index of 2005 conference papers

Women’s NGOs in East and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union: The Imperialist Criticism

Nanette Funk
Philosophy Department, Brooklyn College; Network of East- West Women

PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR

In the 1970s and 1980s development programs in Africa, Latin America and Asia began to focus on non–governmental organizations (NGOs) as agents of political, economic and social change. In the 1990s in postsocialist east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union, an interest in the creation of a non–state sphere of civil society with active NGOs was high on the agenda of many international organizations, western states and funders, both state and private. Publicly, it was argued that increased citizen political participation was necessary for democracy and NGOs were an important vehicle for such participation.

Women’s and feminist NGOs in the region came to be included in these strategies, albeit only a very small percentage of funding went to them. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded US NGOs working in the region, including feminist NGOs, as well as women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. The European Union (EU), through programs such as the Poland and Hungary Aid for Restructuring the Economy (PHARE) program and the Link Inter–European NGOs program (LIEN), and major foundations such as the Soros, MacArthur and Ford Foundations also funded women’s and feminist NGOs working in the region.

At first sight it would appear to be an unalloyed positive step to include women as agents of transformation of the state, institutions and social policy and in the expansion of democracy. But as western support for NGOs has grown so has criticism of them. In this paper I consider one set of criticisms as they bear on women’s and feminist NGOs working in and for the region of and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. I henceforth refer to any women’s and feminist NGO in the region as a ‘local NGO’ whether it is in a particular city or district, national or regional so long as it is not a ‘western’ NGO. I examine different forms of what I refer to as the Imperialist Criticism, and what is right and wrong in them. I introduce a typology for categorizing forms of this argument, contrasting them with my own position, which I identify as a Compatibilist position. By the latter I mean that NGO support of some imperial aims can, in certain cases, be compatible with both the political justification of such NGOs and the demands of justice.

In contrast to the Imperialist Criticism, there are also Pragmatic Criticisms concerning the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and injustices of NGOs, including those of Anthony Bebbington and Roger Riddell, Gerard Clarke, David Hulme and Michael Edwards, Patrice C. McMahon, Sarah Mendelson, James Richter, Paul Stubbs and Janine Wedel. These criticisms will not be discussed here. Pragmatic Critics generally accept what they take to be the goals of NGOs, while the Imperialist Critics do not. Secondly, whereas Pragmatic Critics propose changes to improve local NGOs, Imperialist Critics often strongly reject NGO activity. Like all categorization, when it comes to individual critics the picture is more complex, with many crossovers.

I argue that although there is certainly much truth to some forms of the Imperialist Criticism, both feminist and non–feminist, in its strongest forms this argument is overstated. I focus on the Imperialist Criticisms because they constitute the strongest and most principled criticisms of NGOs and are frequently espoused. I give examples of the kinds of activities local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region have engaged in and their bearing on the Imperialist Criticisms.

The Imperialist Criticism suggests that local women’s and feminist NGOs and their western supporters do not promote gender, class or transnational justice but foster an imperial agenda or western interests. What the critics mean by an ‘imperial agenda’ or ‘western interests’ differs but in the 1990s in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union one central meaning was the building of a neoliberal capitalist economic system and a political order that would support it in the region, to the advantage of western capitalism but the disadvantage of those in the region.

There are both non–feminist and feminist Imperialist Criticisms of both western feminist NGOs working in the region and of local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. The non–feminist Imperialist Criticism characterizes an institution as imperialist either if those acting on behalf of that institution intend to foster neoliberalism in the region, or the institution has that function or its consequence is to foster neoliberalism. Both western governments, western NGOs that support local NGOs in the region and local NGOs active in the region are all criticized as imperialist.

The feminist Imperialism Criticism condemns both western feminist NGOs and local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region as imperialist if 1– it is a western feminist NGO that promotes ‘western’ feminism in the region and/or the western NGO’s own interests or 2– it is a local women’s NGO in the region that adopts western feminism or promotes its own interests through cooperation with a western NGO, and 3– (1) or (2) succeeds at the cost of causing harm or not being beneficial or as beneficial as it might otherwise be to local woman’s NGO interests and/or the interests of women in the region. In what follows I examine both the nature and adequacy of these arguments, focusing particularly on the non–feminist Imperialist Criticism and what moral and political criticisms of NGOs and women’s and feminist NGOs follow from it.

Non–feminist Imperialist Critics

The non–feminist Imperialist Critics include Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, as well as David Rieff (Hardt and Negri 2000; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001; Rieff 2002). The latter refers to western NGOs in general and primarily international humanitarian NGOs. He speaks of the history of humanitarian action ‘as a helper and partner of imperialism’ and of the

... similarity in the way the invocation of a higher moral norm led, in practice, to an alliance between activists intent on relieving suffering and great power in the era of late 19 th century imperialism, and to 20th century humanitarian interventionism (Rieff 2002: pp. 60–61).

Hardt and Negri call transnational humanitarian NGOs ‘the most important’ instruments and ‘frontline force[s] of imperial intervention’ working through moral categories such as ‘universal needs’ and ‘universal rights’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: p. 36). They state that

... These NGOs are completely immersed in the biopolitical context of the constitution of Empire; they anticipate the power of its pacifying and productive intervention of justice (Hardt and Negri 2000: p. 36).

