Where you might come in
We are entering the next phase of our AidWorkVoices project and again need your help, this time from a few of you who want or may be wiling to share your stories.
One of the most interesting nuggets to come from the survey data thus far are the thoughts you’ve had about identity. In the post “You are as you are seen” many of our respondents–you–wrestled with exactly that: how you are seen by those around you matters on many levels. Many of you believe that the way you are seen (for example: young, white, attractive Western female) has an impact on your overall effectiveness. A second impact is that on the self concept of the aid worker: how she or he feels about her or himself.
Our goal at this particular stage is to deepen the data with more in-depth voices speaking about identity management both in the ‘field’ and in other locations, including at home, and throughout the aid industry. We especially want to hear from aid workers whose ‘at home’ identity (what Goffman would call ‘back stage’) may at times present a challenge.
We’re specifically working here with the concept of “master status” in sociology. There are two general categories of master status: Those that are disclosed as soon as people see you, such as skin color, sex (probably), age (possibly), and some kinds of physical disability or special-ability; And those that can remain disclosed with some effort, for example religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, and relationship/marital status.
Who would we like to talk to? We are interested in more in-depth interviews with aid workers that may have faced and/or currently face workplace challenges related to “how they are seen.” Basically, we want to talk to any aid or development worker in a setting where your sex, sexual orientation, marital status, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, local/non-local designation, age, religion, worldview, or other identity status somehow shapes your ability to be effective. Some examples include (but of course are not limited to):
Jewish aid workers in predominantly Muslim locations, or vice versa.
Atheist aid workers working in faith-based organizations and/or in locations where devotion to some religion is expected (Bangladesh comes to mind, based on recent news coverage).
Non-heterosexual aid workers in, well, most anywhere.
Red-headed aid workers (or those with some other exceptional physical attribute. Any 2 meter+ aid workers?)
Differently-abled aid workers (sight/hearing impaired, ambulatory challenges, etc.)
Medication dependent aid workers (e.g., insulin dependent).
You get the idea…..
Specifically we want to arrange open-ended interviews (via phone, Skype or otherwise) with aid workers who deal with identity management issues such as the above. If you are interested and/or have questions please send a message to me (Arcaro) with details of how you would prefer to be contacted.
We expect that interviews will take approximately 30 minutes. While we may need to interact with you as yourself in the context of an interview, we promise to maintain your anonymity in any publication or other external reference to your interview.
The big picture
We are now entering a very intense phase of analyzing and writing about all of the survey results, both quantitative and qualitative. In addition to making regular (weekly) posts to this blog we are in the midst of outlining a book-length treatment of all the results. Our hope is that we have a beta-version draft out by late fall.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Female aid and development workers: how is gender a factor in their work?
Context
I have previously written two posts having to do with the male-female differences in our survey responses. Check here and here for these posts. I turn now to the results from our specific questions about the impact of gender.
Two questions
Which of these four factors is the most important in influencing how we see ourselves: race/ethnicity/cultural status, social class/relative wealth and power, gender or age? Which of those four factors is the most important in influencing how others perceive and react to us?
Certainly every one of these factors is critically important for all of us no matter where we are in the world or what our occupation might be. Indeed, that is a basic truism in the social sciences. Though Max Weber was referring more narrowly to wealth and power when he first used the term, his concept of “life chances” can be usefully applied more broadly to all four of these factors. Each can and frequently does play into how we go through our lives and our work days, that is, what “life chances” we enjoy -or don’t enjoy- depending upon where we are vis-a-vis these four major social variables. Which factor is the most important for an individual can change quickly, even moment by moment as we transition from one social setting to the next, for example getting off a plane to a deployment faced with immediate and dramatic cultural shifts. In short, all four factors are critical, and various combinations can lead alternately to open or closed doors.
This comment from a young, white, male expat aid worker sums this point up nicely:
“In Muslim countries, being a male makes a lot of things easier, even though in West Africa you are generally perceived as white before being perceived as a man or a woman. The only disadvantages in being a Male in some unstable countries are that it makes you more of a target for ‘extremist/hostile’ groups in some contexts.”
