This document discusses gender and social development, covering several key topics: 1) It provides an overview of the Millennium Development Goals and achievements in promoting gender equality. 2) It examines theoretical perspectives on gender and development such as WID, GAD, and post-colonial feminist approaches. 3) Case studies are presented on achievements and ongoing challenges regarding gender equality in Latin America, Brazil, and other regions. 4) Programs promoting women's empowerment, such as Brazil's Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer, are also analyzed.

1. GENDER AND SOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT
Dr. Carolina Matos
Lecturer in Sociology
Department of Sociology
City University London

2. Key points
• Millennium Development Goals: overview and some achievements
• What does gender equality matter for development?
• Gender and development: theoretical perspectives
• Gender and poverty: challenges and implications
• World Development Report 2012
• Atlas of Gender and Development: a worldwide view
• The case of Latin America and Brazil
• The case of South Asia
• Achievements in gender equality on Latin America and elsewhere
• Seminar questions and conclusion

3. Video: Gender Equality: Now
• Gender Equality: Now (WorldFish)
• (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4viXOGvvu0Y)

4. Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015
 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
 2. Achieve universal primary education
 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
 4. Reduce child mortality
 5. Improve maternal health
 6. Combat HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases
 7. Ensure environmental sustainability
 8. Global partnerships for development
 (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/)

5. Gender and development: advancements and
challenges
• The good news is that many things have changed for the better
throughout the world:
• As the World Bank’s 2012 World Development report underlines, women
have made gains in rights, in education, health and in access to jobs and
livelihoods. In all, 136 countries now have explicit guarantees for the
equality of all citizens and non-discrimination between men and women in
their constitutions.
• Problems and challenges:
• * Likelihood of women dying during childbirth in Sub-Saharan Africa and
parts of South Asia comparable to Northern Europe in the 19th
century;
• * Death of women is higher in low and middle-income countries compared
with higher income nations
• * Women continue to cluster in sectors and occupations characterized as
“female”

6. Why does gender equality matter for development?
• Gender equality is smart economics and is a question of efficiency, of
making use of the resources and talent of a whole range of people
• Early debates:
• * Written in the 18th
century, Mary Wollstonecraft in The Vindication of the
Rights of Women argued that women ought to have an education, claiming
that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children
• * Published in 1869, John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women, who was
in favour of votes for women and argued against the archetype of the ideal
woman as mother, wife and homemaker, a powerful idea in the 19th
century
• Sen (1999) sees development as a process of expanding freedoms
• Underlines a correlation between women’s agency and voice, education and
employment, plus the reduction of infant mortality and political participation

7. What do we mean by gender equality?*
• “Gender refers to the social, behavioural and cultural attributes, expectations
and norms associated with being a woman or man. Gender equality refers to
how these aspects determine how women and men relate to each other...”
• Equality of opportunities versus equality of outcomes:
• “Those who defend framing gender equality as equality of opportunity argue
that it allows one to distinguish between inequalities that arise from
circumstances beyond the control of individuals and those that stem form
differences in preferences and choices…..Those who argue for equality of
outcome argue that differences in preferences and attitudes are largely
“learned”… – they are the result of culture and environment that lead men
and women to internalize social norms and expectations. Persistent
differences in power and status between men and women can become
internalized in…behaviours and preferences that perpetuate the
inequalities.”
• * The World Bank – World Development Report 2012

8. Gender and development: theoretical perspectives*
• The “welfare” approach dominated the first phase of development
practices
• The predominance of this model was challenged, shifting the focus of
development from growth to basic human needs
• Challenges and new perspectives:
• * The Women and Development (WID) approach of the 1970’s became a
starting point for engagements with development as discourse and practice
• I.e. Boserup’s study, Women’s Role in Economic Development
• * The second challenge came from Marxism, and alternative models of state
socialist development
• * In the 1980’s, critics questioned the development paradigm as a narrative
of progress. Sen built on the Basic Needs theory on poverty and the concept
of human entitlements and capabilities (1987)
• * Shirin M. Rai, 2011

9. Gender and development: theoretical perspectives*
• Boserup and other scholars offered prescriptions regarding improving
women’s standards of education and skills so that they might compete more
effectively with men in the labour market
• Sen and others pointed out that Boserup assumed that ‘modernization’ was
both beneficial and inevitable in the specific form it had taken in most
developing countries, ignoring the process of capital accumulation set in
motion during the colonial period.
• Beyond the basic needs theory and the focus on growth and income as
indicators of development:
• Sen’s agency achievements - ‘of participation, empowerment and
community life’. (BN and human capabilities influenced the Human
Development Index of the UNDP).