James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer attacked women’s and feminist NGOs in general, claiming they replace class politics by a ‘heavily ... essentialist identity politics’, which ‘focuses on the private sphere and personal politics’ and ‘doing a gross disservice to working women’(Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: p.134). Petras and Veltmeyer claim that NGOs in general demobilize popular movements, promote non–confrontational politics, obscure the creation of classes through the use of the category of civil society, collaborate ‘with capitalists who finance their institutes and ... orient their projects and followers into subordinate relations with the big business interests that direct the neoliberal economies’, and coopt former oppositional leaders and ‘popular women’s organizations’. They moreover claim that NGOs ‘create a new class ... supported by imperial funding to control significant popular groups’ and that NGO directors are ‘ensuring conformity with the goals, values and ideology of the donors’(Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: p.133). Speaking generally of NGOs supported by the US David Rieff claims the US ‘generally expects’ them to ‘broadly’ support US policy.

Susan Woodward, in discussing postwar countries, offers an oft stated argument on the role of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UN in setting policy for postwar countries. Speaking more loosely of promoting ‘western interests,’ rather than imperialism, she says:

A postwar country cannot participate in the international economy, including access to capital, until it comes to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on its debt arrears. The terms of that agreement then create a specific culture of conditionality for the country within which all other donors work ... Data bases to establish needs, track progress, and govern aid are created by outsiders according to highly standardized forms and dominant economic philosophy. And to institutionalize restraints on the power of the central government that this growth strategy requires, the World Bank and USAID, in particular, emphasize programs of community development (alternative sources of local power to local government as well). Most major donors, similarly, give priority for the same reasons to civil society, decentralization, and (programmed) participation.(Woodward 2004)

Kristen Ghodsee mixes feminist and non–feminist Imperialist Criticisms, echoing Petras and Veltmeyer’s Imperialist Criticism. She claims that women’s NGOs in Bulgaria ‘may be unwittingly complicit with the proponents of neoliberalism’ and ‘shift from a class based analysis of oppression to a gender–based analysis of oppression’ (Ghodsee 2004: p. 728, p. 742). She further claims that:

... women’s NGOs in Eastern Europe do, in some ways, directly undermine the possibility of a united proletariat by narrowly focusing on projects for women and discursively constructing women as somehow less suited to capitalism (Ghodsee 2004: p. 742).

Like Petras and Veltmeyer, Ghodsee accuses NGO directors of ‘ensuring conformity with the goals, values and ideology of the donors’(Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: p. 133), of not ‘challenging the social or economic relations within which patriarchy thrives’ working ‘well within the neoliberal ideological constraints’(Ghodsee 2004: p. 728). She claims their activity ‘deflects attention away from the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the stabilization programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’, ‘coopts educated middle class women’ who could have organized ‘a solid class based opposition’ and ‘may actually weaken grassroots opposition to neoliberalism’(Ghodsee 2004: pp. 742-3).

Feminist Imperialism Criticisms

But Ghodsee also raised a feminist Imperialism Criticism in her claim that western feminists came to the region on ‘a tidal wave of grants’ from the West without understanding the history and politics of the east and imposed a ‘feminism–by–design’, an essentialist ‘cultural feminism’ that ‘may have done women [in the region] more harm than good,’ creating ‘new stereotypes that women are less adaptable to the market economy’ and ‘constructing women as disadvantaged and making the women feel they can’t make it’(Ghodsee 2004: p.731, pp. 733-4, p. 736).

In a more nuanced way, Frances Olsen, among many others, also raised the feminist Imperialist Criticism writing that

Small armies of feminists are marching into Central and Eastern Europe .... The same kinds of problems of exclusion and domination, misunderstanding and “essentialism” that have marked relations between African–American women and European–American women within the United States reappear in the international context, with economic domination and cultural imperialism taking the place of racism ... These analytic categories are generally defined by feminist interests as articulated by Western women ... Yet there is reason to believe that the ‘stars’ America recognizes or produces [in the region] will be women most likely to benefit other women in their own countries ... There is also a risk that a kind of new colonialism will filter into the efforts of American women, preventing them from working effectively in Central and Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most obvious danger is simply the privileging of gender over all other categories, despite massive differences in national wealth ...

...The American feminist emphasis on gender is sometimes said to deemphasize or even deny the importance of imperialism. By focusing attention on the conflict between the sexes, American feminists divert attention away from the conflict between wealthier countries and poor countries ... (Olsen 1997: pp. 2223–26).

Forms of the Imperialist Criticism

Some forms of the Imperialist Criticism are functionalist arguments (Woodward), others are based on the purported intentions of funders (Petras and Veltmeyer, Rieff, Woodward), and yet others are based on the consequences of NGO activity (Petras and Veltmeyer, Ghodsee, Rieff, Olsen), although these arguments are often not distinguished.

1. Functionalist Arguments

The functionalist version of the Imperialist Criticism claims that the function of civil society and NGOs in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union is to replace local state socialist elites in and out of government by new elites, to shrink social benefits by privatizing former state functions, and to create stark class distinctions in the transformation of previous state socialist regimes into neoliberal capitalist states. NGOs and civil society ‘institutionalize restraints on the power of the central government’(Woodward 2004). Some versions explicitly include reference to women’s NGOs such as Petras and Veltmeyer, Ghodsee, and Olsen while others make a blanket claim about NGOs which, by implication, include women’s and feminist NGOs. In discussing Latin America, Asia and Africa, Petras and Veltmeyer accuse women’s NGOs of ‘pushing privatization from below,’ both by providing social services that substitute for state provided services, as well as by attacking public services, ‘using anti–statist rhetoric ... to reallocate state resources’, and by repressing ‘criticisms of capitalism and a class analysis (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: pp. 128-30). Kristen Ghodsee makes a similar criticism of Bulgarian women’s NGOs and NGOs in east and central Europe generally (Ghodsee 2004: p. 740).

