Mobility as enabling gender equality? The case of international aid workers Anne-Meike Fechter University of Sussex Research was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Science Research Council.

Research Context Migration and Development Aid workers as mobile professionals Focus on Cambodia

Mobility as intrinsic to aid work Temporal Mobility: Fixed-term nature of programmes and projects Leads to often fixed-term contracts or positions in aid agencies (multi/bilateral organisations, international/local NGOs) Roles of Advisor, Consultant, Project Manager are time-limited

Life course and mobility People enter and exit at different stages in their life course Work that can be entered/exited at a number of points (one-off secondments,, volunteers, consultants, entire career trajectories)

Geographical mobility High geographical mobility (local, regional, international) is characteristic of aid work Principle of rotation means constant relocation as a matter of course Even if employer remains the same, places of assignments change

How does high mobility affect gender in/equality among aid workers? In the past, choosing to work in overseas aid has sometimes afforded Euro-American women greater career opportunities than in their national labour markets

The high flexibility of aid work across time and space, while a source of uncertainty, has also afforded men and women who are in relationships to both pursue and maintain their respective careers

Initial evidence: >relatively high incidence of dual career households >higher number of women in senior positions working abroad, compared with the corporate expatriate sector > comparatively many male accompanying spouses >possibility for alternating lead migrants

All Good? Mobility as reinforcing gender inequalities human resource policies in aid organisations which would enable for longer-term family planning are not necessarily sufficient or effective Depending on sector and organisation, a gendered division of labour may evolve (frustrated UN wives)

Mobility enables dual careers mostly if partners already work in similar field (possibly more likely than in business sector) Women may be more prone than men to drop out of a career in aid if they consider their family planning prospects at risk

Consequences of Mobility: a comparatively high number of single or divorced women and men Existence of single/lone parents in the field women more likely to leave job for both individual and organisational reasons

Whose gender equality? dual career households or single parent families are made viable through employing local domestic workers- often women Gender equality/career prospects of Euro/American women are enabled by labour of relatively disadvantaged women from developing countries

cannot compartmentalise first and third world women need to pay attention to national / racial/ethnic/ dimensions of gender equality

it is argued that greater flexibility in labour markets would lead to greater participation of women because of the mobility/flexibility of aid work, this may be to some extent achieved in the sector However: mobility might also have disproportionately negative effects on women- as they may be more likely to drop out of aid career due to uncertainty