
often than a participant in the production of development communication. The
decline of women’s conditions stands in stark contrast to the pronounced atten-
tion paid to issues of women and gender in development discourse. In this essay,
I explore institutional discourse on the role of gender in constructions of develop-
ment communication beneficiaries and on the process of social change facilitated
through communication intervention.
Development communication activity embodies models of social change that
are implemented across political and cultural boundaries. Issues of gender, com-

Karin Gwinn Wilkins (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1991) is an assistant professor in the Radio-
Television-Film Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include devel-
opment communication, international communication, media, and social change. The author would
like to thank the University of Texas for supporting this research through a summer fellowship, the
Center for American History for their assistance with the Development Communication Archive, anony-
mous reviewers for their constructive suggestions, along with John Downing, Robert Hornik, Rob
Huesca, Emile McAnany, Bella Mody, Nancy Morris, Peter Siegenthaler, Leslie Steeves, and Jody Wa-
ters. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 1998 International Communication
Association conference in Jerusalem.

Copyright © 1999 International Communication Association

46
Development Gender Discourse

munication, and development are grounded in global structures and processes of

power, which condition access to and acquisition of economic and social re-
sources. Critical scholars have described the global domination of media systems
by Western and corporate agencies. Gender, however, also factors into this equa-
tion, as the extensive documentation of the tendency of media industries to trivialize
women’s roles and concerns has demonstrated (McLaughlin, 1991; Rakow & Kranich,
1991; van Zoonen, 1994). As in investigations of the unequal relations between
states engaged in donating and receiving foreign aid, we also need to understand
the dynamics contributing to the institutional construction of gender within devel-
opment communication strategies designed to alleviate social problems.
Some challenges to global power relations build from a feminist approach,
beginning with the premise that women constitute the group most neglected and
harmed by global development processes. In her summary of feminist scholar-
ship, Steeves (1993) concluded that, among other areas, research is needed “on
women’s roles and representations in Third World development communication
activities, including funding agency projects” (p. 120). Issues of women, gender,
and feminism may be examined by exploring discourse of development institu-
tions, given that development strategies designed to benefit women do not emerge
from women’s experiences, but “in the midst of bureaucratic discourse,” the lan-
guage and activities associated with the planning and implementation of develop-
ment projects (van Esterik, 1994, p. 265).
The purpose here is to explore the nature of this discourse on beneficiaries and
social change in development communication projects addressing health, nutri-
tion, and population problems. This work builds on recent scholarship about
development as institutional discourse; historical shifts in development on issues
of women, gender, and feminism; and communication intervention as strategic
social change. This institutional discourse is situated within organizational and
historical contexts. Analyses of health, nutrition, and population project descrip-
tions demonstrate a shift from focusing on women and other marginal groups
since the Decade for Women, toward emphasizing consumption and privatization.

Theoretical Approach

Development as Institutional Discourse

In this section, I frame this work within a recent tradition of understanding devel-
opment within the context of institutional discourse. In subsequent sections, I
focus on historical shifts in development discourse on women and gender, and on
the role of communication interventions in the process of social change.
Escobar (1995a) defined discourse as “a rule-governed system held together by
a set of statements that the discursive practice continues to reproduce” (p. 154),
thereby shaping the reality of a field (Escobar, 1991, p. 675). As a discourse,
development articulates knowledge and power through the construction of social
problems and institutional interventions (Crush, 1995; Escobar, 1995b).
Institutional discourse represents the interpretations of development institu-
tions working in their global context, rather than the interpretations of individual

47
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

practitioners. This discourse extends beyond descriptions of places and peoples

as expertise that is created within the development agency to suit its own pur-
poses (Mitchell, 1991). Development communication activity does not constitute
neutral engagement, but rather, political action in the form of an intervention
(Escobar, 1995a). Yet, when social problems are defined as natural rather than
political, issues of power and hegemony are ignored (Mitchell, 1991, p. 23; Moore,
1995, p. 1). The articulation of social problems involves associating concern with
designated conditions and groups in order to legitimize strategic solutions di-
rected toward alleviating these problems among defined beneficiaries (Rakow,
1989; Schön, 1979). Escobar (1991) reminded us that these solutions may be ac-
companied by administrative measures that make practitioners “conform to the
institution’s discursive and practice universe” (p. 667). Through institutional prac-
tices, the nature of social problems, social change, and beneficiaries are catego-
rized and enacted in development programs.
In this investigation, I assume that institutional documentation of communica-
tion projects represents an integral (though not complete) aspect of this sense-
making experience (Dervin, 1989; Weick, 1995). Development texts, such as re-
ports, evaluations, and speeches, constitute assembled knowledge of the “devel-
opment industry” (Crush, 1995, p. 5). In these texts, I seek organizational con-
structions of the processes of communication and social change, and of intended
beneficiaries. Policies and programs of central development agencies constitute
official program intentions, which may not correspond with actual practice, but
reflect institutional discourse (Staudt, 1985, p. 3). This documentation represents
an attempt by an organization to objectify knowledge through the process of
establishing categories of beneficiaries and approaches to social change (Escobar,
1995a).
Gender, particularly as a way of differentiating beneficiaries, often becomes
institutionalized (Staudt, 1990, p. 10) in a way that implies a “patriarchal gender
system” (Valdivia, 1996, p. 8). For example, population projects focusing on women
as “at-risk reproducers” privilege a biological construction, narrowing women’s
potential roles (Jaquette & Staudt, 1985). Development discourse creates knowl-
edge about women, which is then processed into institutional justifications and
intervention strategies. Moore (1995) estimated that “gender” made its “first dis-
cursive appearance” in development institutions during the 1960s (p. 43). How-
ever, it was not until 1975 that women’s contributions to the development process
were formally acknowledged by the United Nations (UN). Next, I review historical
shifts in development discourse attention to women, gender, and feminism.