10. Women’s empowerment (Sen, 1999)
• Agency and well-being - Sen (1999) highlights the shift in
development thinking concerning the well-being of women towards the
notion of women as active agents of change.
• Relationship between women’s voice, agency and empowerment:
• “….. The relative deprivations in the well being of women were……are
clearly important for social justice….But it is also the case that the
limited role of women’s active agency seriously afflicts the lives of all
people….While there is every reason not to slacken the concern about
women’s well-being and ill-being, and to continue to pay attention to
the sufferings….of women, there is also an urgent and basic
necessity…..to take an agent-oriented approach to women’s agenda.”
• Criticisms to the family as an altruistic space
• Child survival and the agency of women: “Countries like India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Iran, those in West Asia often tend to have
higher female mortality of infants and children…”

11. Social development and quality of life

12. Gender and Development
• By the 1980s, there had been a shift from the inclusion of women on
development towards the transformation of gender relations as the major
concern.
• Focuses on the gender domain of labour within the home and in waged work,
access to and control over resources and benefits, material and social position of
women and men in different contexts
• “The Gender and Development (GAD) approach is now the way in which
most scholars and policy planners, as well as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, discuss the relationship between development
processes and women’s inequality, often using “gender literacy” as a key
phrase.” Was also worried about transforming unequal social/gender relations
and to empower women.
• Criticisms: has not been able to influence development planning
• WID and GAD have been accused of ethnocentrism by some. The post-
colonialist feminist critique emerged in the 1990’s, building on both

13. The ‘feminization’ of poverty*
• Both women and colonies have been seen as having served the very foundations of
industrial development of the key Western nations (Acosta-Belem and Bose, 1993).
• What is understood by ‘poverty’?:
• The last two decades have seen a broadening of the criteria used in poverty
definitions.
• Poverty versus quality of life:
• Key concepts within the more holistic approach to poverty include “entitlements”
and “capabilities” (Sen, 1981) and notions of “vulnerability” and “poverty as
process” (Chambers, 1983).
• These perspectives stress how low incomes may not be problematic if people reside
in adequate shelter, have access to services, or possess a healthy base of “assets”.
• These are not only economic, but encompass “human capital”, such as education and
skills, and social capital, such as kin and friendship networks.
• * Chant, 2006 in Jacquette and Summerfield, 93.

14. The "Third World women"

15. Women’s oppression in an age of
globalization
• As Mohanty (1990) argues that, “the homogeneity of women as a group is
produced not on the bases of biological essentials but on sociological
universals. Women are characterised as a singular group on the basis of a
shared oppression. What brings women together is a sociological notion of
the ‘sameness’ of their oppression.”
• Focuses on 5 specific ways in which “women” is used in Western feminist
discourse. Has looked at the work of Fran Hosken (on female genital
mutilation) to writers from the Women in International Development
School, who write about the effect of development policies
• Oppression of women in Africa x oppression of women in Europe:
• “In the texts women are defined as victims of male violence; as victims of
the colonial process (Cutrufelli); victims of the Arab familial system….;
victims of the economic development process…and victims of the Islamic
code”.

16. Women, culture, development: a new paradigm?
(Chua et al, 2000)
• Aims to provide a multi-ethnic and multiracial feminist approach to
development studies, emphasising that an explicit engagement with culture can
shift economistic and overly structural analyses, highlighting experiences,
identities, practices and representations of Third World women.
• “Since the 1970s, feminist analyses have begun to disentangle this triple linkage
and point to different ways of embedding cultural, that is, non-economic
approaches in all discussions of women and Third World development…..This
is best achieved….when ‘culture’ is viewed as the relationship between
production and reproduction in women’s lives, and when women’s agency is
made explicit.
• Women have either appeared as invisible or as “victims”: “…the invisibility
of women in most writings about global and international development has
meant that the labour, cultures and histories of women are rarely taken into
account, or when they have been, women are most often seen as lacking agency,
as merely victims in a system of cruel and unjust inequalities..