That one’s perceived gender can influence how a person is responded to is the focus below, and by presenting some representative narrative responses from our survey I hope to shed light on the deeper contextual nuances of perceived gender identity.
As a related note, how you feel about yourself is influenced by how you believe others are seeing you and how they are evaluating -judging-what they see. Perhaps that is part of the allure of being an aid worker: “How wonderful you are to help other people!” Though the “looking-glass self” can have that positive side, when the way you are perceived by others is negative (“When two thousand years old you are, see how many times a week you are accused of being ‘too male, too pale, stale.'” stated one male respondent to our survey).
To go one step further, looking through the lens of sociologist Irving Goffman’s concept of “impression management” when we are at home and/or in our cubicle environment we are able to use myriad props, cues and affectations to enhance -or mute- any or all of our gender, race, age or class statuses. We are in control somewhat of how we are seen by others and can manipulate -albeit most times doing so unconsciously- the looking-glass effect, somewhat. By stark contrast, while in the field there are times when we have very little control over how are are perceived. One important interpersonal skill any aid worker must have is the ability to imagine what people in an array of contexts see when they look at them and then act in accordance with that knowledge.
Some results
Below are our results to the question related to gender being a factor for aid or development workers. I am a bit surprised that nearly a third -30%- of the respondents indicated their gender was not a factor at all in their work. When broken down by male compared to female, the percentages differ in what I would consider a predictable manner with females lower at 28% compared to 36% for males. I can understand that a male might not be habituated to thinking in terms of gender, but for well of a fourth of the females to report gender not a factor sounds, well, a bit odd, especially as I look more closely at the other numbers and read through some of the comments that were offered in the open-ended followup question (Q41).
What we do see very clearly in the data below is that that by a very wide margin gender is a more negative factor for females than for males, with 39% of the females indicating that their gender was a negative factor compared to only 7% of the males indicating the same.
Q 40: To what extent has your gender been a factor in your humanitarian aid work experience?
Combined responses:
Qualitative data
Among the 328 (thank you all!) women that provided a response in the followup open ended question (Q41) several themes and patterns emerge.
Gender impacts both relationships with colleagues in the aid worker industry and those with the non-aid workers (both aid/support beneficiaries and non-beneficiary community members) in both negative and positive ways. Below are examples.
“It’s been creeping up on me … I never thought it is an issue but over the years I did notice that it is. Either with project clients and sometimes with colleagues.” (30+yo female expat aid worker)
“I would say the positive aspects outweigh the negative. As a woman, I have been able to work with women and children in communities more closely than if I was a man. I also feel blessed to have close female friends in this field and we try to support and nurture each other as much as possible. I have not witnessed men bonding in this way. However, I have experienced sexism and harassment quite a bit in the course of my work. In some countries the harassment was significant and carried with it the threat of violence. On a couple of occasions I have not received jobs due to my gender. I have also experienced female bullying.” (41+y0 female expat aid worker)
This next one gets pretty specific and expresses anger that I suspect may generate some head nods among the women reading this post.
“Because white women like me can still be viewed negatively, dismissed, ignored, by other white men – yes, really. So, a white woman in a senior position in Africa? Tough. African men ignore me routinely, especially if I am in the company of a male colleague, I may as well not be there sometimes. Only when they realise they need me to get to the money, do they talk to me. By then it is too late. Enough assholes in aid work, I am not supporting those who do not acknowledge a white woman.” (31+yo female expat air worker)
The next two examples highlight the nuance of gender impact.