Historical Shifts in Development Discourse on Women and Gender

There has been a transition in the field of development communication from a
lack of attention to women, to a focus on “women in development” (WID). This
has been adapted by some into an approach considering “gender and develop-
ment” (GAD), and more recently, toward an articulation of international femi-
nisms.
Early scholars of development communication did not explicitly address the
role of gender in their discussions of media and modernity. However, an examina-

48
Development Gender Discourse

tion of their work illustrates implicit assumptions made about men’s and women’s
roles in the development process. For example, Lerner’s (1958) classic text con-
trasting the life of a male Turkish village chief, representing traditional values,
with that of a male grocer, representing modernity, chronicles the lives of men,
while diminishing women’s roles. Although women did not figure in his analyses,
Lerner did hire a female interviewer, who was “ordered . . . by the numbers:
thirtyish, semi-trained, alert, compliant with instructions, not sexy enough to im-
pede our relations with the men of Balgat but chic enough to provoke the women”
(p. 29). This example is not intended to isolate Lerner’s work as a specialized
case, but to suggest that early theorists trivialized women’s roles in the develop-
ment process. Valdivia’s (1996) more extensive analysis of early development
theorists’ work confirms a pattern of discourse that minimizes women’s employ-
ment and participation in development projects and constrains mediated images
of gender roles. Early views of development obfuscate women’s economic contri-
butions, instead highlighting their role as vulnerable reproducers (Escobar, 1995a;
Parpart, 1995).
The mid-1970s marked a shift in attention to women in development, along
with other critical transitions in the field of development communication (Rogers,
1976; Schramm & Lerner, 1976). A WID strategy advocated including women as an
explicit focus in order to achieve development goals (Dagenais & Piché, 1994).
Based on her experience implementing a WID project, Spronk (1992) explained
that project documents articulated not just the intentions of the practitioners, but
of the institutional expectations regarding appropriate beneficiaries and practice.
In 1975, WID was placed on a global agenda when the UN sponsored a confer-
ence in Mexico City to launch the Year of Women. This facilitated the designation
of the Decade for the Advancement of Women (1976 until 1985; Staudt, 1990).
As a discourse, WID served to organize principles for the production of knowl-
edge about women by states, institutions, and communities (Escobar, 1995a, p.
210). WID constructed women as actively contributing to society through their
economic production and human reproduction (Staudt, 1985). Boserup’s (1970)
research on the importance of women’s contributions to agricultural production,
which tended to be underpaid if compensated at all, inspired a focus on women’s
role as economic agents. WID also pointed to a need to improve women’s access
to education, employment, and political participation (Parpart, 1995; Valdivia, 1996),
conditions considered in earlier models of modernization that tended to privilege
male constituents. Throughout the Decade for the Advancement of Women, sev-
eral scholars recognized limits to using media to promote social change, such as
problematic stereotypes of women in media texts, a lack of women’s employment
in positions of power in media industries, and poor access to mediated technolo-
gies as a source of information, particularly among rural women.
Following the Decade for Women, attention to WID gradually shifted toward a
concern with gender and development (GAD). This shift from “women” to “gen-
der” resonates with an understanding of gender as a socially constructed category,
rather than essentializing sex as a biological condition (Dagenais & Piché, 1994;
Parpart, 1995; Riaño, 1994). GAD attempted to position women as active agents of
social change situated within social and structural systems of patriarchy and power

49
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

(Cardinal, Costigan, & Heffernan, 1994; Dagenais & Piché, 1994). Steeves (1993)
drew our attention to critical scholarship about the political economy of commu-
nication and participatory approaches to development (Freire, 1983) to propose
the creation of a global, imagined feminist community that challenges power
relations. As a model of social change, a GAD approach to development locates
power within normative and structural conditions (Parpart, 1995), in contrast to
earlier development frameworks that privilege the importance of the individual in
social change.
Recent literature has proposed a new shift toward “international feminisms”
(Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1996), recognizing differences across class, race, and other
social categories (Fernea, 1998; Luthra, 1996; Mackenzie, 1995; Riaño, 1994). Re-
specting diversity across women, a move toward international feminisms has sought
a collective identity across women as an imagined community of participants
seeking to change a global history of patriarchy and domination (Cardinal, Costigan,
& Heffernan, 1994; Steeves, 1987, 1993).
Existing development institutions have responded to WID and GAD by creat-
ing new structures (e.g., establishing WID divisions in the United States Agency
for International Development [USAID], Canadian International Development
Agency [CIDA], and the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP]) and
strategies (articulating gender-sensitive guidelines). New organizations (e.g., the
United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM], Development Alterna-
tives with Women for a New Era [DAWN], Self Employed Women’s Association
[SEWA], Women’s International Network [WIN], and Women’s International News
Gathering Service [WINGS]) have also been formed to facilitate collective mobili-
zation toward global feminist issues (Wilkins, 1997). The 1995 United Nations
Fourth World Conference on Women and the Non-Governmental Organization
(NGO) Forum in Beijing attracted more than 30,000 participants, five times as
many as had the conference 20 years earlier. Despite the introduction of new
structures, conferences, policies, and organizations, the emphasis on women’s
programs may be diminishing (Dagenais & Piché, 1994, p. 59), limited by a lack of
resources (Staudt, 1990), women in senior management positions (Parker & Fried-
man, 1993, p. 117), and appropriate gender stereotypes (Ferguson, 1990).
A feminist approach to development highlights many issues worth examining,
including the gendered constructions of intended beneficiaries in communication
interventions, the lack of female representation in existing development agencies,
the efforts of women’s groups to promote social change, women’s access to com-
munication technologies, and inappropriate stereotypes employed in strategic
messages. I focus on the first of these issues, concerning the role of gender in
institutional discourse on project beneficiaries, by exploring organizational docu-
mentation on communication interventions. Next, I consider the role of communi-
cation campaigns in strategic social change.

