5. Development Processes
Criticized
Economists, governments and
international organizations (IOs)
defined development primarily in
terms of traditional measures, such
as increased Gross National
Product (GNP) and the degree of
industrialization.
6. “Women in Development”
The convergence of
Women’s issues and
Development problems
led to the growth of the
“Women in Development”
(WID) field of study and policy
advocacy.
7. WID advocates sought change:
WID advocates sought to change
development practices by pushing
governments and international
organizations to:
include women in development projects
respond to specific concerns and problems
of women,
13. Critique and Limits
of WID
The mobilization of women as
scholars, policy-makers, activists
and practitioners of development
led to criticisms of the WID
policies of the 1970s.
The limits of the WID approach
were emphasized.
14. Emergence of GAD Approaches
Criticism of the limits of WID
led to new ways of thinking
about development in the 1980s
and 1990s. The theories and
policies that emerged from this
rethinking became known as
“Gender and Development”
(GAD).
15. Empowerment
“Empowerment” is a relatively
new term for the long-standing
recognition that women and
disadvantaged men must be
organized to make a difference
in the structures of power that
confine them to secondary
status.
WID/GAD - Women In Development/Gender and Development - forms an inseparable bond with Health and SHD - Sustainable Human Development.
The learning objectives for this course include:
a history of the development of WID/GAD and a discussion of the connection between gender and development.
a discussion of health issues that are pertinent to the continuing evolution of WID/GAD
and a discussion of a strategy for obtaining sustainable human development.
This lecture features
Gender and Development
The other two lectures on the topic are
Sustainable Human Development (SHD)
Interactions between GAD, SHD and women’s health
The learning objectives of the section on gender and development are to:
* Provide an historical overview of the concern for the role of gender in development processes.
* Summarize different positions regarding the impact of development on gender relations
* Show the link between the debate about gender and development, the growth of non-governmental organiztions (NGOs), government policies, and international organizations.
What is the connection between gender and development?
In the 1960s and 1970s, two international concerns emerged:
1. Women’s movements for equal rights
2. Criticisms of development processes.
Women’s organizations, especially in North America and western Europe, mobilized to demand:
equal legal rights
expanded access to jobs and other economic resources
a voice in government policies
shared responsibility by men for household work and child care
Even when the GNP went up, millions of people remained poor, and gaps between urban and rural people and men and women often widened. Also, although GNP measures the sum of all goods and services produced by a country’s nationals, the statistics used often do not reflect productive activities that are especially important for women, who may work, for example, primarily in subsistence agriculture.
WID advocates argued that:
the benefits of development had not reached women;
in some economic sectors women’s position was undermined;
women should be integrated into the design and implementation of development programs through legal and administrative changes.
The momentum to integrate women into development programs emerged from the priorities and interests of two different groups of women in the 1970s:
. The UN Commission of the Status of Women http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/
. And national women’s movements, particularly in the US.
Some of the specific concerns addressed were
Nutrition
Health
Education
Access to resources, such as land and credit
These needs are now referred to as practical needs…the basics for survival.
The First U.N. Decade did not emphasize gender roles, but in 1962 the General Assembly directed the Commission on the Status of Women to report on the role of women in the development plans of member governments
The Second U.N. Decade called for incorporation of women into the total development effort.
In 1963, the Swedish parliament proposed the use of foreign aid funds to improve women’s access to training and education.
Sweden later proposed to the U.N. a long-range program for the advancement of women.
In 1973, U.S. women’s organizations pressured the U.S. State Department to address women’s issues.
Congressional legislation authorizing funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) included an amendment requiring U.S. foreign aid programs to give particular attention to integrating women into the national economies of foreign countries.
The concept of women in development and the goal of improving development efforts by incorporating women quickly won acceptance and was incorporated into policy statements by U.N. agencies and national governments
The United Nations International Women’s Year (IWY) in 1975 and the ensuing Decade legitimized women’s concerns among government leaders and brought together women from many countries and cultures. Three international conferences marked the Decade.
1975 - Mexico City
1980 - Copenhagen
1985 - Nairobi
Early in the Decade the equity principle had been made even more persuasive by its linkage with the utility principle. Women had been a missing link in development, now they were being found; they could actually be a valuable resource, indeed were half, or more, of a nation’s human resources, no longer to be wasted.…
The prospect of steering women from the margin to the mainstream was as exciting to some would-be developers as to female recipients of such policies and programmes. “Women in Development” became the Decade’s overnight catchphrase, a seductive one, which for a time, at least, could evade the question of what kind of development women were to be drawn into.
Quoted by Irene Tinger,Persistent InequalitiesOxford, 1990, p. 31.
The emphasis on incorporating women into development processes succeeded in:
1. focusing attention on the shortcomings of development policies practiced in the 1950s and 1960s;
2. expanding the documentation, including sex disaggregated data, on women’s roles in economic and social systems;
3. establishing goals and plans for improving women’s status around the globe;4. increasing the representation of women in official government positions;5. changing many inequitable laws that discriminated against women;6. mobilizing women at the grassroots level around the world.
Limits of WID
1. Accepted traditional liberal economic theory about the nature of development;
2. Assumed women were not already integrated into economic production;
3. Influenced by American feminism: accepted existing social and political structures;
4. Assumed women all had common problems and interests;
5. De-emphasized the family and community contexts affecting women’s activities;6. Often resulted in separate projects for women apart from broad development programs;7. Non-confrontational, thus failed to transform the fundamental status of women.
GAD approaches argued that:
1. Development processes in poor countries or less-developed countries (LDCs) were deeply influenced by the inequitable structures of the international economic system.
2. Women have always been integrated into development processes, but those processes essentially flawed.
3. Men, as well as women, are hurt by development programs that do not alter repressive class, ethnic, and racial structures.
4. One cannot assume women’s solidarity across class and racial lines, but patriarchal values and institutions may oppress women in every social-economic category.
5. Development policies should not isolate women’s productive or reproductive roles: they are intertwined in women’s lives.
6. Women are agents of change and must organize politically.
7. Successful development does not “target” women, it empowers them.
Empowerment may be defined as:
A process through which women and men in disadvantaged positions increase their access to knowledge, resources, decision-making power, and raise their awareness of participation in their communities, in order to reach a level of control over their own environment.
Source: World Food Programme,
Gender Glossary, n.d. (1998?)
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have helped to organize women at the local and regional level. By the 1990s, NGOs seeking to empower women from the local to the international level had organized in nearly every country of the world. Their importance has been acknowledged in international NGO forums that have paralleled the United Nations conferences on women.
Most governments have established women’s commissions or bureaus to help formulate policies to improve the legal, political, economic and social status of women. The success of these policies may be seen in the Gender Empowerment Measure.
This is an index developed by the U.N. Development Programme. It quantitatively measures the empowerment of women on a country-by-country basis, by using these three indicators:
During the 1990s, international organizations responded to pressure from NGOs and some governments to take new initiatives for improving the status of women. Global conferences contributed to a more powerful recognition of the crucial role of women in sustainable development, environmental issues, and human rights.
The Rio de Janeiro conference on the environment and development (1992) acknowledged women’s roles in protecting the environment, and the special impact of environmental degradation on women.
The Vienna conference on human rights (1993) included “women’s rights as human rights”.
The Cairo conference on population and development (1994) addressed women’s needs for access to health, maternal care, and family planning facilities.
The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) built on earlier international conferences, national government efforts, and lobbying by NGOs to develop gender-sensitive strategies in its Platform for Action.
In June, 2000, the United Nations will host a meeting in New York City to reaffirm the commitments made in Platform for Action and the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women. In preparation, citizen groups have been meeting around the world.