“My answer will change based on the day. It is definitely a large factor but in some instances it is positive and in others it is negative. I deal regularly with sexist rules and comments made by other expat staff members who I am sure do not even realize what they are saying or doing (e.g. no you cannot ride a bike, no you cannot drive a car. you are too emotional you must not be able to cope with stress. no you cannot attend this meeting with us, etc. etc.) When dealing with locals I have found that being a woman is often a positive as people seem to open up and trust women more than men and are more likely to feel they must take care of a woman, therefore offering me more access to people’s homes to be able to talk to them.” (41+y0 female expat aid worker)
Being a woman can be exceedingly difficult, especially in conflict zones where I’m working with mostly men. All of the decisions are based on a 2-dimensional perspective. It takes a lot of explaining to bring about a holistic approach and/or incorporate the lives of women in planning. Sometimes, as an expat woman, I’m considered androgynous and given the same access as a male. But that can also be isolating, depending on the context since I end up in the male category and have to fight to speak to a woman or plan things that factor in women’s lives. Sometimes, I’m a critical bridge between the women/vulnerable and decision makers, a “voice” for women when they’re kept out of the process. That can also be a burden if decision makers are expecting you to be the voice for millions of women. (40+yo female expat aid worker)
Addition thoughts
Here are some additional responses:
This was a challenging question. While I don’t feel I have ever been discriminated against for being female in my job, there are certain implications. In my organization, the majority of staff at HQ are actually female – so I am at a slight disadvantage were I to try and work at HQ. In the field it is different – there are some perceptions by male coworkers that some deployment areas are ‘too dangerous’ for women so this can limit your movement.
I have experienced sexual harassment from “locals” and staff alike too many times to count. I have at times felt like a liability to male staff when confronted with armed groups who use the threat of rape and kidnap of females as pressure to get what they want. I also believe my gender has enabled me to connect with children despite language barriers and open conversations that may not have happened otherwise.
Sometimes positive (interviewing female participants) and other times more dangerous.
In my organization, “rank and file” staff at HQ level are dominated by young women, whereas senior managers and leadership continue to be dominated by men. This is changing, but still observable. In the HQ setting, being a driven female was positive because my motivation was rewarded with opportunities. In the field, the overwhelming majority of “rank and file” staff (local nationals) are men, as well as heads of local organizations and government, and often fairly traditional. This made being a senior leader challenging at times, as I had to work harder to earn respect from my male counterparts.
The only issue that my gender has caused is that it was a factor in deciding whether or not to go to work in Afghanistan. That’s the only time it has influenced any decision I’ve made.
Being a woman can sometimes help in communication and negotiation
I think as a woman, there are still issues in respecting me in some cases, likely. I think my age (I’m still young compared to most local colleagues) has probably been a bigger factor than my gender though.
In a lot of countries being a woman means working ten times harder than men just to be taken seriously (even by your own colleagues). And I have been in situations when me being a woman put me in more physical danger.
More risk associated with being alone/out Sometimes I get the sense that people don’t take what I’m saying as seriously, and I noticed they’ll look to or defer to the man in the group, even if I’m the one in the position to answer/position of authority.
When I am able to work directly with poor or marginalized women in visual storytelling processes, my gender creates a more open and safe environment for them. As such, I always ask for a female translator, if needed, when working with women.
It’s been difficult in two ways: 1. There is certainly an “old boys network” in my work context. My bosses are more likely to listen to other male workers’ opinions, especially on academic or theoretical topics. 2. Being a woman in a Central American context is frustrating on a daily level (catcalls, threats to security) which I think decreases my productivity.
A take-home thought
Being a female aid worker is, in sum, not the same as being a male aid worker in many, many ways. The quantitative results from our main question highlighted the fact that one’s gender is more of a negative factor for women. The qualitative data produced the insight that though there are negatives and positives of being a female when working with colleagues as well as with clients and locals, the negatives working with colleagues were much more commonly cited than the negatives when working with clients or locals. Indeed, what I am reading is that in terms of doing her job, being a female was frequently a distinct disadvantage.
What is the take-home point from all of the above? Aid and development organizations recruiting and hoping to retain qualified females need to be constantly aware of the impact of gender and ceaselessly work to minimize the negatives in whatever ways they can. They should begin by hearing the voices of the women already in their ranks and using their insights and growth to support those who come behind them, both males and females.
In my next post I’ll drill deeper into the impact of all of the social variables on the lives of aid workers. We are as others see us, like it or not.
Thoughts, questions or comments? Reach me via email.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
So, last week The Guardian online ran an article in the Global Development Professionals Network section, in which the authors sort of rambled on about the importance of discussing the sex lives of humanitarians. Yes, you read that right. A research fellow and an adviser at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) want to have a little chat about aid worker sex lives–that is, our sex lives.
On the outside chance that you missed their arousing discussion, check it out.