Communication Interventions in Strategic Social Change

In this study of development discourse, I focus on communication interventions
designed to facilitate social change. The academic literature on development com-
munication projects highlights the failure of these interventions, due to inappro-

50
Development Gender Discourse

priate theoretical approaches, poor program implementation, inadequate resources,

lack of political support (Hornik, 1988), or lack of connection with audiences’
needs, knowledge, and concerns (Mody, 1991). These development communica-
tion projects build on broader conceptualizations of the social change process
facilitated through communication interventions. These projects are implemented
by organizations working within political-economic contexts.
Communication campaigns represent a form of social intervention prompted
by a determination that some situation represents a social problem that merits
action. Although models of campaigns are united by their assumption that infor-
mation may be an appropriate means to resolve social concerns, they are divided
in their approaches to intervention. One of the most prominent approaches to
public communication campaigns, at least in literature published on the topic in
the U.S., advocates a social-marketing framework. Social marketing (McGuire,
1989) refers to a model of communication campaigns that works toward promot-
ing a socially beneficial practice or product in a target group. It does so through
market segmentation and formative research. The theoretical framework underly-
ing this approach follows sequential cognitive processes, moving an individual
from acquisition of knowledge, to an adjustment of attitudes, toward an ultimate
goal of behavior change (known as a “KAP” hierarchy of effects).
By focusing on individual social change, social marketing may be critiqued for
not adequately addressing social contexts (in terms of social structures and norms,
or political-economic conditions) in its conceptual framework. Alternatively, other
models of communication campaigns build on sociological frameworks, attempt-
ing to change norms rather than individuals, or on political-economic conditions,
attempting to address structural constraints. Another critique of the social-market-
ing model corresponds with recent attention in development communication dis-
course to more participatory approaches to social change (Melkote, 1991; Servaes,
Jacobson, & White, 1996). Some find fault with social marketing for assuming that
individuals in an audience serve as the objects rather than participants of commu-
nication interventions. For example, according to Gnmucio-Dagron (1991),

We in the Third World already have the experience of being objects of adver-
tising techniques and we believe that social marketing represents exactly the
opposite of what we have been fighting for over the last 25 years: a communi-
cation approach that places strength in the community and aims to change the
passive receptor of messages into an active communicator. (p. 20)

These diverse approaches to communication campaigns may be categorized as

attempting to persuade audiences to alter their behavior, to provide beneficiaries
with information or skills, to educate groups toward normative change (Wilkins,
1996), or to adapt structural conditions. Projects designed to inform and to per-
suade focus on individuals as the central locus of social change. However, each
model holds very different assumptions about the role of communication. In the
first model, projects assume communication serves as an end in itself, resonating
with a participatory approach to development communication (Melkote, 1991).
This information approach needs to be conceptualized as distinct from a persua-

51
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

sion framework, which attempts to change behavior as an ultimate goal, perhaps

facilitated through the process of changing knowledge and attitudes (McGuire,
1989). With persuasion projects, communication is assumed to serve as a means
toward another end, and not as a social good in and of itself. This framework is
closely aligned with social-marketing models of social change. In contrast, projects
designed to educate locate the focus of social change at the level of collective
groups rather than at the level of individuals. These projects are designed to
encourage people to adopt new values and norms over the long term, assuming
that interventions play a contributing role in the overall socialization of a commu-
nity. Finally, structural approaches attempt to improve policies or services by
focusing their interventions on key professionals (e.g., physicians) and decision
makers (e.g., government officials), who are directly responsible for structural
conditions.
I situate communication campaigns within the organizational contexts in which
they are produced. Luthra’s (1991) analysis of a social-marketing project in
Bangladesh demonstrated the importance of the marketing organization in pro-
moting particular conventions in intervention strategies. Drawing on Guttman’s
(1997) “value-centered” approach to the study of health communication interven-
tions and Rakow’s (1989) framework of communication campaigns, such projects
represent political strategies rather than neutral responses to objective social prob-
lems. Approaches to social problems do not exist independently, but are con-
structed by human agents (Schön, 1979) working within institutional contexts.
Organizations not only select the issues to be addressed through mediated cam-
paigns, but they also define the problem they hope to resolve through their inter-
pretation and characterization of the issue (Salmon, 1989). Groups and persons
participating in the construction of communication campaigns have power with
respect to their ability to define problems, appropriate solutions, and beneficiaries
(Gergen & Gergen, 1983).
Organizational contexts encompass both structural (in terms of interorganizational
relations) and normative (in terms of shared approaches to social problems and
their solutions) conditions. To explore normative conditions within environments,
I build from models of “sense making” (e.g., Dervin, 1989) and interpretive ap-
proaches to organizational communication (e.g., Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983).
Weick (1995) summarized the central tenets of this approach, conceiving organi-
zations as “sense-making systems” in which members actively engage in interpre-
tation and action.
In addition to normative conditions, organizations are subject to their structural
circumstances, such as the nature of the funding relationships between the orga-
nization and its donors and recipients (e.g., Aldrich, 1979; Luhmann, 1982; Murdock,
1988). This political-economic structure is believed to contribute to the direction
of articulated policies and programs in development agencies (Luthra, 1991). USAID
development projects, for example, are created within a context of foreign poli-
cies that have supported privatization and commercialization since the early 1980s
(Mohammadi, 1997). Communication campaigns are implemented by several in-
ternational development organizations with vastly different political-economic struc-

52
 Development Gender Discourse

tures, operating as bilateral agencies, multilateral agencies, nongovernmental or-

ganizations, or domestic government institutions.
This approach to the study of communication campaigns assumes that social
problems, and consequently the interventions designed to resolve them, are so-
cially constructed by practitioners working within organizational contexts. These
organizations are guided and constrained by normative climates and political-
economic structures. Institutional discourse about communication projects is situ-
ated within organizational and historical contexts to address shifts in attention to
gender and communication strategies over time.

