Gender justice

INDORE INSTITUTE OF
LAW
(Affiliated to D.A.V.V. & Bar Council of India)
{{
B.A.LLB. (HONS.)
Project Subject : Gender Justice
Project Topic : Gender Justice Right and Development
Submitted to : Asst. Prof. Taranjeet Kaur
Submitted by : Avinash Rai
Date-:20/05/2016 Semester : VI

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that I Avinash Rai has successfully
completed the project on the title “ GENDER JUSTICE
RIGHT AND DEVELOPMENT ” for the partial
fulfillment of the DAVV norms under the supervision
of Prof. Taranjeet Kaur at Indore Institute Of Law.
Faculty Signature :
Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
It is not possible to prepare a project report without the assistance and
encouragement of other people. This is certainly an exception. On the very outset
of this project I would like to extend our sincere and heartfelt obligation towards
all the personages who have helped me in this endeavor. Without their active
guidance, help, cooperation and encouragement, we would not have made headway
in the project.
I am thankful to Asst. Prof. Taranjeet Kaur .for conscientious guidance and
encouragement to accomplish this assignment. I extend my gratitude to INDORE
INSTITUTE OF LAW for giving me this opportunity. I also acknowledge with a
deep sense of reverence, my gratitude towards my friends and members of my
family who have always supported us morally as well as economically.
Thanking You
Avinash Rai

DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the project titled “Gender Justice Right and
Development ” is my original work.
I take full responsibility for any kind of plagiarism.
Signature Of Student :

INTRODUCTION
The 1990s were a landmark in the international human rights movement. There were many
positive changes in human rights and especially in women is rights. The collection of theoretical
and empirical studies on which this paper is based7 reflects on these gains, and on the
significance given in international policy to issues of rights and democracy in the post-Cold War
era. It engages with some of the most pressing and contested of contemporary issues neoliberal
policies, democracy and multiculturalism and in so doing invites debate on the nature of
liberalism itself in an epoch that has seen its global ascendancy. These issues are addressed here
through two perspectives, which cast contemporary liberalism in a distinctive light. First, by
applying a gender lenis to the analysis of political and policy processes, and by deploying the
insights gained from feminist theory, the collection of papers provides a gendered account of the
ways in which liberal rights, and ideas of democracy and justice have been absorbed into the
political agendas of women is movements and states. Second, the case studies contribute a cross-
cultural dimension to the analysis of modern forms of rule by examining the ways in which
liberalism the dominant value system in the modern world both exists in, and is resisted in,
diverse cultural settings. It is a harsh reality that women have been ill-treated in every society for
ages an India is no exception. The irony lies in fact that in our country where women are
worshipped as shakti, the atrocities are committed against her in all sections of life. She is being
looked down as commodity or as a slave, she is not robbed of her dignity and pride outside her
house but she also faces ill-treatment and other atrocities within the four walls of her house.
They are considered as an object of male sexual enjoyment and reproduction of children. They
are real dalits (downtrodden) of the society. They are discriminated at two levels, firstly they
suffer because of their gender and secondly due to grinding poverty.
Women are deprived of economic resources and are dependent on men for their living. Women
works are often confined to domestic sphere, she had to do all house hold works, which are not
recognized and unpaid. In modern times many women are coming out to work but has to
shoulder the double responsibility; one she has to work where she is employed and secondly she
also has to do all the house hold works, moreover, she is last to be considered and first to be fired
as she is considered to be less productive than her counterpart. Her general status in the family
From the cradle to grave, females are under the clutches of numerous evils acts as
discriminations, oppressions, violence, within the family, at the work places an din the society. I
illustrate my proposal by discussing the injustice involved in the gendered division of labor,
which is one of the most important, yet philosophically disputed, gender issues in the developed
world. Some liberal egalitarians contest that a freely chosen gendered division of labor is
unjust.3 Others believe that in order to know whether particular outcomes are gender just we
need to pay attention to the context of people’s choices, to the processes of preference formation
and to the cumulative effects of particular choices. Some of the latter even doubt that liberal
egalitarianism has the theoretical resources to recognize the gendered nature of the gendered
division of labor.