Yeah, yeah. Aid worker notoriety vis-a-vis all things sexual is legendary. I don’t think there’s any other aspect of the aid worker experience that is more commonly or gleefully portrayed in pop culture remakes of our allegedly exciting lives than our sexuality. From the apocryphal Emergency Sex, to the far-fetched tale of a UK housewive-turned-UNICEF warrior for the poor, to any one of several flaccid attempts to capture the aid worker experience as prime-time television drama, we see very quickly that the common denominator ain’t the Sphere standards for emergency WASH or an obsession with humanitarian accountability. My own first (and by far most commercially successful) furtive fumble down the path of humanitarian fiction shamelessly capitalized on the mythical hyper-sexualization of expat aid workers. Heck,even The Guardian’s own blush-worthy moment on the subject of aid worker sex life indiscretion seems to confirm exactly what everyone already thinks, and so we’ll forgive @IDS_UK for prematurely… er… raising the flag just a little too high on this one. Because, see, if you look at what actual aid workers are saying in the Aid Worker Survey, it would seem that we’re not really as busy getting busy as everyone seems to want to believe.
Let’s look at the results so far from Question 26: Which response below best describes your coping mechanisms (coping with stress, coping with burnout, coping with loss of idealism)?
Q26 responses (combined female & male)
[The response choices (paraphrased) are: I don’t experience burnout; Physical release (yoga, running…); Self medication (alcohol…); Finding strength in one’s faith; “Emergency Sex”; and Reading & writing about the humanitarian experience.]
I’ll skip straight to the spoiler: “Emergency Sex” scored dead last at 3.4% and 4.4% of female and male respondents, respectively.
The majority of all respondents (41% of females, and 40% of males) chose “Physical release“–yoga, running, or some kind of physical exercise as their primary stress release or coping mechanism. The remaining categories ranked as “Self Medication” (23% Female, 21% male), “Minimal Stress” (13% female, 18% male), “Reading/writing about the humanitarian experience” (12.8% female, 7.8 male), and “Strength from faith” (5.5% female, 8.5% male).
You can look at this breakdown in many ways. But for now, from a staff care perspective (and writing as a manager and frequent leader in field operations), I find the prevalence of “self medication” the most troubling in this lineup. In response to The Guardian’s hand-wringing, I’ll simply point out that according to our data thus far, it seems that more aid workers pray as a coping mechanism than engage in sexual activity.
Q26 responses in table form (combined female & male)
This is the only question in the Aid Worker Survey which addresses or gives the option of sex, specifically, and so for sure we’re assuming a potential link between work or context-related stress and aid worker libido. Although the writers from IDS cover a wide range of aid worker sex related worries in their article (not just sex as stress release), on the basis of only the response data from Q26, it is reasonable to ask whether this really ought to be the first thing HR (or security, apparently) worries about.
It’s also worth taking another look at some of the other data, too, though, with a view to the IDS’s angst about our sex lives. Q12 “Which best describes your relationship status?”, for example. The choices under Q26 are: Single and dating; Single and not dating; In a relationship. Here’s how it shakes out.
Response to Q12 (disaggregated by sex)
For the moment let’s assume that “single and dating” and “in a relationship” sort of hang together. In this context something like 68% of females and 83% of males are in some kind of relationship. No, I’m not naively assuming that dating or being in a relationship rules one out from participation in the alleged sexual misbehavior. Anyone can have a bad deployment, or just an evening of drunken (likely, according to Q26…) indiscretion, and of course there are those who are serially unfaithful. But based purely on personal observation as a long-term aid worker, it is my opinion that relationship status does make a difference. For all of their sometimes rough edges, aid workers are usually people of some kind of principle. Moreover, in my real job as a supervisor and frequent mentor to young newbs, I can tell you that there is no issue which comes up as frequently as relationships, specifically the desire for a relationship. When aid workers are in relationships–even relationships with challenges–the gravitational pull is toward doing everything possible to make those relationships work.
The ins and outs of aid worker sex lives will surely make interesting reading (to some). But that it’s something we must absolutely worry about now… well that’s a bit of a claim.
