Using Traditional Patriarchal Institutions to Address Women’s Problems

This essay summarises an innovative project for gender and development research in one religious society. The approach that was employed combined participatory and ethnographic methods toward a merging of anthropological research with gender and development to prioritise the articulations and understandings of the local population concerning gender norms in their society. The approach was premised on the observation that gender relations are contextual and differ cross-culturally, and this diversity must be accounted for better in mainstream gender and development analytical and theoretical tools, which have been disproportionately influenced by western gender conditions and epistemologies. A second premise was that understanding gender relations and improving women's problems in traditional societies can only be achieved with the inclusion of men and the cooperation of religious/cultural leaders who influence local attitudes, and therefore this project engaged with both genders across sociocultural groups. The article was written for non-specialists and was published on the official website of the Tokyo Foundation in Japan which granted funds for the implementation of the project