Research Approach

The central issue in this research concerns the nature of institutional discourse on
development communication. Specifically, how does this discourse articulate the
role of gender in constructions of project beneficiaries and the role of communi-
cation in the process of social change? Moreover, does this discourse vary across
organizational or historical contexts?
I explored these questions through an analysis of population, health, and nutri-
tion projects implemented since 1975 (the first year dedicated by the UN to the
recognition of women’s roles in the development process). Although WID and
GAD encouraged development interventions that would improve a variety of con-
ditions for women (including access to formal education and economic opportu-
nities), the areas of population, health, and nutrition command a much higher
proportion of development resources and are more likely to target and reach a
higher proportion of women than other sectors of development (Helzner & Shepard,
1990; Jaquette & Staudt, 1985; Population Council, 1997).
These analyses were based on institutional documentation of health, nutrition,
and population projects1 acquired through the Development Communication
Archive in the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.2
The selection of documents includes all development communication projects in
these fields (N = 262) implemented since 1975. The unit of analysis was the project
implemented in one geographical site. When possible, multisite programs were
counted according to each individual project. Only those interventions imple-
mented in communities outside North America and Western Europe were included
in this analysis.3

1
This project sample includes 37% in the area of population, 40% in health, 13% in nutrition, and 10%
from the areas of population and health dealing exclusively with AIDS.
2
Funded by USAID, the former Clearinghouse for Development Communication had been maintained
most recently by the Academy for Educational Development (AED). This Archive is now administered
by the Radio-Television-Film Department (RTF), through the College of Communication, and the
Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
3
Studied projects were implemented in the Caribbean or Latin America (46%), Africa (27%), the Middle
East or Asia (25%), and in multiple regions (2%).

53
 Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

Development practitioners construct interventions designed to alleviate per-

ceived problems, based on their beliefs about the nature of their audience, the
social change process, and possible outcomes or processes facilitated through
communication. Therefore, the central dimensions in this analysis included the
implied model of social change, channels of communication employed, character-
izations of intended beneficiaries, organizational context of funding agency, and
year of initial implementation. The coding of these characteristics appeared to be
reliable.4
To investigate assumptions made about communication and social change, I
described the approaches to social change employed (according to the goal stated
in the project), and assumptions about communication channels (implied in de-
scriptions of and justifications for intervention strategies). Based on the stated
objectives of the intervention and the description of the process engaged, I cat-
egorized each project as designed to inform individuals and promote dialogue, to
persuade individuals to change their behavior, to educate collective groups to-
ward new social norms and values, or to change structural conditions. Projects
explicating an ultimate objective toward changing beneficiaries’ behaviors were
classified as “persuading.” Projects that did not include behavior change in their
objectives were categorized as “educating,” if they focused on altering the atti-
tudes or values of beneficiaries, or as “informing,” if they concentrated on the
provision of information or skills.5 Projects that target other professionals and
decision makers rather than beneficiaries are categorized as “structural.” In this
analysis, these categories were treated as mutually exclusive in order to differen-
tiate projects with different assumptions about the role of communication inter-
vention in the process of social change. Many of these projects described more
than one objective, but were coded in terms of the ultimate goal the communica-
tion intervention intended to accomplish.
To investigate discourse on beneficiaries, I chronicled which groups have been
targeted and how they have been described. Explicit reference to intended audi-
ence of each project was coded, along with justifications and descriptions of these
groups. Many projects referenced more than one audience, so each category was
coded separately.
In addition, I explored how discourse on social change and beneficiaries var-
ied across organizational contexts and over time. The organizational context of
the funding institution—whether through bilateral, multilateral, NGO, or develop-
ing country government support—may influence the nature of discourse about
project activity. The historical conditions of the time period may also contribute to
the nature of development communication. These analyses distinguished projects

4
Agreement coefficients across two coders are estimated at or above .80 (year implemented: 1.0; fund-
ing institution: .87; social change strategy: .80; television: 1.0; radio: 1.0; film-video: 1.0; audiovisual:
.93; newspapers-magazines: .87; other print: 1.0; telephone: 1.0; folk: 1.0; interpersonal: 1.0; women as
reproducers: .87; women as other: .93; men-fathers: .93; youth: 1.0; low-SES: .93; mid-SES: 1.0; con-
sumer: .93; rural: .87; urban: .87; professional: 1.0; general: 1.0).
5
It is important to acknowledge that no claim can be made that these “informing” projects are more or
less “participatory” than the others, given the research focus on discourse and not praxis.

54
Development Gender Discourse

implemented between 1975 and 1984 (54% of the studied projects), roughly ap-
proximating the Decade for Women, which lasted until 1985, from projects imple-
mented after 1985.
Given that the collection was sponsored by USAID for many years, it is not
surprising that most of the projects in the sample (55%) were funded through
USAID. About one quarter (27%) were funded through NGOs, 10% through mul-
tilateral agencies, 5% through national governments in developing countries, and
3% through other bilateral donors or other sources. Projects on which USAID
worked with other donors on a particular intervention were coded as USAID
projects. Similarly, when a multilateral organization worked with NGOs, the project
was coded as a multilateral strategy. NGO projects then represented those inter-
ventions attracting neither bilateral nor multilateral support.
I did not assume that this sample of documents reflected a population of projects
or actual practice in the field. Therefore, significance statistics, used to assess a
relationship between a randomly selected sample and a population, have limited
value for this study. Although this sample represented all appropriate project
descriptions identified in the Archive, it was limited in that it represented a purpo-
sive selection of materials deemed worthy by previous administrators of the col-
lection. In addition, this research was limited by focusing on written documenta-
tion, which summarizes and selects aspects of project experience as bureaucratic
discourse, distinguished from praxis or actual project implementation in the field.