2. Intentionalist Arguments

The intentionalist version of the Imperialist Argument claims that civil society and local NGOs in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union are supported and created by ‘outside forces’ who intend to realize policies and practices favorable to western capital in the form of neoliberalism, to the detriment of the region. Petras and Veltmeyer characterized NGOs as ‘grass roots reactionaries,’ part of ‘imperialist strategies’ (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: p. 130, p.138).

The intentionalist Imperialist Argument is often used to explain the funding of NGOs. Applied to local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region, the argument implies that these NGOs are funded by western governments and transnational institutions such as the UN and EU to promote western imperial agendas and interests, especially the promotion of neoliberal economies to replace state socialism. Local women’s and feminist NGOs are said to be ‘donor driven,’ that is, funders from outside the region determine local women’s NGO agendas, with funders changing what they will fund as their understanding of their own interests change.

The feminist version of this argument claims western feminist NGOs only fund local NGOs to promote their own western feminist agendas and their own NGO interests and are not in the interest of women in the region.(Olsen, Ghodsee)

3. The Consequentialist Argument

This argument claims that the consequences of NGO activity, including local women’s NGO activity, and the activity of western women’s and feminist NGOs and western funders is to foster neoliberalism and weaken the former socialist state and reduce social services. This is said not to promote gender, class or transnational justice but to exacerbate these injustices. The consequences are said to benefit the west at the cost of those in the region. This argument will be discussed in detail below.

Cautionary Claims, Generalizations and Reductionist Arguments

There are several ways to interpret any of these versions of the Imperialist Criticism as applied to local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. It could be a (1) Cautionary Claim that there are limitations to the benefits of local women’s and feminist NGOs because of the structural conditions under which they operate, and/or because some western NGOs, funders and local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region contribute to neoliberalism or more to western feminist agendas and interests than to those in the region; (2) a Generalization Argument that most local women’s and feminist NGOs are so constrained by the structural conditions in which they operate that they generally promote neoliberal capitalism, for example, by taking over from the state the provision of social benefits and redirecting attention away from a critique of neoliberalism, increasing class injustice. NGOs further instil capitalist attitudes and practices. The feminist version of the argument claims that NGOs generally foster western feminist interests and agendas that do no good for women in the region and for which they deserve strong criticism and it would be better if they did not exist. A still stronger interpretation would be a (3) a Reductionist Argument that local women’s and feminist NGOs do nothing but promote neoliberalism and western feminist and non–feminist interests and are harmful to the region, and hence women’s and feminist NGOs are morally and politically unjustifiable on grounds of gender, class and transnational injustice and it would be better if they did not exist.

It is certainly true that a deep bow must be made to charges of imperialism or neocolonialism and to feminist imperialism as in the Cautionary Claim, to which NGOs both east and west, and the NGOization of women’s organizations are vulnerable. Julie Hemment, Sabine Lang and Francis Olsen, among others, hint at such positions. I do not debate the empirical premises of the Cautionary Claim, in fact I affirm them. Fostering neoliberalism is sometimes part of the function of western and local women’s and feminist NGOs and to some degree and in some cases they do contribute to the spread neoliberalism. I also accept the assumptions that neoliberalism is not in the interest of women in the region or the region as a whole and even that the intention of some western feminist and non–feminist funders of local women’s and feminist NGOs is to promote neoliberalism. But I object to the generalization and to the moral and political criticisms that are sometimes taken to follow from this claim. From the Cautionary Claim one cannot generalize to most women’s NGOs or that on balance their impact is to promote neoliberalism. All that follows is the need to do a case by case analysis with sensitivity to the possible problems.

In contrast to the simple Cautionary Claim I hold a Compatibilist Cautionary Claim. By this I mean that it is compatible with the claim that local women’s and feminist NGOs promote some neoliberal interests or interests of western feminist NGOs that they still contribute to promoting gender and class justice in the region and are morally and politically justifiable. If women’s NGO activity, either individually or collectively, can reasonably be expected to only minimally foster neoliberalism, while producing benefits that are sufficiently important and would not be otherwise realized, and doing nothing would be even worse for gender and class justice, then such NGO activity is justifiable. Thus, it may be true that accepting funding involves following budgeting practices, de facto adopting a small business approach to social problems and developing business skills. But learning small business skills is not tantamount to promoting neoliberalism although it might minimally help to entrench neoliberal capitalism; but such an economy would have come to the region, whatever women’s and feminist NGOs did. It is certainly better that women also gained the know–how to operate in such an economy. If the NGO provided only such minimal support for neoliberalism and did some good–and there are many that fall into that category– that particular NGO would be politically justifiable. Many women active in NGOs in fact did not conclude that a small business approach was the only way to correct gender and social injustice and did not argue for the reduction of state services. Participating in the creation of civil society may have helped to undermine a state socialist government that provided social benefits but it also helped to transform an anti–democratic or nationalist government, opening up political space for some who fostered gender, racial and ethnic justice. This is not to deny that civil society also opened up space for nationalists and neoliberals. Women’s and feminist NGOs in the 1990s acted at a moment when there were urgent issues, both of individual survival, war, and traumatic economic transformations and there were only certain possibilities for political activity. Any minimal contribution women’s and feminist NGOs in the region made to fostering neoliberalism was outweighed by the benefits, some of which will be discussed below.

