Gender and international development: Or, the reality of development spinsterdom

I'm betting two things when writing this post, which I've been hinting at for awhile: there's going to be a whole lot of ladies out there shaking their heads in resigned recognition, and a whole lot of dudes who have no idea what I'm talking about. Given, this is a post that is somewhat unique to a niche lifestyle (that of the expat), but maybe there's some greater conclusions that can be culled from it. If so, great. If not, and you're reading this as a non-international development, expat-y person, enjoy this brief glimpse into its weird little world.

I was talking with a friend the other day about a mutual acquaintance and she said something that I've been working over in my mind ever since. In talking about this person, she said, 'he'll be the victim of his own life.' This gave me great pause, and a caused a sharp intake of breath - shit, will I be the victim of my own life? Now by that I didn't mean suicide or cancer from smoking or anything awful and mortal; no, I meant something far for frightening. Development Spinsterdom.

Anyone who has met them knows the type. Late 30s and older; generally very smart and well-traveled; high-ranking positions in whatever org they work for; bourgeois sensibilities for good food and fine home decor; great at a dinner party; lots of photos of nieces and nephews on the fridge; single. The development spinster is a reality, and I hate it. I hate what it says about how gender is still such a determinant, I hate what it says about the female zero sum game between ambition and family, I hate what it says about men (where are the men??), and I hate the most what it says to me when I wake up in a cold sweat at 3 am and realize that I am pushing my very late twenties and will soon have to choose between the family off-ramp or stay on the die-alone highway.

Allow me to elucidate more clearly the situation I, and many other women, find ourselves in. You're 22. You graduate from college and you're an internationally-minded, adventurous type. You somehow get to go abroad - be it Peace Corps or Fulbright or UN, etc. You go. It's incredible. You fall in love with everything about living abroad. The heat, the frustrations, the absurd transportation you find yourself on, the total and complete beauty, the indulgent whiff of neocolonialism of it all. You realize upon living abroad that it's not just for college grads- there's a whole profession that allows you to do this! It's called 'development'! You stay, or you come home. You move to DC. You find yourself a job at an NGO - be it Save the Children or IRC or UNICEF or Grameen. You still go abroad...a lot. You accrue some serious airline miles. You go to grad school. You meet many other people who also do development - mostly women. Education is all women. Agriculture and economic development, more male. Health, pretty mixed. Diplomacy, pretty mixed. You go abroad again, in a higher-paying position. You develop a rich network of friends all over the world. You come to realize this network skews pretty heavily in the direction of smart, single 25-25 year old women. You go to parties. The men are mostly taken. You start doing yoga. You stop checking Facebook because the engagements are too depressing. You do more yoga. You take up baking. Development spinsterdom happens while you're busy down-dogging and baking a non-dairy cake for a dinner party in the heat of some Global South city.

It's like watching my own personal slow trainwreck - of me. It's being on that slow train.

The thing that kills me the most is that so many people, when hearing about this, say, 'well, go home.' Oh, ok! No problem - I'll give up a career I've worked hard to cultivate on the fear that this highway I'm on will not have any off-ramps. Or they say, no problem, just find someone with similar interests. Easier said than done, readers. Not many men are that jazzed at the idea of following a woman around the world as she saves refugees/children/women/entire nations, and not many women who save refugees/children/women/entire nations are that jazzed at following a man about as he does the same - unless the magic of doing it together happens. And those couples do exist, the development ones, but it seems the rare pair that make it work well. And let's be real: when it works, it's fucking great. The expat life is nothing if not sweet. I went sailing last weekend with a US diplomat power couple. They live all over the world, get paid super well, pay no taxes, and do things like go yachting on the weekends. Yes, please.

But it's hard to skipper a yacht alone. It's also hard to give up what you care about. It's also hard for your career to tuck you in at night. It's even harder to skipper a yacht, while doing what you care about, and get tucked in at night as well. So as for me, I don't know. I don't mean to sound so negative - I've been doing a decent job at skippering my own yacht for awhile now, and I think I've found a weird enough, beloved career that I can sort of play it out as I want. When, I think of 'my life', I think of a car pulling up to a house in Cape Cod with so many dogs and kids spilling out. When I look at my life (notably without the quotations, so you know, the real deal), I see a car pulling up to a small but lovely apartment in Ramallah and one woman getting out. I don't know how to reconcile those two stories. But I have hope I can.