The location of managerial positions in NGOs has produced an unanticipated effect: the increased exclusion of women from management positions.
By wanting to correct managerial neo-colonialism, humanitarian organizations have reproduced another injustice. The rise of national personnel in management positions has mechanically marginalized women, in contexts where their mobility and access to leadership remain structurally constrained. 38% women at MSF, 39% at the ICRC: the figures have not changed for fifteen years. Deciphering a collective blind spot.
—-
Localization in humanitarian work is progressing. Women are moving backwards.
Twenty years ago, humanitarian organizations began a silent revolution. Fewer Western expatriates in charge. More managers from the countries of intervention. A strong political commitment, driven by a legitimate conviction: we cannot defend the autonomy of populations while entrusting them with executive positions.
This localization movement is right. It was necessary. It produced real results.
It also produced an effect that no one had anticipated.
Women have paid the price.
A good intention, a blind spot
Behind the figure of 38% women in the international pool of Médecins Sans Frontières, and 32% overall, there is a reality that the dashboards do not spontaneously show.
For decades, Western expatriates have occupied a significant share of coordination positions on the ground. Their geographic mobility, their ability to deploy outside their country of origin, partly compensated for the obstacles that national women encountered in their own environment.
When organizations rightly decided to favor local talent for management positions, they made a one-variable calculation. They counted the nationalities. They didn’t count gender.
However, in many humanitarian intervention contexts, women’s access to positions of responsibility comes up against powerful structural obstacles: restricted mobility, family and community pressure, limited access to training, cultural norms which dissociate leadership and femininity. Promoting national staff without explicitly integrating the gender variable mechanically reproduces existing imbalances, or even amplifies them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross already had 39% women in its workforce in 2009. Fifteen years later, the figures for the sector have not fundamentally changed. This is not a coincidence. This is the sign of a structural problem that good intentions are not enough to resolve.
What the global figures confirm
The World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 134 years to close global gender inequality at the current rate. UN Women reports that only 17% of international humanitarian aid targets gender equality, compared to 50% in the peace and security sector.
The sector that treats victims of discrimination is struggling to look at itself in the mirror.
This paradox is not specific to humanitarian work. A study on French NGOs already pointed to marked vertical segregation: only 26% of general management positions occupied by women, a proportion lower than that of the general association sector. Organizations that promote a progressive discourse on equality cannot escape the dynamics they are fighting externally.
Localization without parity is not decolonization
The debate on localization in humanitarian work is legitimate and necessary. The populations concerned must be represented in decision-making positions. Careers must be built within the contexts of intervention, not only from the Paris or Geneva headquarters.
But a localization that excludes women is not emancipation. It is a transfer of power from one group to another, within the same logic of exclusion.
Afghanistan illustrates this in an extreme way. Since the return of the Taliban, female caregivers have faced unprecedented restrictions: a ban on medical training, the obligation to be accompanied by a mahram, constant social pressure. MSF maintains their presence as much as possible. This choice is not trivial: it is a deliberate political decision, accepted as such, which goes against local pressures.
The logic of localization cannot mean acceptance of local norms when these norms exclude women. This is precisely where the coherence of organizations comes into play.
What this actually requires
Organizations that have taken this tension seriously have in common that they have not simply set representation goals. They have acted on the conditions that make careers possible.
This involves concrete measures: mentoring programs between national women and expatriate women, adaptation of mobility conditions to take into account family and cultural constraints, explicit work on recruitment and promotion criteria to identify unconscious bias, and above all regular measurement of results.
Action Against Hunger says it is working to strengthen parity at all levels of the organization. What distinguishes this intention from a proclamation of goodwill is the ability to measure its impact over time.
Without indicators. Without procedures. Without explicit responsibility. Commitments in favor of parity remain what they have always been in this sector: declarations of intent.
The question that remains open
The localization movement in humanitarian work has opened up an important space. He called into question a form of real managerial neo-colonialism. It allowed local talents to access responsibilities that were structurally inaccessible to them.
But he left one question unanswered: what location, for whom?
Organizations that want to answer this question honestly will have to accept additional discomfort. That of recognizing that defending the empowerment of populations and defending gender equality in these same populations are not two parallel commitments. These are two sides of the same project.
As long as they treat them separately, the numbers will stay where they are.
@