Findings

Development Discourse on Communication and Social Change

In this section, I illustrate assumptions made about the potential for communica-
tion interventions in the process of social change. Project descriptions, articulating
intended goals, selections of communication channels, and justifications for projects
inform this analysis.
Overall, about half of the projects (52%) were categorized as attempting to
persuade audiences to change their behavior. Another third (30%) were catego-
rized as attempting to inform individuals with new knowledge or skills (see
Table 1). Of the remaining 18%, half pursued a strategy to educate an audience
and half to change structural conditions.
Projects attempting to persuade individuals tended to promote a Western ver-
sion of modernity that is associated with faith in technology. Oral Rehydration
Therapy (ORT), for example, was framed in USAID-sponsored Healthcom projects
as the latest achievement of modern science to resolve the “problem” of mothers
following traditional local practices when their children have diarrhea (Meyer,
Block, & Ferguson, 1983). Similarly, a nutrition project description suggested that
this intervention would coax mothers away from problematic rural customs
(Huffman & Canbest, 1988).
The persuasion model can best be characterized by a social-marketing ap-
proach to social change. More than half (56%) of all projects categorized as per-
suasion explicitly discussed social marketing as a conceptual framework. For ex-

55
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

Table 1. Communication Strategy for Social Change by Organizational Context

USAID Multilateral NGO Government Other Row

Intervention
Strategy

Persuasion 80% 23% 10% 29% 43% 52%

Information 9 42 66 42 57 30

Education 1 23 16 29 0 9

Structure 10 12 8 0 0 9

Column 55% 10% 27% 5% 3% N = 262

Note. Column percentages reflect the percentages of the total number of strategies (N =
262) used by each organization. Row percentages reflect the percentage of each type of
intervention strategy based on the total number of strategies.

ample, SOMARC, a USAID population program launched in 13 countries by 1984,

was designed to increase condom sales through private sector marketing. The
Healthcom program also employed social marketing as a central principle (along
with behavioral analysis and anthropology) in its communication strategy. Elabo-
rating on the success of “modern” marketing techniques in nutrition programs,
project consultants explained that

if breastmilk could carry a brand name from which someone makes a profit,
there would be no shortage of advertising and education in behalf of its ben-
efits, of the best way to feed an infant or of proper nutrition for the lactating
mother. (Manoff & Cooke, 1977, p. 2)

An integral part of the social-marketing model, according to USAID policy

documents, involves working with the private sector, in accordance with U.S.
foreign policy. According to one policy paper, health projects should “stress pri-
vate sector approaches to providing health care and health-promoting measures
and private resources to cover the costs generated by health programs” (USAID,
1982). Another report on population programs advised governments of develop-
ing countries to create policies supportive of the private sector and to work with
multinational corporations that “have a strong vested interest in stable economic
development” (Logan, Friedman, & Lown, 1989). In another summary of “AID’s
most promising contributions to development programming,” authors highlighted
the role and potential of the private sectors in both the U.S. and the developing
world (USAID, 1987b). In a collection of entertainment-education projects, popu-
lar songs were “promoted through a vast commercial network . . . treated as
commercial products rather than educational materials—exactly the effect plan-
ners had strived for” (Kincaid, Ruber, Elias, Coleman, & Segura, 1988).

56
Development Gender Discourse

Positioning communication interventions within the private sector accentuates

this tendency to frame programs within economic parameters. Thus, health care
was not conceptualized as a human right. It was conceptualized within a cost-
benefit framework that underlies the social-marketing model of social change.
Social-marketing frames individual health decisions as a balance between costs
(seen more broadly than financial costs, including opportunity costs) and benefits.
The persuasion strategy then frames social change as a set of economic conditions
and choices realized at an individual level. Focusing on individuals as the locus
for change draws attention away from critical structural influences. In the case of
nutrition, the International Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes, established
in 1981 to deter commercial firms from marketing infant formulas, played an
important role in promoting breastfeeding. In contrast, focusing on individual
mothers’ care of ill children avoids concerns with unsanitary water and poverty.
The characteristics of persuasion, as an approach to social change, became more
apparent when compared with other types of communication projects.
Many persuasion projects, like other interventions, assumed that mediated tech-
nologies have the power to achieve social change. Radio (71%), along with print
(74%), was used in a majority of the persuasion projects. Radio was favored for its
“access” and as having the “greatest impact” (Kaufman, 1975, p. A12). Although
not used as frequently as radio, television was employed in 57% of these projects.
It was seen by some as “a powerful tool in creating a climate for development”
(Joshi, Joshi, & Parmer, 1989). Used in fewer projects (17%), video and film were
seen as an alternative to interpersonal channels (42%), advocated by some as a
better “vehicle for educating developing country populations” than mass media
(UNDP, 1991). Using a telephone hotline appeared to dominate persuasion strat-
egies (17%), particularly entertainment-education approaches. Projects attempting
to persuade individuals to change their behavior tended to use television, radio,
telephones, print, and interpersonal sources more frequently than other projects.
Persuasion strategies tended to apply more channels per project than other modes
of intervention, thus accounting for the higher proportions across channels.
About one third of the studied projects operated within an informing frame-
work. Many of these projects attempted to improve living conditions by teaching
skills or promoting dialogue about nutrition, health, or family planning. Several
cases illustrate this strategy: An International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)
population program in Honduras used literary circles modeled after Freire’s (1983)
work to educate adults in rural areas (AED, 1986b); UNICEF created radio dramas
to teach Kenyan villagers about health (Kaufman, 1975); and the Pila project in
Guatemala instructed women working on a coffee plantation through audio cas-
settes of ways to improve nutrition and health at home (Fernandez & Colle, 1977).
In these projects, social problems were seen as resulting from a lack of informa-
tion, not behavioral conditions. Informing strategies seem to follow similar trends
as persuasion strategies in their use of communication channels. They relied on
television, radio, and print more frequently than education or structural approaches.
Other than persuading and informing strategies, about 1 in 5 projects focused
on normative or structural conditions, shifting blame from individual beneficiaries
toward their political and social contexts. Educating projects focused on gradually