The nonfeminist Imperialist Generalization and Reductionist Criticisms are even more problematic claims than the Cautionary Claim. They make much stronger empirical and normative claims. Both claims oversimplify, overgeneralize, trade on vagueness at crucial points, and are in need of empirical proof. The Reductionist claim that women’s and feminist NGOs in the region do nothing but promote neoliberalism is simply empirically false. There are many other consequences, functions and intentions of local women’s and feminist NGOs, as will be discussed below. This claim does a disservice to the actual practice of women’s and feminist NGOs in the region and to some western women’s and feminist NGOs active on their behalf. It does not follow from women’s and feminist NGOs’ small contributions to neoliberalism in the region that local women’s and feminist NGOs do no good at all, or that as Petras says, ‘they should stop being NGOs’( Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: p. 137). I therefore do not take the Reductionist Claim as a strong contender, and focus instead on the Imperialist Generalization Claim.

This leaves the Imperialist Generalization Claim as the strongest contender. In what follows, I consider both the theoretical and empirical difficulties common to all versions of these arguments, and focus particularly on the Imperialist Generalization Claim, in its different versions.

General Problems of the Imperialist Criticisms.

Several reasons for the persuasiveness of the Imperialist Argument are shared by all versions of the argument. These include 1–an implicit ‘dirty hands’ argument, 2– oversimplification and overgeneralization and 3– false empirical and theoretical assumptions.

The Dirty Hands Argument

By the ‘dirty hands argument’ I mean the argument that any cooperation or acceptance of funding from any institution that promotes neoliberalism and hence is imperialist in the relevant sense, or any women’s NGO that has any imperialist features is morally and politically unjustifiable. But if this were a good argument it would mean that in the world of real politics and the exercise of power where hardly anyone has clean hands, one should do nothing at all. This would eliminate any reform activity whatsoever, including most activities crucial to promoting gender justice and other ends that reduce injustice as well. For example, if the dirty hands argument were a good argument one would have to conclude that eliminating gender and racial injustice or sexual harassment in the military, in multinational corporations or mainstream newspapers is unjustifiable because these institutions often further harmful militarist and imperialist ends.. One cannot demand ‘moral purism’ and effect change in the real world, fraught with global injustice and power imbalances. This was especially true in the 1990s for women active in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and those in the west interested in supporting women in the region. Women could not generally set or choose basic state and institutional agendas that fully conformed to feminist principles.

A political criticism of local women’s and feminist NGOs because of accepting ‘dirty’ money also misses the mark because what matters is not only what the funders intended, but what the NGO does with the funding. The Imperialist Generalization Argument trades on the dirty hands argument in that it assumes that whatever else women’s eastern NGOs do, since they also cooperate with, support or operate in conditions that promote neoliberalism they should be strongly criticized or even rejected as imperialist.

Oversimplification and Overgeneralization

Criticisms of ‘the West’. The Imperialist Argument also rests on claims about the agenda of ‘the West’, the function, consequences or intention of ‘western’ funding of local women’s and feminist NGOs. But this assumes both that there is something called ‘the West’ and that all NGOs are funded by it. Both claims are false. There is a very wide range of goals, interests and objectives in the West and they sometimes conflict. Thus the interests of the EU, increasingly important in the region, are not the same as those of the US. Western funding sources included the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and many European countries, including Sweden and the Netherlands. It also included global and regional organizations such as the UN and EU. It included not only government agencies for international development but public and ‘private’ foundations, small and large foundations, non–feminist and feminist foundations such as Kvinna till Kvinna of Sweden, The Global Fund for Women, the Network of East–West Women and MamaCash in the Netherlands. It included foreign political parties such as the German Greens or Social Democrats each with different interests and projects. In the 1990s the US was interested in establishing neoliberalism but in the early 1990s the German Green Party wanted to find political partners and funded feminist organizations and ecology groups in east and central Europe as potential political allies since there were no Green parties (Funk 1999a.). The German Greens FrauenAnstiftung (Women’s Foundation) and after 1998, their reorganized Boell Foundation, funded 20 women’s and feminist NGOs concurrently in postsocialist countries in the years 1990-99 including several of the most active women’s and feminist NGOs in the region including Profem (Czech Republic), the Prague Women’s Center and the St. Petersburg Center for Gender Issues and the Independent Women’s Forum (Russia) (Funk 1999a). Thus, an Imperialist Criticism based on the western funding of women’s NGOs needs a much more complex view of western funders than that presumed by Imperialist Critics.

The Variety of Women’s NGOs in the Region. Any argument that attempts to generalize to all women’s NGOs in eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union is bound to fail because of the diversity of women’s NGOs within a country and between countries.

(i) Non–western funded women’s and feminist NGOs. The Imperialist Generalization Argument assumes that local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region were all funded by foreign western states or western dominated transnational bodies, but this is a gross oversimplification. There were also non–governmental and ‘quasi–NGOs’ not sponsored by the west, but by local governments. One also has to distinguish between former communist party based mass membership women’s organizations such as the Organization of Women’s Organizations in Macedonia (Bagic 2002) and the Women's League or Democratic Women's Union in Poland, nationalist, anti–nationalist and right wing women’s organizations, etc. In Russia many quasi–NGOs were funded by the Russian government, including the Women's Association of Russia and women's professional organizations. The Russian Women's Councils were transformed from state to non–state bodies and supported by the Russian government; women active in the Union of Russian Women often retained official positions in the government. In some cases, as in Russia, independent women’s and feminist NGOs try to work with these groups (Zdravomyslova 2000: p. 55). Eastern German women’s activities were also almost all funded by local governments.

