Targeting "Destitute" Women to Promote Food Security and Empowerment: A Comparative Study of the World Food Programme's Vulnerable Group Development in Rural Bangladesh and Current Theory on Gender-Aware Planning

Increasing recognition of the linkages between population dynamics, human wellbeing and women's human rights at the international level, through conventions such as the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, has been key in stimulating the emergence of increasing numbers of development initiatives which state the empowerment of women among their goals. Many actors involved in food security and poverty alleviation efforts in rural Bangladesh have incorporated a gender aware approach aiming to empower poor women through their policy interventions in an attempt to go beyond the "unexamined assumptions and preconceptions which form the 'common sense' of so much of traditional top-down development planning" (Kabeer, 1996; 5). The World Food Programme (WFP) has intervened in rural Bangladesh through the Vulnerable Group Development Programme (VGD) which targets "destitute" women in the rural areas of Bangladesh with a food aid and development package. However, how a target group such as destitute women and their needs are conceptualized and approached through an intervention results from how the VGD programme is formulated and designed from within the WFP institutional machinery to address the needs of that group. This paper attempts to fill the gap between the actual planning practice of the VGD programme intervention and current theory about the design of gender-sensitive policy. Thus the objective of this study is to compare the approach of the World Food Programme to targeting, needs identification and empowerment of destitute women in rural Bangladesh, as embodied by the VGD programme, to current theory on the formation of gender-aware policy interventions. In comparing the WFP approach to women's economic and social empowerment with current theory from the field of gender planning this study concluded that differences between the two existed and that the WFP use of the concept empowerment was fragmented in its emphasis primarily upon economic forms of empowerment. More intangible forms of empowerment, that are helped or hindered by hierarchical social relations of gender and class in that context, should also be taken into account in the formulation and design of future interventions. A participatory planning process in which members of the target group as well as other interest groups from all levels of society are approached for their views and input would strengthen the potential impact of the programme not only through a more accurate view of the needs of the target group, but also through the identification of potential obstacles or sources of support within the wider community to the programme. Such a process could also contribute towards a increased awareness among men and members of other classes about the gender specific processes of poverty that prevail m rural Bangladesh.