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Short, vivacious, bubbling with laughter, Pumla was obviously a natural born leader. She was not alone, however. Many women have risen up to work with her in various development projects. Though they have little education and exposure to the world, these women bring talent and initiative to sewing and craft projects, agricultural initiatives, and school programs. "We are not helping because we are employed," Pumla said. "We are helping because we have been helped, and now we are ready to help others."

However, as we visited these various projects, men seemed hardly to exist. We saw exactly none engaged in the work. We saw plenty sitting or staring from the margins.

"Men will join," Pumla said unapologetically when I asked her, "but they won't stay. Men want to get money now. When it comes to commitment and patience, men don't have it."

When school let out, we saw many adolescent boys in neat school blazers heading home, talking, jostling, full of good spirits. What future do they have? The high unemployment rate means that few regular jobs await them. They have few male role models.

Development expert Frances Cleaver writes in the 2001 article "Do Men Matter?": "With a few notable exceptions, men are rarely explicitly mentioned in gender policy documents [from humanitarian organizations]. Where men do appear, they are generally seen as obstacles to women's development: Men must surrender their positions of dominance for women to become empowered. The superiority of women as hard working, reliable, trustworthy, socially responsible, caring, and cooperative is often asserted; whilst men on the other hand are frequently portrayed as lazy, violent, promiscuous, and irresponsible drunkards."

Manfred Grellert, long-term World Vision vice president for Latin America, told me, "It's a little idealistic to imagine mom and dad and kids in a perfect nuclear family. You cannot bring change on the micro level when macro forces are in control." Development workers tend to be practical people. They don't deal with ideal conditions, and they rarely imagine they will create a model community out of the poverty and dysfunction they face every day. So development workers do what they can, which often means they help mothers.

One of the hottest techniques in development is micro-enterprise development (MED). In micro-credit schemes, small loans are given to individuals and cooperative groups. The literature of MED is full of inspiring stories of small loans used to buy a sewing machine, or leather to make into belts, or 50 chickens, or a gas-operated flour mill. A minuscule investment can enable a small-scale home industry to support the family.

According to Microcredit Summit president Sam Daley-Harris, 82 percent of these loans worldwide go to women. Often the lending organizations specifically target women, because women are more likely than men to repay, and more likely to use the profits for the good of the family.

"Ensuring that women are 70-80 percent of the borrowers from a particular scheme may sound positive," notes Sandy Ruxton in an Oxfam book, Gender Equality and Men, "but in practice, the project may cause women to increase their workloads in order to achieve repayment, and cause anger and resentment among men, who believe their traditional livelihoods are being undermined."

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August 2005, Vol. 49, No. 8