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 Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

changing social norms. These included NGOs’ work in Nigeria to discourage so-
cial acceptance of female circumcision and early marriage (Supriya, 1991); an
NGO strategy in the Dominican Republic to change traditional gender roles as
reflected in media (Andujar, 1982); and a UNFPA project in Jamaica to alter the
conception that fertility is a reflection of virility and femininity (AED, 1986a).
Educating programs were designed to facilitate long-term consequences rather
than cause short-term change, through their use of television, radio, print, and
interpersonal sources.
Whereas campaigns attempting to alter norms focus on addressing social change
within a community, projects addressing structural conditions locate social change
in political, economic, or other institutional contexts. Many projects paid tribute to
the delivery of health, nutrition, and population services, such as USAID and
multilateral programs using interactive radio to assist physicians working in re-
mote areas (Hudson, Forsythe, & Burns, 1983). These projects attempted to change
the structures of health care, family planning, and nutrition services. Projects ad-
dressing structural conditions also tended to rely on radio, print, and interpersonal
sources.

Development Discourse on Intended Beneficiaries

Next, I explore constructions of beneficiaries, with particular attention to gender
as a mode of categorization. As expected, gender marks a defining feature in
these targets for intervention6 (see Table 2).
Women’s role as reproducer was highlighted in the 25% of the projects that
specified pregnant women or mothers as appropriate audiences. This audience
was constructed as both “vulnerable” and responsible for children. Several texts
repeated this theme of women’s vulnerability as illustrated in the following ex-
ample: “Women of childbearing age, infants, and preschool children have tradi-
tionally been called ‘vulnerable groups’ because they are at high nutritional risk
due to their increased physical needs,” so helping mothers and children assures
“the social and economic well-being of the future generation” (USAID, 1978, p. 2).
When infants were malnourished, projects tended to direct attention to what mothers
were not doing, such as not breastfeeding soon enough or long enough. Some
projects explicitly suggested that compliance with the mediated message would
enable beneficiaries to “be a good mother.” Projects targeting women as repro-
ducers tended to apply folk media (26%) and interpersonal sources (62%) more
frequently than did projects not targeting this group (9% and 29%, respectively).
The categorization of “women” (22%) used gender specificity without high-
lighting women’s role as reproducers. Projects targeting this group of women
were more likely to use magazines, newspapers (42%), or television (54%) than
those projects that did not (18% and 40%, respectively).

6
Viewing audiences as “targets” implies a rather mechanistic, passive model of the communication
process. When social marketing is used to explain development communication projects, this vocabu-
lary tends to be employed. In this discussion, the word “target” reflects a strategic approach to commu-
nication intervention.

58
Development Gender Discourse

Table 2. Intended Beneficiaries by Organizational Context

Beneficiary USAID Multilateral NGO Government Row

Reproducing
Women 30% 35% 11% 36% 25%(66)
Other Women 14 15 41 14 22(57)

Men-Fathers 10 4 9 14 9(23)
Youth 20 4 3 21 13(35)
Low SES 27 0 11 7 19(49)

Mid SES 19 0 0 7 11(29)

Consumer 18 0 0 0 10(26)
Rural 14 19 26 7 17(45)

Urban 7 0 6 0 6(15)
Professional 29 15 19 0 23(59)
General 11 23 14 7 13(34)

Column 55%(145) 10%(26) 27%(70) 5%(14)

Note. Percentages exceed 100% because projects tend to use more than one description
or target more than one audience.

Most projects addressing men (9%) fell in the realm of population (20%, com-
pared to 2–4% of other fields). Women may be seen in terms of their relationships
with men as well as with children. As one report explained, modernization projects
must press for improving the status of women, since “not only educated men . . .
do not want ignorant village women for wives” (Chaney, 1978). A project in Bali
focused on men by perpetuating local power structures. “Approaching Balinese
men through the Banjas satisfied the Balinese fact of life that men are publicly
acknowledged heads of the household. They also represent the family before the
law and before the gods, who are considered male ancestors” (Pret & Pret, 1977).
Some evaluations of projects focusing on mothers, such as a child survival project
in Honduras, concluded that “educational messages should be aimed at both
parents in the family” (Vigano, 1985). However, very few of the studied projects
focused on “parents,” “married couples,” or “families.”
Some projects focused on youth (13%), particularly young women. In one case,
a project report explained that “early pregnancy is a major health and social prob-
lem throughout the region and the world. Adolescent mothers are ill-prepared
psychologically, physically, financially and socially to accept the responsibilities
of motherhood” (Kincaid et al., 1988). As with mothers and pregnant women,
adolescents appeared to constitute a vulnerable group in these project descrip-
tions. Adolescents were more likely to be seen as needing persuasion (21%) than
education (13%) or information (3%). Projects addressing adolescents were more