MEANING
Gender inequities throughout the world are among the most all-pervasive forms of inequality.
Gender equality concerns each and every member of the society and forms the very basis of
a just society and hence, the issue of „gender justice‟ is of enormous magenta and of mammoth
ramification engulfing an all-embracing and illimitable canvas. In the midnight of
August 15, 1947, when India awoke to “life and freedom”, most of its 170 million women
scarcely knew what the „Tryst with Destiny‟ was all about. Evictimps of poverty, ignorance and
oppressive social institutions, they hardly knew their destiny and who controlled it. However, the
stalwarts who led India to its independence were aware that if the new India of their dreams was
to become a reality and not remain only a figment of imagination, it would need social
engineering on a massive scale, in respect of the backward and oppressed sections of the society
and above all, its women. Swami Vivekananda had aptly remarked.
The crucial question that arises for deliberation is : Have the women been able to reap
the benefits provided for them under the Constitution of India? The answer, unfortunately, is not
encouraging. There is still a long way to go to achieve the goals enshrined in the Constitution. In
spite of special constitutional guarantees and other legislations, crimes against women in the
form of child marriages, rape, dowry, practice of Sati, trafficking of the girl child, prostitution,
domestic violence and sexual harassment are on the increase. The review of the disabilities and
constraints on women, which stem from socio-cultural institutions, indicates that the majority of
women are still very far from enjoying the rights and opportunities guaranteed to them by the
Constitution. Justice K. Ramaswamy has also stated Indian women have suffered and are
suffering discrimination in silence. Self sacrifice and self-denial are their nobility and fortitude
and yet they have been subjected to all inequities, indignities, inequality and discrimination.
It is indeed ironical that when Indian mythology places women on a very high pedestal and they
are worshipped and honored Goddess of learning is Saraswati of wealth Laxmi of power Parvati
and of energy or shakti Durga we show no concernfor her honour and her dignity. It is a sorry
reflection mirroring the attitude of indifference of the society which results in a total negation of
the human rights of women in which gender justice nosedives. Despite this regression in the
social and moral values, there is still a ray of hope in the midst of the darkness surrounding the
realization of women's rights. Time and again the Indian judiciary has played a pro-active role by
their positive interpretation of the various.

The Scope of Gender Injustice
It is hard to dispute that women and men are equally entitled to just treatment and that, when
someone suffers injustice because of their sex, they are a victim of gender injustice. But the exact
definition of gender injustice and therefore the scope of gender injustice are contentious matters.
Some forms of gender injustice are easy to identify. In many countries some kinds of violence
against women are particularly high, often women receive lower pay than men for the same work
and in some countries women still do not have legal rights equal to those that men hold. It is not
difficult to see the problem in these cases. Widely endorsed conceptions of liberal egalitarian
justice uphold people’s moral rights to dignified treatment and physical integrity, to equal
compensation for equal work and to equality in front of the law. If those directly responsible for
the above injustices are partly motivated by hatred or prejudice against women, the victims of
violence and discrimination do not just happen to be women – rather, they become victims of
injustice because they are women. Hence, these examples are clear illustrations of gender
injustice. Other cases are a bit more difficult to describe as gender injustice or, indeed, as
injustice full stop. Take, for example, women’s “second shift.” Significant numbers of women
worldwide simultaneously hold full-time jobs and do most of the work that goes into maintaining
households, raising children and caring for disabled or elderly family members. They are clearly
shouldering more than their male partners.19 Even worse, in case of divorce, women who used
to be full-time homemakers and caregivers often find it hard to enter, or reenter, the labor
market, and are much more likely than their former partners to fall into poverty – especially
when they have children.20 But these women seem to owe their situation to voluntary choices:
neither laws, nor physical coercion, nor, strictly speaking, a lack of alternatives, forces them to
take on double shifts (since it is possible to live without a male partner and without dependents,
or to go on strike with respect to all but the most urgent care tasks). Moreover, some women say
they enjoy being able to discharge several social roles successfully. Why are they then subject to
gender injustice? One way to explain why is by assuming that people become double shifters as a
result of adapting their preferences to fit gender norms and to avoid other types of hardship.
Women have traditionally been, and still are, expected to meet the material and psychological
needs of their nearest and dearest; and leading a solitary life, or going on strike, can be
emotionally very costly21 for most people. When alternatives are very undesirable, we often
adapt our preferences to the status quo in order to make our circumstances more bearable. Action
guided by adaptive preferences, while not as morally problematic as coercion, should not count
as entirely voluntary. But it is possible to account for the injustice of the double shift even
without reference to adaptive preferences. A widely acknowledged feature of a just society is
that it allows its members to share the benefits and the burdens of living together fairly. That is,
in a just society nobody has to systematically take on more burdens than others – unless they
freely choose to and are offered proper compensation. Nor is anybody entitled by default to more
benefits than anybody else. The systematic overburdening and denial of benefits that others
enjoy to some individuals because they belong to a particular sex are forms of injustice. Even if
the double shifters in our example were to take on the excessive burdens voluntarily, the injustice