There were also women’s parties, women's subsidiaries of political parties and unions in the region that supported women’s and feminist NGOs such as in Hungary, Slovakia and Russia (Schmedt 1997: pp. 24-5; Fabian 1999: p. 213). These groups were active on different issues than those of western funded NGOs. In addition, explicitly feminist organizations were only a small percentage of women's NGOs and some were anti–feminist. There were also networks of women’s and feminist NGOs in many of the countries in the region. Women’s and feminist NGOs were active both on gender and non–gender specific issues. In Bosnia–Herzegovina women’s and feminist NGOs worked on ethnic reconciliation after the war and many women’s and feminist NGOs in the former Yugoslavia were peace activists during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Some women's groups are ethnically defined and nationalist such as Rossija in Russia, the Hungarian Mothers' Party in Hungary (Fabian 1999: p. 213) and the League of Albanian Women in Macedonia (Bagic 2002 ).

(ii) ‘Strong’ vs. ‘Weak’ women’s and feminist NGOs. The Generalization Argument also does not distinguish between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ or donor driven women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. By ‘strong’ women’s and feminist NGOs I mean those had a strong sense of purpose prior to being funded or shortly thereafter, were in a position to insist on their own agendas and were not donor driven. Several such NGOs existed in the former Yugoslavia, eastern Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Strong women’s and feminist NGOs are also those that know how to navigate the foundation field, have extensive contacts with funders, many different funders and a proven track record.. In the 1990s this included women’s and feminist NGOs led by women who had been self–identified feminists or activists within state socialism or shortly thereafter such as Vesna Kesic founder of Be Emancipated, Be Active (B.A.B.E) and cofounder of the Center for Women War Victims in Croatia, Lepa Mladenovi ƒ of the S.O.S. Hotline in Serbia, and Marina Beyer of the Ost–West Europaeisches FrauenNetzwerk (OWEN) in eastern Germany. Others had a self defined interest in defending abortion rights, women’s rights and women’s studies centers in Poland, Russia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In 2002 B.A.B.E. in Croatia had 19 different funders from several Scandinavian countries as well as the US. Such feminist NGOs as Women Against Domestic Violence (NaNE). in Hungary and B.A.B.E. in Croatia rejected funders who wanted them to work on projects they were not interested in, such as trafficking, a project popular with many western funders. Strong NGOs also had a better chance to challenge funders who engaged in unacceptable practices; they could publicize funders’ bad practices, making their work more difficult. Thus, one intermediary western funder claimed credit for work done by a Croatian women’s NGO before it had even received that funding. The local NGO made this public, shaming that funder into changing its practices (Funk 1999b). OWEN in eastern Germany, headed by Marina Beyer, always initiated their own projects based on support for women's dignity and self–respect in Ukraine, Russia, Poland and eastern Germany. They received funding from the Berlin and Brandenburg governments in Germany. Critics such as Ghodsee and Petras and Veltmeyer emphasize the weak women’s and feminist NGOs, of which no doubt there are many, more in some countries than in others. These more likely to carry out neoliberal agendas. But it is an overgeneralization to go from those NGOs or those countries to a general conclusion that women’s and feminist NGOs in the region or even all those in a given country are likely to carry out imperial agendas and that it would be better if they did not exist at all.

False empirical and Theoretical Assumptions

The Imperialist Generalization Argument also assumes the west and western policies wholly determine the nature, function, structure and/or consequences of local women’s and feminist NGOs, such that they are ‘wholly immersed’ in the pursuit of neoliberalism (Hardt and Negri 2000: p. 36). This reveals an arrogance and ignorance of the influence of cultural, historical, political and economic contexts including the state socialist past, its organizations and practices. It ignores the impact of local laws governing NGOs, especially tax laws and state laws governing NGOs, the agenda of active women in the region as well as the influence of western feminism. Some women’s and feminist NGOs supported by western funders, for example, the Center for Women War Victims in Croatia started by 12 women and organized by Vesna Kesic, the Feminist Network in Hungary, and the PSF Women’s Center in Warsaw studied and shared organizational principles of western feminism including democratic decision making, participation and shared leadership. Their functioning and impact was not solely determined by western funders or the ‘conditionality’ imposed by the IMF or World Bank. The Imperialist Generalization Argument also mistakenly assumes that local women’s and feminist NGOs are passive, powerless victims without their own strategies to subvert neoliberal agendas of some of their western funders and which enable them to to carry out their own agendas in spite of the conditions under which they act or the intentions of their funders.