59
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

likely to use video (37%) than projects that did not address adolescents (13%).
Moreover, two thirds of the projects addressing adolescents used telephone hotlines,
a channel not used with any other audience.
Other categories were also used in descriptions of audiences. Some audiences
were defined in terms of their spatial location: 17% of projects focused on rural
populations, but fewer addressed urban populations (6%). Audiences also were
categorized according to socioeconomic status (SES; 19% targeted people with
low levels of income or education, and 11% targeted those with middle levels of
income or education). Other projects (13%), typically those devoted to AIDS, did
not specify narrow target audiences, defined in terms of gender, age, socioeco-
nomic status, spatial location, or structural position. Rather, they addressed a more
broadly defined group, such as nation or city.
Some projects focused on reaching “consumers” (10%), reinforcing the social-
marketing assumptions framing some project activity. All projects designating au-
diences as consumers fell within the persuasion framework, specifically, as social-
marketing projects. This consumer may be of lower or middle SES, but should
have enough resources to pay a small fee for products or services, as suggested in
descriptions of the SOMARC program (Brown, Friedman, Janowitz, & Leung, 1988).
Integrating a focus on consumerism with the role of women in development, one
report suggested that projects should address women’s roles in “improving health
and nutrition so that people have the energy to work” (Chaney, 1978, p. 14).
Similarly, another project connected a woman’s maternal responsibilities with her
ability to make “careful and prudent” consumer choices in a market (Smith &
Meyer, 1979).
Related to the framework directed toward addressing structural conditions in
promoting social change, many projects specifically focused their attention on
professionals (23%), such as health workers or policy makers. In one example, a
USAID project focused on convincing leaders of prominent public and private
population institutions of the value of “natural family planning” methods (USAID,
1987a). Projects targeting professional groups were more likely to use interper-
sonal sources (61%) than projects that did not (30%).

Development Discourse Across Organizational Contexts

Next I explore patterns of discourse about social change and beneficiaries across
organizational contexts. For these analyses, organizational contexts are separated
into those projects funded through USAID, multilateral agencies, NGOs, and gov-
ernments in developing countries.
Communication strategies appeared to be closely related to the organizational
context of the dominant funding organization (see Table 1). Most of the USAID
projects examined (80%) were categorized within the persuasion framework, com-
pared with 23% of the multilateral projects and 29% of the government-supported
projects. NGOs used this strategy in only about 10% of their projects. The educa-
tion strategy seems to have been more favored by multilateral (23%) and govern-
ment projects (29%) than by NGO (16%) projects. It was almost nonexistent among
USAID projects (1%). NGO strategies seem to prefer informing frames. Two thirds
of these projects were categorized as such. Multilateral and government efforts

60
Development Gender Discourse

also used this frame in 42% of their projects. USAID was much less likely to
employ this informing frame (9%). Attending to structural issues appears to cap-
ture somewhat similar attention across USAID (10%), multilateral (12%), and NGO
(9%) projects, but not among government projects.
Constructions of audiences also varied with organizational context (see Table
2). Domestic public (36%), multilateral (35%), and USAID (30%) programs were
more likely to address women as reproducers in their projects than were NGOs
(11%), whereas a more general category of “women” tended to fall in the domain
of NGO project activity (41%) at more than twice the rate of other projects (14% of
USAID, 15% of multilateral, and 14% of government projects). USAID (20%) and
governments (21%) were more likely to target adolescents than were other orga-
nizations (3–4% of other projects). Rural audiences tended to be favored more by
NGOs (26%) than by multilateral agencies (19%), USAID (14%), or government
(7%) programs. Projects focusing on middle-SES audiences were funded through
USAID (19% compared to 0–1% of other projects), whereas projects focusing on
low-SES audiences were slightly more varied. USAID alone categorized audiences
as consumers in 18% of their projects. Along with being less likely to use social-
marketing procedures, multilateral groups (23%) tended to prefer a broad defini-
tion of audiences more than did NGOs (14%), USAID (11%), and governments
(7%).
It should be acknowledged that project implementation involves several orga-
nizations, not just the funding institutions addressed in these analyses of organiza-
tional contexts. These donor organizations themselves act in relation to recipient
organizations and other donors as referents, collaborating on projects, or working
toward similar goals. Even when organizations are working separately, they tend
to know about others’ activities, so that they might initiate distinctive programs. In
the case of a USAID Healthcom project in Jordan, project officials initially in-
tended to work with UNICEF on a diarrheal disease program. However, project
staff decided that rather than duplicate UNICEF efforts, they would attend to
breastfeeding and child-spacing issues (McDivitt, 1991).
Development organizations may also face constraints within the host country.
For example, a USAID nutrition program met resistance when it was seen as an
“attempt on the part of the United States to develop a market for its own soy
production” because “soy is not part of the traditional diet in any part of Bolivia”
(Smith & Meyer, 1979). Similarly, the SOMARC population program met opposi-
tion in Zimbabwe, where “contraception has been an extremely sensitive and
political subject to most black Zimbabweans . . . when all population control
efforts were seen as being aimed specifically at blacks” (SOMARC, 1987). Organi-
zational contexts embody a variety of conditions and agencies then within donor
and recipient arenas.

From the Decade for Women to a Rise in Privatization

In these next analyses, I explored changes in intervention strategies and con-
structed beneficiaries over time. Health, nutrition, and population projects initi-
ated between 1975 and 1984, roughly approximating the Decade for Women,
were compared with projects initiated since 1985.

