Gloria Steinem's relationship with the CIA is sometimes treated as an embarrassing footnote to the life of America's most famous feminist. It deserves more serious attention. Before becoming the public face of American feminism, Steinem headed the Independent Research Service, an organisation covertly financed by the CIA to organise American participation in the World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki in 1962. Steinem knew where the money was coming from and subsequently defended her relationship with the Agency.

The CIA's purpose was hardly mysterious. During the Cold War, it did not restrict itself to supporting conservative organisations. Its own historical account describes an emerging strategy of “promoting the non-Communist left” — intellectuals, students and organisations capable of competing with communist influence from within broadly progressive politics. Steinem's activities were consistent with this wider Cold War strategy.

The episode illustrates a sophisticated form of political influence. Governments do not necessarily have to dictate what activists say. By deciding whom to finance, which organisations and publications to support and which causes to amplify, they can alter the relative strength of competing political currents. Some acquire institutions, professional staffs, research capacity and international platforms that others lack. Influence can operate through patronage and institutional selection without requiring direct control. There are striking parallels in Pakistan from the 1980s onwards.

The women's movement that confronted General Zia-ul-Haq emerged in conditions of political repression. Women challenged discriminatory legislation and an authoritarian state at considerable personal risk. Their struggle intersected with broader progressive politics concerning democracy, class, labour and social justice. The women's demonstration in Lahore in February 1983 against the proposed law of evidence, for example, was political resistance to an authoritarian state, not a development-sector project.

Yet during roughly the same period another institutional model was emerging: the professionally staffed NGO increasingly supported by international development agencies. The funding was substantial and sustained. Canada began supporting the Pakistan NGO Support Program in 1987, seeking to build NGO networks, promote women's participation and strengthen organisations as agents of social, economic and political change. Western support subsequently expanded. In 2010, USAID launched a five-year, $40 million Gender Equity Program intended, among other objectives, to strengthen Pakistani organisations advocating gender equality and women's empowerment. In 2019, Canada announced another C$21 million for programmes promoting women's civil and political rights, including political participation and civic empowerment.

Over several decades, an externally financed infrastructure developed around gender, human rights, governance, political participation, research and advocacy. Foreign donors did not create Pakistani feminism, and accepting foreign money does not make........

© The Friday Times