17. Atlas of Gender and Development: a worldwide
view*
• There are differences in patterns of gender discrimination worldwide
• There are huge differences in gender equality, reflecting factors such as
culture and religion, the rural-urban divide, the level of development and
the political system
• Discriminatory features include: the high incidence of son preference in
Asia; the prevalence of early marriage in some Asian and African countries;
land ownership, rarely accessible by women, especially in Asia and Africa;
restrictions on freedom of movement and of dress, mostly in the Middle East
and North Africa and domestic violence in Latin America, Europe and
central Asia.
• Progress has been made in some areas, including women’s job opportunities
(i.e. in East Asia and Pacific in the last decades)
• * OECD (2010) “Worldview” in Atlas of Gender Development: How Social
Norms Affect Gender Equality in Non-OECD Countries

18. East Asia and Pacific*
• Gender discrimination in social institutions is low across 17 countries of the
East Asia and the Pacific region
• Exceptions are China, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, of which figure in
the bottom half of the SIGI ranking and display high inequalities in terms of
son preference
• Problems:
• Discrimination in labour markets, education and political participation is an
issue for women in many parts of the region
• Many women still work in the agricultural or informal sector
• Improvements have included girls’ educational attainment and better job
opportunities for women, with newly created jobs in the export
manufacturing sector
• * “Missing women” – 100 million “missing women” in South and East
Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. (* Atlas of Gender and
Development)

19. Europe and Central Asia*
• Women in Europe and Central Asia enjoy high levels of equality
• The former Soviet system having been a driving force for introducing
gender equality into legal frameworks
• Gender discrimination is considered low in the 17 countries, with Croatia,
Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine figuring among the top ten
• There is little discrimination in the area of inheritance, with women and men
sharing equal rights and responsibilities within the family
• Problems?:
• Violence against women, especially domestic violence, is a key issue
• In Moldova, one third of female murder victims are killed by their husbands
• The UK has a high rate of women working part-time, and has one of the
lowest levels of female political representation in Europe, together with
Italy, France and Germany

20. Atlas of Gender and Development – The case of
Latin America and Brazil*: a case study
• Gender discrimination is low across Latin America and the Caribbean,
having one of the smallest range of gender disparity between the 22
countries
• All ranked countries are in the top half of the SIGI
• Region has made significant progress in the last years promoting gender
equality over the past 20 years, especially in education and access to land
• Women however still suffer from bias, mainly due to a deeply rooted
sexism, social stereotypes and a traditional view of the family.
• Inequalities persist between men and women’s wage levels and career
prospects
• Improvements have included legal and institutional frameworks securing
women’s rights, such as laws protecting women’s physical integrity passed
in Paraguay in the 1990s
• * Atlas of Gender and Development

21. Structural inequalities and
advancements
• The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC – UN 2004) underlined that full equity was reached in the
1990’s with access to primary education. These successes have not
necessarily improved women’s position in the labour market or
narrowed the wage gap.
• * Surveys have shown that women’s economic participation increased
significantly in the 1990s, reaching nearly 50%, although it is still low
among poor women.
• * Women still have higher unemployment rates than men,
• * Women’s average labour income is lower than men’s and the gap is
especially pronounced in the case of the most highly qualified.
• * Women are also outperforming men in terms of educational
achievements (i.e. political participation).

22. Achievements on gender equality in Latin
America and Brazil
• Facts and figures from the World Bank (2011) on the gender gap:
• The increase of the professional engagement of women in Latin
American society has translated into higher participation in politics,
with the share of parliamentary seats held by women in the region at
nearly 24%, the highest among all the regions in the world.
• Since the 1980s, nearly 70 million women have joined the labour
market. It has doubled since the 1960s in the region, tripling in Brazil
• Maternal mortality rates have been declining continuously since the
1980s, dropping by 40% in the Caribbean and 70% in the Andean
region. Latin American fertility rates are now as low as those of
industrialized nations.