By hardly the second sentence into The Guardian’s article (written by those two researchers from IDS):
“…your day-to-day management challenges also included arguments over what time your colleagues could watch porn in the common room, and negotiating how staff could get to and from a brothel. Yet it is often a reality of the job and it is time we talked about it.”
Where to start? How about here: In a prior post, my research partner on this project described the “typical” aid worker, based on the results of this survey to-date. Once more with the spoiler: it’s a single, 30-something female. You can read the numbers in different ways (and we’ll eventually make raw data available in full), but basically the proportion of the single, 30-something women is above two-thirds of the total.
Based on the simple proportion of women to men in the industry overall, along with what we know from other sources about the propensity of men versus women when it comes to behaviors like paying for sex or consuming pornography, the statement above feels like a bit of overblown hand-wringing.
Also, I just have to say: in 23 years of continuous aid work, including quality time in some of the more notorious team houses in some of the more notorious responses, I have never (not once to-date) heard of aid workers watching porn in the common room. Nor have I ever heard of anyone ever needing the permission of the security manager before sleeping with someone from another other organization (see the caption under the photograph in the original article). And these days I usually supervise the security manager.
* * * * *
Surely some of the issues raised by The Guardian matter. The power dynamics involved and the potential for exploitation when aid workers become involved with local people while deployed (especially if they become involved with beneficiaries or disaster survivors) is terribly serious and worth larger, honest discussion. But a call for more discussion of aid workers’ sex lives (scintillating as that all might seem) needs to be grounded in some actual data, and framed in ways which correspond to real issues, rather than over-the-top, made-for-TV stereotypes.
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Think I’m wrong? Sound off on in the comments thread below this post, or on my Facebook page, here.
Want to take the Aid Worker Survey yourself? (of course you do) Do it!
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
Though I don’t have any firm numbers to go by, a quick scan of available data is that English is not the first language of most humanitarian aid workers. While it is a fact of life that the default language of many (most?) organizations in the aid world industry is English (with French coming in a very strong second), of the over 300,000 aid and development workers globally I’ll repeat: for most English is at best a second language.
This fact is perhaps reflected in our data in that we have attracted a very small number of local aid workers:
Our main goal in taking on this project was to provide a space for more discussion about the lives and views of aid workers and so, toward that goal and more specifically toward the goal of hearing more -and more diverse- voices, we are working on translating the survey into Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Please send us a Tweet if you have suggestions for other languages – especially if you have someone able to do the translation.
In other news, check out this article in Devex International Development Career Forum that mentions our survey and also quotes my collaborator J.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
As we pass 600 hits, what does our “sample” population look like so far?
And why is “sample” in quotation marks? As we mention in the FAQ, our target population -those who are now or have in the past worked in the aid/development industry- is not a homogeneous, database available-at-the-ready population. Just the opposite: you are all spread across the world in an astonishing array of locations and work circumstances, from New York City-urban to South Sudan-rural. We have here is a snapshot of a necessarily self-selected group of souls who have invested some precious time on our survey.
Some bits from the data:
Age/gender/’race’
Though those who identified as female make up 68% of our respondents, there is a markedly higher percentage of ‘long in the tooth’ males responding: “I have been doing humanitarian aid work for ten or more years.” Male: 33%, Female 17%, with males having a higher percentage of respondents in all age groups from 36-40 on up.
The population is overwhelmingly “white” at 84%. The responses to the open-ended question related to self-identification have been fascinating, edifying and entertaining. Most of you we very mindful -thank you!-about what you wrote. Here are a couple intense responses:
I am Filipino-American. Colleagues in the Philippines treat me as a local/national with a foreign passport. I have similar experience in other countries within South East Asia. In West and East Africa, I am often perceived as Chinese. In the Middle East, my ethnicity is often associated with hired domestic help. I am extremely proud of my ethnic background and cultural heritage but there have been times in the field when I wanted to look like the typical expat aid worker – 6 feet tall, blond and very white. The color of one’s skin shouldn’t matter especially in this line of work, but who are we kidding?
I was adopted from Colombia as a baby, have grown up “white” but feel that to deny my “latina-ness” isn’t doing race discussions any favors either, so I am conflicted as to what to identify myself as, but in terms of privilege, opportunity, and perspective, I am white.