comes from a systematic failure to fully compensate them, or even to offer such compensation.22
Moreover, their male partners systematically enjoy more benefits thanks to the social
cooperation structured by women’s double shift: These men have extra free time, better access to
economic well-being and fewer overall responsibilities. Gender justice requires that nobody
should be expected to carry higher overall burdens, or enjoy overall lesser benefits than others,
without due compensation, simply because of their gender. But think now of cases in which
women and men shoulder the same overall burdens and enjoy the same overall level of benefit
by conforming to gendered lifestyles. A good example is a heterosexual family, intact over time,
and adopting an equal, but gendered, division of labor. This may come in the more extreme
traditional form, with the man as a full-time breadwinner and the woman as a full-time
homemaker. Or it may take a more modern shape, with the man holding a full-time job and
doing some housework and care and the woman working part time while also managing and
doing the main bulk of the housework and care. If both partners work the same amount of time
and enjoy equal benefits, is there any injustice at stake? The answer for which I argue below is
that no injustice is involved in such an arrangement if the society in which this couple lives does
not make their arrangement – or, indeed, any other kind of gendered division of labor – the least
costly23 lifestyle option. In other words, this is not a case of injustice provided the couple in
question would find it no more costly to share paid and unpaid work equally. This claim, I
believe, accounts well for the intuition that all is fine if people voluntarily choose to divide work
as the couple above, but not if they end up with this arrangement due to the pressure of gender
norms coming in the form of individuals’ expectations or constraints of the labor market. The
last example also raises a deeper worry, related to the possible meaning of making a truly free
choice in an environment structured by gender norms. Think, first, of a world where there is no
distinguishable gendered pattern of dividing work in society in general and between family
members in particular: There is as much variation in the paid/unpaid ratio between spouses as
there currently is, say, eye-color variation. In this case, indeed, nothing seems to be wrong with
the particular division of labor of this couple – in fact, it is not a gendered division of labor and
the couple is not a traditional couple. (Because gender plays no role in the way people divide
their labor in this world.) In contrast, imagine that the couple in question lives in a society where
most men hold full-time jobs and most women do the bulk of domestic work. Also, imagine the
spouses in our example like this arrangement because it is adequate to their personalities. The
lingering worry is that the very fact that a gendered arrangement is adequate to the kind of
people they are may be a sign of background injustice. Perhaps they had their personalities
shaped such that gendered lifestyles are the least costly for them. Perhaps the gendering
happened as early as infancy, well before they could decide which influences to allow into their
lives. (This problem is inevitably connected to the question of what is nature and what is nurture
in gender, and I will return to it in section 6.) The principle of gender justice that I propose is
capable of accounting for cases where the injustice lies at the very deep level of determining
agency by shaping individuals.