Specific Problems in nonfeminist Imperialist Generalization Arguments

The intentional version. This Imperialist Generalization Argument criticizes both donors, intermediary and local women’s and feminist NGOs who accept western funding because of the imperial or neoliberal motives and intentions behind the support. This Kantian based moral criticism may be relevant to assessing the moral virtue of the funders, but is not sufficient for a political assessment of those who accept their funds. Any reasonable political evaluation must take into account the actual and expectable consequences of the NGO use of the funding. To assume that the consequences are imperialist or neoliberal the intentionalist Imperialist Generalization Argument has to implicitly assume that local women’s and feminist NGOs and western feminist NGO intermediaries actually fulfill their funders’ intentions, effectively contributing to the elimination and reduction of state welfare functions and preventing the development of more critical grassroots groups. But not all intentions hit their mark. Not all local women’s and feminist NGOs and their western feminist NGO supporters do what their western funders intended or do so very successfully. Indeed pragmatic critics have frequently claimed that many women’s and feminist NGOs accomplish nothing or little at all, much less the agenda of ‘the West’. Most women’s and feminist NGOs in the region and western researchers complained that accounting and budgeting requirements and the continuous searching for grants seriously reduced local NGOs’ ability to do much of what either they or their funders wanted; fighting over limited sources of funding further undermined NGO success (Funk 1999c; Fabian 1999: p. 116; McMahon 2002; Richter 2002). Moreover, local adaptations, interpretations and interests can subvert funders’ intended goals. Julie Hemment’s study of crisis centers and centers for violence against women in Russia in the 1990s revealed that many Russian women’s NGOs redefined ‘crisis centers’ from the meaning intended by their western funders, to emphasize Russian women’s ‘economic crisis’ and struggle for economic survival (Hemment 2004: p. 826). Hemment argued that the prior understanding of ‘crisis center’ before ‘the arrival of foundation support’ influenced that outcome. (Hemment 2004: pp. 828-9). Ghodsee herself argued that although western funders wanted women to be active in formal politics, women in the region were more likely to support the ‘potential center or Left’ and result in ‘an anti–World Bank or anti–EU government’ position (Ghodsee 2004: p.746). Thus an argument based on intentions alone is insufficient and ultimately turns on an assessment of the consequences of funding and NGO activity, which will be discussed below.

In addition, western government funders from agencies such as USAID in the 1990s who one can assume had a neoliberal agenda, sometimes depended on intermediary western feminist NGOs to identify and work with local women’s and feminist NGOs. But such intermediary NGOs as the Network for East–West Women (NEWW) in the US, the STAR Foundation and the Global Fund for Women did not have neoliberal intentions. Nor did OWEN in eastern Germany, MamaCash in the Netherlands, Kvinna till Kvinna in Sweden or the FrauenAnstiftung (Women’s Foundation) of the German Greens. Such feminist and non–feminist intermediaries are not only interest driven but also ‘principle’ or ‘value’ driven. This is also true of some members of western agencies and foundations such as Ford and Soros. Some funders genuinely wanted to promote gender justice in the region in the 1990s, such as Irena Grudzinska Gross in the Ford Foundation, Anastasia Posadsykaia and the staff of the Soros Women’s Network Program as well as others in the EU, UN, and even some in the US State Department.

This is not to deny that western funders, founders and activists in feminist and nonfeminist western and NGOs in the region had mixed motives in their activities. That included self–interested motives for institutional and personal gain including: to promote neoliberal agendas; to enhance their personal and institutional power, status, and reputations; to gain recognition for their institution as an effective agent in the region; to be invited worldwide to give lectures, build careers, earn good salaries or any salary at all; to preserve their own western feminist NGOs and run up a track record of getting grants, which would facilitate future funding. But self–interested motives are compatible with principled motives, which many had. On the basis of intentions alone most women’s and feminist NGOs do not count as predominantly imperialist in the sense discussed above.

The Functionalist Version. In this version of the Imperialist Generalization Argument the first problem is the assumption that the conditions under which NGOs operate are set by ‘the West’ and that the function of women’s and feminist NGOs in the region is to dismantle the socialist state. It is assumed this function is generally fulfilled, serving western interests and not those of the region. But, as stated above, state tax laws and laws regulating NGOs, the past and present political culture, women’s commitment to feminist principles, a sense of entitlement to health care and other social benefits, women’s institutions, politics, and economic circumstances in a country also condition what NGOs and the state will and can do. Jointly these circumstances can subvert the intended ‘western’ function for women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. In fact, some women’s and feminist NGOs have been the strongest critics of neoliberalism rather than promoting it. The assumption that women’s and feminist NGOs generally fulfill their ‘western’ function also belies the claims made by many pragmatic critics and members of local women’s and feminist NGOs that many NGOs accomplished much less than was expected.

Secondly, even if it is a function of NGOs to create a new elite that promotes neoliberalism and replaces former communist elites this is compatible with also serving citizens’ interests in general and women’s interests in particular.

Thirdly, this version of the argument assumes that women’s and feminist NGOs in the region have only one ‘function’ and there are not other functions determined by women in the region itself, such as to resist nationalist divisions and preserve contact between women of different nationalities, as women did in the states of the former Yugoslavia or to preserve abortion or introduce women’s studies. Thus, the functionalist argument does not prove either that the function of women’s and feminist NGOs is to serve imperial or ‘western’ interests, or that they realized that function or that it would be better if they did not exist.

The Consequentialist Version. This version of the Imperialist Generalization Argument (Petras and Veltmeyer, Rieff, Ghodsee) criticizes women’s and feminist NGOs because of the neoliberal consequences of their activity. As stated above, it is claimed that western funders supported local women’s and feminist NGOs who provided services to women, enabling the state to disengage from providing services thus further entrenching neoliberalism. In addition local women’s and feminist NGOs are said to have blocked the growth of more oppositional women’s NGOs, subverted attention from the ongoing construction of class by attention to gender and the private sphere, or were ‘rarely effective’(Ghodsee 2004: p. 731).

First, it is important to note that the percentage of monies distributed by funders to women’s and feminist NGOs was a very small percentage of total monies allocated. According to some reports from 1992–6 in Russia USAID spent most of its Freedom Support Act budget ‘on market reform...[and] at times as little as six percent for democracy assistance’(Mendelson 2002: p. 238). US Democracy assistance aid to eastern Europe was only 16.5 percent, according to Mendelson and Glenn(Mendelson and Glenn 2002: p. 4). Support for women’s and feminist NGOs was itself a very small part of those democracy assistance programs. Even if all women’s NGO activity in the region successfully contributed to neoliberalism, unless they were wildly successful out of all proportion to their funding, their contribution to neoliberalism could at best be expected to be small. And there are many positive consequences of their activity, as will be discussed below.