Vast majority of the sample -83%- self-identifying as working for or volunteering in a humanitarian aid organization, with the remaining 17% divided among UN System (3%), donor agency or charitable foundation (5%), consultant or contractor (9%).
Education
A very well educated lot, these humanitarian aid workers: 74% report having Masters level or more formal education. The open-ended question “How would you describe your non-institutional educational background?” has yielded some nuggets:
Good question. Extensive experience in the university of life perhaps? I’ve learned more from fieldwork and discussions with experienced colleges and ‘uneducated beneficiaries’ than all my degrees put together, but they help pad out my CV.
Took some courses here and there – e.g. evaluation, DRR, humanitarian practice, human trafficking.
Much hands on experience and self study in terms of humanitarian aid standards. Taken several workshops on a variety of topics as well as led workshops on a variety of topics. Community courses, through community centers of continuing education forums.
Being thrown in at the deep end in Somalia and going from there. You learn fast in the field when you get practical hands on experience, rather than all the theoretical drivel they teach us in university.
As a university professor who has taught classes on “global citizenship for the last few years this final one was my favorite.
Home?
The respondents thus far have reported “home” as predominantly the US, UK, Canada and Australia with a sizable number calling home various nations around the globe. To this point there have been 720 visits to this blog from all over the world, though the biggest lot is from the US. Here’s the blog cluster map indicating from where the blog was accessed.
Relationships Of those that responded (572), most are in a relationship -58%- though interestingly 26% reported being “Single and not dating.” The qualitative data indicates that this is very likely a life-style reality fore those in the aid world. The gender breakdown on this question is significant. While 71% of the males report being in a relationship that number drops to 51% for females. When we break down “single and not dating” the numbers look like this: 31% females and nearly half that number -16%- for males.
Though 35% of the respondents report being married, the gender disparity -50% male, 28% female- merits a closer look. Most (76%) have no children but a remarkable 4% reported having three or more.
Travel and work environment
This is a well traveled group, 53% report having traveled 11 or more times outside of their home nation for their work and over 65% reporting having been deployed for over a year (46% 2 years or more).
Most -80%- work in non-faith based organizations, 54% are in development (community development, long-term development, etc.), 28% doing relief work (disaster response, emergency response, etc.).
So, above is just the very tip of the data iceberg that we are only just beginning to explore. Please keep us on our toes with your Tweeted, Facebooked, emailed or otherwise transmitted comments and feedback.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
The humanitarian survey has been live for about two weeks, now, and so far we’re very pleased with the response. We’ve had over 500 respondents to-date, and yes, we know it’s not a statistically viable sample just yet, but nevertheless we’re seeing some fascinating trends already beginning to emerge.
At this point, though, we need to pause and answer what is apparently a burning question in the minds of many: Who should take this survey? Or, put another way, who do we want to hear from?
You’ve tweeted us, DM’d us, emailed us, Facebooked us, biting your bottom lips, voices wavering… wondering if… is it really… for you?!
Should I take the humanitarian worker survey?! (hint: yes)
Yep, we know. It says “humanitarian”, but you’ve always fancied yourself as a development worker. No short-term, all-output-no-impact, disaster zone adrenaline junkie shenanigans for you. The decades-long debates about “aid” and “development” begin to coalesce in your mind. Should you take the survey?
Yes. If you do now or have ever worked in the aid industry in any way, whether relief, development, advocacy, policy, shuffling papers, managing spreadsheets… aid industry? Yes? Then yes, we want to hear from you.
Or maybe you’re hung up on the fact that we appear to be asking about NGO staff only, and you’re a consultant or maybe you work for an institutional donor (we’ve updated a few of those questions, by the way). Should you take the survey?
My personal favorite (see my prior rants here and here) is when some of you worry aloud over the fact that you sit in a HQ, far from the action, providing passive “support,” while the alleged real work is being done by the alleged real aid workers far, far away. Should you take the survey?
Yes! If you do now, or have ever worked in the aid industry, whether in DC or Dhaka, Brussels or Bujumbura, Geneva or Genoa… Whether your job is something about shuffling papers, responding to donor information needs, making operational decisions, directly handing relief NFIs to survivors, attending meetings, attending really important and high-level meetings… Then yes, we want to hear from you.