61
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

Strategies for social change did appear to change over time. Although the pro-
portion of projects intending to foster educational or structural change remained
relatively constant, an emphasis on informing strategies during the Decade for
Women appears to have been replaced by persuading strategies among projects
supported by USAID. In contrast, multilateral and NGO projects generally focused
less on persuasion in the latter time period. They concentrated slightly more on
informing projects in the case of the former category of development institution
and more on educating in the case of the latter.
These interventions also shifted in their tendencies to use selected channels.
Since the Decade for Women, projects have decreased their use of radio, audiovi-
sual materials, newspapers, and magazines, whereas video and film (perhaps re-
placing less advanced forms of audiovisual communication), telephones (along
with the growth of social marketing and attention to adolescents), folk media, and
interpersonal sources have increased.
Although attention to women’s role as reproducer has remained consistent
over time, projects focusing on women’s other roles have decreased since the
Decade for Women. Between 1975 and 1984, 27% of all projects attended to
women (not as reproducers), but this proportion subsequently dropped to 16%.
Although attention to urban groups remained relatively constant over time, the
proportion of projects devoted to rural audiences and low-SES beneficiaries also
declined over time. In contrast, youth did not become a significant target audience
until after the Decade for Women.
Since the Decade for Women, there has been a growth in persuasion interven-
tions at the expense of informing strategies within USAID health, nutrition, and
population projects. Moreover, attention to women (not as reproducers) and to
other marginal groups, such as those in rural areas and with lower levels of edu-
cation and income, has declined. It appears that the Decade for Women has been
replaced by a “Decade for Privatization” for USAID, as social-marketing projects,
closely associated with the private sector, attempt to capture a middle-SES, con-
sumer audience with the ability to purchase products and services.

Development Discourse on Gender and Communication

in Strategies for Social Change

The development industry articulates knowledge and power about social change,
communication, and beneficiaries through discourse on project intervention, situ-
ated in organizational and historical contexts. In this final section, I consider the
implications of gendered constructions of beneficiaries and of divergent approaches
to strategic communication intervention.
Gender serves as a critical mode of categorization in constructions of project
beneficiaries. Women dominate the focus of attention in development discourse
on health, population, and nutrition projects, in their capacity to nourish children,
men, and even the economic well-being of their communities. Although attention
to women in terms of their biological condition has remained relatively constant

62
Development Gender Discourse

over time, attention to women in other capacities has decreased since the Decade
for Women. A “global feminist” approach to development would critique what
appears to be essentializing gender according to reproductive capacity in a way
that promotes motherhood as a universal role for women, rather then celebrating
diversity in women’s intentions, experiences, backgrounds, and capabilities. Stress-
ing the need to recognize power dimensions within women’s domestic, profes-
sional, and social contexts, GAD proponents would advocate interventions de-
signed to change structures or norms. However, few projects attempt to promote
social change as a gradual, macrolevel process. Instead, the dominant discourse
targets women as individuals who need to change their actions to achieve devel-
opment goals. WID, as an approach to development, does not appear to question,
but rather to expand upon an economic emphasis in development by illuminating
women’s contributions. This approach to project intervention corresponds with
marketing strategies of commercial media industries, such as women’s magazines,
by attributing value to women through their capacity to consume.
Development communication interventions build on several approaches to so-
cial change. Some projects, typically those supported through multilateral agen-
cies, pursue long-term educational strategies, resonating with feminist appeals to
acknowledge the role of context in social change. These multilateral strategies
also correspond with a European approach to public broadcasting, foregrounding
the social and civic values perpetuated through the media, despite the transition
toward privatization in West European broadcasting industries (Blumler, 1992).
Informing strategies supported by NGOs attempt to produce more participa-
tory and culturally relevant communication programs. However, while attempting
to construct projects that address local needs, these interventions are faced with
the potential problem of perpetuating inegalitarian power structures within com-
munities, particularly across gender.
Persuasion projects, notably those supported by USAID, tended to interpret
media as a social-marketing tool to promote individual modernity. Although some
have argued that social marketing works against a participatory approach, others
have attempted to subvert social marketing to challenge rather than support mul-
tinational commercial operations. An illustration of such resistance took place in
Micronesia in the mid-1970s, when local groups promoted the consumption of
indigenous coconuts as a beverage, competing directly against the sale of globally
manufactured soft drinks (Rody, 1978). With this example, I suggest that linking
multinational commercial corporate activity to a model of social change is not
inevitable, but rather, part of bureaucratic discourse situated in organizational and
historical contexts.
Characterizing social change within a commercial structure resonates with glo-
balization trends privileging the role of multinational corporations as dominant
institutions. Instead of struggling against this corporate dominance, USAID, as a
public agency, appears to support privatization as a necessary if not sufficient
precursor to modernity. This emphasis on privatization can be seen as part of the
U.S. approach to foreign and domestic policy initiated during the Reagan admin-
istration. USAID institutional discourse, linking modernity with the private sector,

63
Journal of Communication, Winter 1999

resonates with the dominant ideological structures of this donor community. How-
ever, the transition toward privatizing public programs may be more disruptive
than beneficial to the process of social change.
Situating institutional discourse within historical and organizational contexts
may enhance an intermediary bridge across theory and practice and between
academic scholarship and project implementation. To address the limitations of
the studied sample, a broader research project might also include attention to
other sectors of development, such as education, microenterprise, and new tech-
nologies. This would advance a more comprehensive assessment of development
discourse. This research does not assess the consequences of specific strategies.
However, future studies could focus on evaluations of development projects, not-
ing their relative accomplishments, grounded in differing constructions of success.
Although the discourse of development communication may recognize the
importance of considering gender in the process of social change, organizational
structures and norms may inhibit the successful implementation of projects. De-
spite the considerable attention directed toward women in health, nutrition, and
population projects, women’s conditions have not improved. This failure should
not, however, be attributed as a direct consequence of development communica-
tion. Rather, the problematic conditions of women, along with the interventions
designed to resolve them, need to be situated within a broader context of dis-
course and practice that privileges individual consumption and structural
privatization in strategies for social change.

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