NGO EXPANSION AND THE FIGHT TO REACH THE POOR - GENDER IMPLICATIONS OF NGO SCALING-UP IN BANGLADESH

The gender implications of a growing trend of NGO competition and encroachment in rural Bangladesh are discussedusing case studies of the Grameen Bank and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). The examples demonstrate how these organizations' quests to rapidly expand and scale-up their programmes, particularly women's credit schemes, can in fact, have detrimental effects at the field level for small local NGOs. Their target-driven preoccupation with growth, and the differing pressures of the expansion process, appear to be diverting organizational priorities away from development of 'others' (women), to development of 'selves' (the organization).