The same goes for all the other permutations, too. You retired years ago. You’re super angry. You’re super happy. You’re expat. You’re local. You’re too busy for blogs. You’re an expert in surveys and you have serious concerns about the assumptions being made by some of these questions. You’re in ‘transition’ work, and so neither really relief nor development. Your job is highly specialized. Your job is very general. You’re very senior in your organization. You’re very junior in your organization. Should you take the survey?
Yes. If you do now, or have ever worked in the aid industry….
J. is a full-time professional humanitarian worker with more than twenty years of experience in the aid industry. He currently holds a real aid world day job at a real humanitarian organization as a senior disaster response manager.
In a previous blogosphere life J. wrote a blog about aid work called Tales From the Hood, and was half owner/curator of the uber-awesome Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like.These days he occasionally blogs about serious topics at AidSpeak (aidspeak.wordpress.com).
J. has written several books, including the world's first humanitarian romance novel, Disastrous Passion, and a non-fiction book entitled Letters Left Unsent.
Follow J. on Twitter @evilgeniuspubs
I’ve spent the better part of the past twenty years believing that something was wrong with me. I knew the cause, of course: I am a professional aid worker, and I have been for some time. And that fact alone seemed, for a while, to explain it all. Aid-work-induced weirdness was for many years something easy to hold up as a pseudo-explanation for why I couldn’t or couldn’t be bothered to try to fit in or get along.
But you get to a point—or at least I did—where the simple acknowledgement that “aid work affects you” is no longer sufficient. It’s not sufficient because we want to understand ourselves, and others like us. I am now in a space where I need to understand, supervise, lead, and in a few cases even mentor actual, young, newly-minted aid workers. The ability to analyze and make some sense of my own experience, including those moments of jarring disconnect, is a critical attribute.
“A persistent and exclusive focus on the ‘other’ obstructs more open and necessary debates on the role of aid workers. Such academic invisibility allows popular and misleading stereotypes of aid workers to flourish; more pertinently, it hinders honest appraisals of the experiences of aid work and its challenges.”
In other words, it is important to understand us, too. Aid workers. We are part of the aid equation, too, and if we’re not understood, neither can our roles and contributions be understood. And if our roles and contributions cannot be understood, then we cannot make improvements to it all. Good aid requires good aid workers, and good aid workers require and understanding about what an aid worker is in the first place.
All that having been said, we’re an understudied and largely misunderstood group.
Which is why, I’m particularly proud and pleased to be part of a new project meant to address exactly this. It’s my privilege to be able to collaborate in my personal time with Dr. Tom Arcaro of Elon University on a project to study us! The first step, as any real aid worker will appreciate, is to do a survey, and that is what brought you to this blog.
This project, according to Tom:
As founding Director of the Periclean Scholars program and Mentor of the inaugural Class of 2006, I have mucked around on the edges of aid work for the last 12 plus years. Guiding my Class through their experience partnering with HIV/AIDS related NGO’s on the ground in Namibia gave me a deep appreciate for the complexity of aid work and thus began my long and serious emersion into the world of humanitarian outreach and development work. In the last several years I have been teaching a course on ‘global citizenship’ in general and more specifically about the issues related to humanitarian aid. The work that I am doing now in studying the aid world is important to be on many levels but most critically because (1) I believe that a robust conversation about the realities of how we are responding to our global issues is vitally important and that (2) knowing more about the views of those most directly involved in this response is a positive step toward a more just world for all.
So, thanks for being part of the conversation. Stay tuned to this blog for frequent ‘mini’ polls which will appear on the right side up this page (see above now for the first one), ongoing presentation and analysis of the emerging data from the survey and, we hope, both heat and light.
Thanks for stopping by! Please promote this survey on your Facebook page, Twitter, or by any other mode you might prefer. Be sure to check back here often for updates and discussion as our research progresses.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Specifically we want to arrange open-ended interviews (via phone, Skype or otherwise) with aid workers who deal with identity management issues such as the above. If you are interested and/or have questions please send a message to me (Arcaro) with details of how you would prefer to be contacted.
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