Secondly, some funders insisted local women’s and feminist NGOs not provide services and engage in more ‘political’ activities. Thus, the FrauenAnstiftung of the German Green Party in the 1990s criticized the Center for Women’s Rights in Poland precisely on such grounds, much to the frustration of the Center. The Boell Foundation of the German Green Party – which in 1998 incorporated the FrauenAnstiftung into its Boell Foundation – said they were not interested in doing ‘developmental work’ and that such services are better provided by the state (Funk 1999a). In other cases, during the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Center for Women War Victims did provide services. But they in no way substituted for a service the state would have provided, since the state would have done nothing at all. It was sometimes these initial efforts that later persuaded the state to provide such services or incorporate women’s centers started by NGOs within the university, as in Belgrade. In addition, the distinction between service and non–service providing activities is much less rigid that critics take it to be. The Center for Women War Victims engaged in a kind of conscious–raising discussion with those they assisted, some of whom themselves became active on women’s issues and in the Center.

Thirdly, consequentialist Imperialist Generalization critics sometimes imply that it would be better if western and local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region had not existed at all or were not active in the region. But such a conclusion involves the implicit counterfactual claim that neoliberalism would have been less well entrenched in the region and/or that women in the region would have been better off and more constructively active if there had been no women’s and feminist NGOs in the region. Although it is true that women’s activity in the region would have been different if there had not been women’s and feminist NGOs funded in the ways they were, there is little way to know whether women in the region would have been better off and some reasons to think otherwise. Women would still have faced neoliberalism and the entrenchment of stark class distinctions in the region and many of the most important women’s and feminist NGOs in the region would have had difficulty operating.

Fourthly, the consequentialist argument mistakenly assumes that if the activity of a local woman’s and feminist NGO in the region, or of a western NGO active in the region, has neoliberal consequences this is a sufficient political reason to reject that NGO, or women’s and feminist NGOs in general, as imperialist. But it is not a priori true that women’s and feminist NGOs’ contribution to neoliberalism overrides other more beneficial consequences of women’s NGO activity, either individually or collectively. A consequentialist Generalization Claim is based on an assessment of women’s and feminist NGO activities in the region and of western women’s and feminist NGOs working there. An adequate consequentialist argument has to consider all the short and long run consequences, including not only neoliberal, but also beneficial, consequences, of both individual NGOs and of women’s and feminist NGOs in the region or in a given country collectively. The collective long run significance of local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region is as important as the immediate impact of any individual women’s NGO. Yet the consequentialist Generalization Claim usually focuses only on short run neoliberal consequences of a particular woman’s NGO and from this makes a hasty generalization to NGOs generally. Ghodsee, for example, often jumps from accounts of Bulgarian women’s NGOs to claims about women’s NGOs in eastern Europe.

A more adequate consequentialist argument is one that considers the actually existing circumstances in the 1990s and what options were practically possible. If on balance (i)the beneficial consequences in the long and short run of local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region and of western women’s and feminist NGOs working with them were sufficiently important, (ii) there is reason to believe they would not have been otherwise accomplished, (iii) the contribution to non–beneficent ends such as neoliberalism was not above some acceptable threshold and (iv) there are no inherently evil consequences, such as furthering racism or ethnic cleansing, then women’s and feminist NGO activity in the region is morally and politically justifiable. If one considers the impact of women’s and feminist NGO activity in the region it is reasonable to believe the above conditions are satisfied.

Among many not particularly neoliberal achievements of women’s and feminist NGOs in the region are: new university gender and women’s studies curricula and integration of gender into other courses in universities and law schools; freestanding women's centers; the writing of new text books for elementary and high schools that change gender stereotypes; the introduction of new language such as ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘discrimination in employment’ into public discourse; proposals for antidiscrimination laws in Poland, eastern Germany and Croatia.

Women’s and feminist NGO attention to discrimination in employment and women’s unemployment also belies the claim that women attended only to issues in the family, as Petras and Veltmeyer and Ghodsee claimed. One writer claimed that 40 percent of Polish women's organizations were concerned with employment, training and retraining (Fuchs 1999).

Women’s and feminist NGOs in the region also challenged gender biased laws and legislation and played a major role in the development of conceptions of rights for both women and men. NGOs provided a voice defending abortion rights in many countries in the region; challenged problematic family laws in Russia and Croatia; created ombudspersons; argued that rape of women in war is a violation of women’s human rights and a war crime (Croatia) and that violence against women is a violation of women’s human rights; fought against nationalism, corruption and the cutting of social benefits. Izabela Jaruga–Nowacka stated that in Poland in 2003 her work as the Polish Governmental Plenipotentiary for Equal Status was strengthened by the existence of active feminist NGOs and non–NGOs in Poland. Her office educated members of even the more liberal parties in Parliament in Poland who did not know that they were under a legal obligation to provide equality for men and women. This led to gathering gender disaggregated statistics to support arguments for the need for gender equality (Jaruga-Nowacka 2003). In Warsaw University women faculty applied to the Ford Foundation for a grant to introduce women's studies. Ford required the university to document the gender division of the faculty, bringing the practice of gender disaggregation to a university in a postsocialist state that had not previously done so (Funk 1999d).