23. Brazil’s Bolsa Familia*
• For years, the poorest 60% of the population had only 4% of the
wealth, while the richest 20% held 58% of the pie
• Programme has been in place for 10 years, and consists of giving poor
families small cash transfers in return for keeping their children in
school and attending preventive health care visits
• Income inequality fell to a Gini coefficient of 0.527
• It reaches 14 million households, nearly 50 million people. It has
increased school attendance and grade progression. World Bank’s goals
of eradicating poverty by 2030 and boosting prosperity draws from
Brazil’s experience
• Role of social policy in development – “The ultimate goal of any
welfare program is for its success to render it redundant.”

24. Ipea study: violence against women and
measurement of sexism in Brazilian society
• 3.810 people of both sexes were interviewed in cities within the 5
main regions of the country during May-June 2013
• Respondents were asked to comment on 27 sentences as a means of
assessing their levels of tolerance towards violence
• Controversy: It was initially announced that 65% of Brazilians
supported attacks on women who wore revealing clothes. The number
was later corrected to 25%.
• However, the researchers argued that in spite of the mistake, the
results largely confirmed how sexism is still part of Brazilian culture.
• Conclusions: Large sectors of the population still endorse a vision of
the nuclear patriarchal family, where women are still seen as an object
of desire and ownership
• Only in 2009 did rape cease to be a crime against costumes, to be one
against individual liberty and sexuality.

25. Social protection and the reduction of
inequality*
• The 2012 World Development Report underlines four areas:
• * Reducing gender gaps in human capital endowments (addressing excess
female mortality and eliminating pockets of gender disadvantage in
education)
• * Closing earnings and productivity gaps between women and men
• * Shrinking gender differences in voice
• * Limiting the reproduction of gender inequality over time
• Addressing gender gaps in human capital endowments requires fixing the
institutions that deliver public services . Education services need to focus on
improving access for significant population groups that are currently
disadvantaged by poverty, ethnicity, caste, race or geography.
• Policies to improve women’s economic opportunities
• Closing gaps in access to assets and inputs

26. How do you achieve gender equality?
• Improvements in infrastructure services
• Interventions can also focus on reducing the time transactions costs
associated with access to markets
• Strengthening women’s land and ownership rights can help female farmers
and entrepreneurs
• Releasing women’s time, such as paying attention to child care and parental
leave policies
• Other important initiatives include addressing discrimination in labour
markets
• “In wage employment, the underrepresentation of women in certain sectors
or occupations can feed discriminatory beliefs among employers that women
are not suitable workers or good candidates for employment. The importance
of networks in job search and professional promotion can further reinforce
women’s exclusion from certain jobs…..”
• * 2012 World Development Report – The World Bank

27. Case studies: UNDP’s Global Gender and
Economic Policy Management
• (http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourwork/povertyreduc
tion/focus_areas/focus_gender_and_poverty/gepmi/)

28. Seminar questions
• I. Choose one of the questions and discuss it briefly with your
neighbour. Prepare yourself to answer these in the end of the next
session.
• 1. Examine the relationship between gender discrimination and equality.
What are the links and why does equality matter?
• 2. What have been some of the successes that we have in the world
today? How far have we come? Think of examples
• 3. What are the challenges still to gender equality and citizenship?
Think of a particular country to focus on and discuss what it has
achieved in the last decades and what are the roadblocks that exist now
that prevent further gender advancement in the future?

29. Selected bibliography
• Acosta-Belem and Bose, C. (eds.) (1999) Researching Women in Latin America and
the Caribbean, Boulder CP: Westview
• Chant, S. (2006) “Contributions of a Gender Perspective to the Analysis of Poverty”
in Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice, Durham and
London: Duke University
• Mill, J. S (1997) The Subjection of Women, Dover Publications
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (2005, 2000) “Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” in Feminist theory: a reader, Kolmer, Wendy
K. and Kouski, Frances Bart, N York: McGraw Hill, 372-379
• Sen, A. (1999) Development as Reader, Oxford Paperbacks
• Shirin, M. Rai (2011) “The history of international development: concepts and
contexts” in Visvanathan, N et al The Women, Gender and Development Reader,
Routledge, 14-22
• Wollstonecraft, M. (1996) The Vindication of the Rights of Women, Dover
Publications
• World Development Report 2012 – The World Bank