Book Review: The Twelfth of February: Canadian Aid for Gender Equality during the Rise of Violent Extremism in Pakistan

The Twelfth of February (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 276 pages) is especially fascinating to me because I was part of the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) initial “Women in Development” (WID) foray into Pakistan in 1984. One memory particularly stands out. It was our exploratory mission to test the waters for a female focus in Canadian aid. Though Gossen’s work is wonderfully rich in vignettes about what it was like as an officer and diplomat building this program over the years, this was the moment when the Pakistan government first said “yes” to an association that lasted decades. We were a group of three Canadian women that day, nervously twisting our unfamiliar headgear, as we studied the circle of men hunched around the large meeting table in the Government’s Economic Affairs Division in Islamabad. They seemed to glower back at us. Elizabeth McAllister, who led the mission, outlined the framework we would use in developing our proposed WID program. When she flipped the last chart of her spiel and took her seat, there was thunderous silence. Would we be sent packing? Finally, the boss in these matters, Ejaz A. Naik, spoke. 

With dramatic pauses he said, “I once had a landlady in Moose Jaw…She was a kind woman…Canadians are good people…You are welcome to take up this work.” And that was that. We were off and thus began our forty years of support to women in Pakistan. Later, Gossen recalls, Dr. Mahbub ul Haq, then Minister of Planning (who later spearheaded the UN’s Human Development Report), took the WID director for CIDA aside. In a corridor chat, on the margins of a large meeting, he urged Canada to keep up international pressure on Pakistan to safeguard women’s rights and gender equality. Canada’s welcome was not a flash in the pan.  

Is it too simplistic to think that a long-forgotten home-stay host to a young foreign student who became powerful, could have been the first person to thank for Canada’s ultimate reputation for leadership? I know that from the middle, one cannot always discern what actions will matter most. And I know that minor events can have big consequences. That’s why this excellent book by Rhonda Gossen is so special. It respects the importance of seemingly small matters, and pulls these pivotal moments out of the fog.

In particular, Gossen shows how CIDA made a meaningful difference in the lives of women through its innovations in development. Scores of efforts, big and small, had results in the lives of those grassroots people we referred to in our mountains of paperwork as “recipients”. One life at a time, results were compounded into a new way of working in Pakistan. Some projects connected women’s social and economic needs, others were a leg up to small women farmers, still others boosted women’s skills. 

CIDA also empowered other actors. There were projects that built journalists’ mojo to speak out about violence against women. Lawyers were supported to craft new ways to use the laws, and activists to change them. Bureaucrats were encouraged to include gender analysis in their plans. It all added up to change. Gossen acknowledges how the work of the Pakistan program was always challenging and sometimes had uneven results. But over time it became a model for other parts of the Agency.  If gender focus could make such a difference in Pakistan, could other programs do it too? In 2013, CIDA merged into Global Affairs Canada, and by 2017 the announcement of a Feminist International Assistance Policy became a turning point.  

Sadly, the geopolitical winds changed when it came to programming in Pakistan beginning around 2007, and ultimately it was no longer a focus country for Canada. What had been so painstakingly built seemed to quickly unravel. Still, what shines through in Gossen’s narrative history is that the models developed, networks established, and darn good projects for women still displaying a maple leaf years later, all cleared the path for much larger financial donors to carry on. The Americans, and the British, were able to sustain the work that Canada had championed.

Gossen’s personal stories make this book come alive. As an intrepid officer and later a diplomat, she was always observing the wheels within wheels of aid and activism, when they were humming, or grinding to a halt.  In her extensive research, she dug out impressive details hidden inside archives and dust covered boxes in back rooms, and gleaned the memories of those involved or those who inspired and informed her work. Indeed, the book title pays homage to those women who were arrested in Lahore on 12 February 1983, while protesting against the proposed law of evidence, which would have reduced the value of a woman’s testimony to half that of a man.

It is said we make the road by walking, and Gossen shows how we did just that in Pakistan and later Afghanistan. Success could be seen in tangible indicators of rising well-being for the women there. And when the aid machinery broke down those indicators began to slip. Finally, the rise of violent extremism could no longer be worked around, so the aid program pulled back from Pakistan. Still, Canada’s effort mattered.

Gossen’s excellent contribution to the development literature also spotlights a growing body of research showing how gender inequality links to violent extremism and undermines stable societies. Violence directed to women stymies everyone’s security if it is allowed to foment. So, this narrative history is also a beacon. For international development to stay relevant in an unsettled world, applying insight matters. And looking ahead from history has never been more relevant.