Coco Tait (she/her) is the Assistant Director of Events and Programs at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), where she oversees public programming and strategic communications. A recipient of the Provost’s Distinguished Staff Award, she brings over five years of experience in international education, grant administration, and event management. Prior to joining Georgetown, Coco held multiple roles at the Middle East Institute, where she managed State Department–funded programs and founded the Institute’s International Youth Summit. She holds an M.S. in International Relations and Politics from Carnegie Mellon University.
The Politics of “Helping”: Women and Queerness in SWANA
Institutions and organizations across North America and Europe often center their work on women and gender in the “Global South” through the lens of development and empowerment. Stories of women, especially from the SWANA region (South West Asia and North Africa), are frequently used to tug at the heartstrings of wealthy donors, reinforcing a savior narrative that casts the Global North as benevolent and enlightened. Careers are built around fixing problems that are often rooted in the political, economic, and military actions of those same countries. This project asks: How do humanitarian and development organizations capitalize on crisis narratives in SWANA, particularly those involving women, and how does that affect the way programs are funded, framed, and implemented? What stories get uplifted, and which ones are silenced? My argument is that these organizations often use gendered stories, especially those involving Arab and ethnic minority women, to secure funding and visibility while rarely creating long-term, community-led solutions. I view this sector through the lens of postcolonial feminist thinkers like Chandra Mohanty and Falguni Sheth, along with Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism. Their work helps frame how Western ideologies continue to position SWANA women as either victims or symbols, rarely as full agents. I am especially interested in how gendered narratives are used to justify intervention while maintaining deeply unequal power dynamics.