The long run general consequences of local women’s and feminist NGO activity included transforming public discourse and public consciousness in Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, eastern Germany and the Czech Republic, among others. Olga Pietruchova of the Slovakian NGO ProChoice stated that a politician who made disparaging comments about the possibility of Slovakian women serving in the chemical corps for Iraq was forced by women’s letter writing to publicly apologize, reflecting a major change in public consciousness (Pietruchova 2003). Women’s and feminist NGO introduction of gender concepts such as ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘discrimination’ in employment made possible further political changes. In Poland by the early 2000s the latter term began to be used by all parties in Parliament, even conservatives, whereas previously the use of the term had been criticized as ‘aggressive’ feminist confrontation (Grzybek 2003). Rather than simply replacing state services, women’s NGO activity in Russia contributed to state officials becoming required to provide services for women (Hemment 2004: p. 822). Gender studies courses established by feminist NGOs in and out of universities were attended by future journalists, sensitizing them to gender issues (Grzybek 2003). Younger women educated in these courses and in the context of women and feminist NGO activity challenged NGOs as the primary form of women’s political activity and engaged in new forms of public actions in support of abortion rights. By the early 2000s in Poland and Serbia women’s activities and organizations got attention from the media (Graff 2003; Milic 2004: p. 73).

At the level of transnational organizations some women from women’s and feminist NGOs in the region were able to enter the global feminist network and discourse. They were able to officially register with the UN, speak before UN bodies such as the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW), and challenge false official state accounts of the situation of women in their country. Women from NGOs participated in other transnational fora such as the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and the Beijing +5 and Beijing +10 Meetings of the UN in 2005. In 1995 women from the region made public the specific demands of women from the region in their ‘Statement from a Non–Region’ at Hairou in an effort to influence the final NGO document of the conference to incorporate their concerns. Women learned how to appeal to international documents such as UN documents on human rights, International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, international human rights agreements, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as EU laws and policies on women. When a nation’s law conflicts with an international agreement the international agreement supervenes (Fuchs 1999: p. 13). According to the judgement of several women in the region all this provided women’s and feminist NGOs in the region the leverage and legal and political arguments to legitimate their activities and influence local politicians. Women networked with other women’s and feminist NGOs, both in their own country, in the region and with women from other regions. B.A.B.E. helped create a transnational NGO, the South Eastern Europe Legal Initiative (SEELINE) with 10 member countries from southeastern Europe to monitor and influence laws from a gender perspective (B.A.B.E. 2005). KARAT, with 44 women’s and feminist NGOs from 21 different countries in the region formed after the 1995 Fourth Women’s UN Meeting in Beijing (KARAT 2005). Women active in women’s and feminist NGOs entered formal politics, parliaments and are helping to start new parties, including Green parties. Through women’s and feminist NGO activity, women thus gained support, experience and became politically effective.

Given this panoply of examples it is reasonable to believe that the non–feminist Imperialist Generalization Claim is not true. Given the above— admittedly anecdotal account of women’s and feminist NGO activity in the region—and considering all the long and short term effects of their activity, it is reasonable to believe that it was better that there was funding for women’s and feminist NGOs in the region than if there had not been, given that neoliberalism was likely to be brought to the region to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the country. This does not deny some activities may have helped neoliberalism, such as promoting a small business mentality in NGO leaders, developing a business based approach, rather than a movement based approach to political problems, creating competition rather than solidarity among women, and fostering hierarchical rather than democratically structured NGOs with grassroots oriented activity. But on balance important inroads began to be made by local women’s and feminist NGOs in the region.

This means that a Compatibilist Cautionary Claim is the most plausible position to adopt, that participation in western and local women’s and feminist NGOs in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union, in important— though by no means all cases or even in a majority of them—did provide valuable support for gender and ethnic justice and for peace, even if these NGOs also supported to some extent some imperial agendas. Of course, in any particular instance, any particular women’s and feminist NGO in the region has to use political judgement to assess whether to accept the proffered funding or work with any particular western NGO, feminist or otherwise, given the available options and whether what can be accomplished is worth the concessions. What is important is to identify how to make this even more likely by attending to the voices of women in NGOs in the region on how and what to fund and the nature of funding.

Conclusion

Why does all this matter? Because in the 1990s NGOs in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union were an important arena in which women were able to be politically active. The state in the 1990s was gendered with most parliamentary positions and governmental ministers and official political and economic power held by men with some exceptions. For many reasons women who attempted to be agents in the transformation of the state, institutions and social policy did so by creating and participating in women's, feminist and non–women specific NGOs. In the 1990s there were thousands of local women's NGOs throughout the region, although it is difficult to determine their exact number or the significance of those numbers. Women’s and feminist NGOs were sometimes tapped by international funders and agencies as the central agents for political change, including for reconciliation and conflict resolution in the former Yugoslavia (Helms 2003). Many gender issues addressed by local women’s and feminist NGOs in the 1990s had simply been ignored by the formal political institutions in postsocialist states or those bodies had taken very different positions, such as on economic issues or anti–abortion positions. The Imperialist Criticisms of women’s and feminist NGOs tarnishes and condemns the public activity of some very brave, courageous and creative women in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Finally, the practice of NGOs is evolving and pragmatic criticisms are much more useful to determine how to change the practice. At a time when there is a debate on how and whether NGOs should have an increasing role in the UN and global governance it would be a shame to condemn and dismiss these women’s and feminist NGOs in east and central Europe and the former Soviet Union as simply agents of imperialism and western interests.

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index of 2005 conference papers