Gender equality in development NGOs from Gipuzkoa: myth or reality

Abstract

Non-Governmental Development Organisations (NGDO) raise ethical, social, political and economic issues for debate which serve to highlight our society’s problems and contradictions. At the same time they are organisations comprised of men and women who live in real societies whose well-established cultural models, transmitted efficiently and often invisibly, strongly influence stereotypes and perception, among which is that of gender, which are difficult to change unless we learn to recognise and confront them. The study of NGDOs in Gipuzkoa focuses analysis on three aspects: their ideological positions, their structure and their organisational culture in an attempt to discover a possible gap that exists between theoretical discourse about equality and the practical reality. Our objective is to determine whether there exists a dif­ference between learned discourse and real equality in their own organisations and actions. We analyse, from a theoretical perspective, the role of women in Development Cooperation and the normative and theoretical frameworks that govern the work carried out by these NGDOs in Gipuzkoa as well as the principal myths that are used in organisations, which could be responsible for the learned discourse in subjects relating to equality