A Principle of Gender Justice
A gendered division of labor, even when it burdens women and men equally, is unjust if it is set
in a social context that endorses gender norms that make some choices cheaper for women and
other choices cheaper for men. The pressure such norms put on people casts doubt on
individuals’ freedom to choose certain valuable elements from the lifestyle of the other gender.
Sometimes this happens because gender norms make the costs of such elements prohibitive.
Even when the costs are not prohibitive, and individuals are free to choose these elements,
gender norms compromise the equality of women’s and men’s access to what they have reason,
and sometimes choose, to pursue. Before proposing a principle of gender justice, let me explain
how the pressure of gender norms works and what is problematic about it. There are three
different ways in which gender norms can interfere with just outcomes through limiting
individual choice,25 all illustrated by the “glass-ceiling” effect in women’s careers. First, there is
increasing evidence that much gender bias operates at the unconscious, and hence not directly
controllable, level.26 Even individuals who consciously reject gender norms tend to
unconsciously evaluate women and men according to different criteria and to expect members of
each gender to do better in those respects that are traditionally associated with their gender; this
is called implicit bias. Often, implicit bias puts people at a net disadvantage due to their gender.
Moreover, we are ourselves unconsciously sensitive to gender norms and actually perform worse
in environments in which we are expected, on the basis of our gender, to be less successful; this
is called stereotype threat. It is not very difficult to see the unfairness of implicit bias and
stereotype threat and of the ensuing differential treatment of women and men: They invite
unjustified discrimination. Additionally, the imposition of different standards of evaluation of
performance on women and men unjustifiably limits the scope of occupational choice, or at least
the equality of access, for some. So, part of the explanation of the glass-ceiling effect lies at the
level of unconscious discrimination, due to gender norms, in evaluating women. A woman has to
prove herself more than she would had she been a man. In order to be deemed equally good as
men, women must pay the higher cost of superior performance. If one adds the stereotype threat
into the picture, the costs – especially psychological – are even higher, since extra self-
confidence is needed to overcome the drawbacks of being perceived as inferior women are
unable to pay this price, and their freedom of occupational choice is thereby limited; others are
able to pay it but their access to top jobs is unequal to men’s.27 Second, it is costly for
individuals to frustrate gender expectations (for instance, most men would be mortified to appear
in public wearing dresses and makeup). This is particularly true when dealing with the
expectations of people we care about (often gay people find it hardest to come out to their own
families) and even more so when the expectations are internalized (the urge to please others is
more difficult to resist when one’s self-perception as an acceptable individual depends on
pleasing others). I return to the relevance of these distinctions in section 6. Once someone starts
to systematically behave in ways that conform to others’ expectations, it becomes increasingly

hard for that person to resist them, for two reasons: (a) because it is subjectively hard to break
patterns of action that have become part of one’s regular lifestyle, and (b) perhaps more
importantly, because patterned behavior generates legitimate expectations. Being always there to
meet the essential needs of the nearest and dearest, as women are expected to do, or to earn the
living of the family, as men are expected to do, results in duties that cannot be dissolved at short
notice or with little effort. Both habit and acquired duties curtail one’s freedom of choice. A
second part of the explanation of the glass-ceiling effect is in the way that gender norms shape
the family. A woman with dependents who wants to rise to the top of her profession will have to
pay higher material costs than she would had she been a man: She is the main caregiver in her
family and so either needs to work harder overall or else she needs to counter social expectations
and to overcome habit in order to transfer her care duties to somebody else. The cost, for women,
of having a successful career is often prohibitive, and hence they enjoy lesser substantial
freedom of choice in this respect than men do and/or unequal access. Third, external pressure in
the form of gender expectations can generate what economists call “statistical discrimination,”
which is a structural feature of work markets. If most people from your social group conform to
(gender) expectations, others will reasonably predict that you will conform as well, even if in
fact you will not, and will treat you accordingly. So, for example, if enough women put less time
than most men into advancing their careers because they dedicate their time to meeting essential
needs of the nearest and dearest, it may be reasonable for potential employers to expect any
woman who has needy dependents to do so. This is the last part of the explanation of the glass-
ceiling effect, consisting in how gender norms structure women’s relationship to the labor
market. Even if a woman has generally resisted gendered expectations in her family life, and
even if such expectations play no role in evaluating her performance,28 prudent employers will
be reluctant to promote her. Employers have limited knowledge, and it is statistically more likely
that female employees will lead a gendered lifestyle that prevents them from performing as
efficiently as a similarly positioned man. In other words, gender norms also make the costs of
promoting women that employers have to pay higher than those of promoting men. This results
in market mechanisms that limit people’s opportunities, and therefore the scope of individual
choice, on the basis of their gender. When is the limitation of individual choice, resulting from
social norms, unjust? It cannot always be so: Much of the way in which we manage ourselves
and our relationships with others is shaped by social norms and, arguably, this is often for the
better. It is costly to frustrate social norms, but this does not involve any intrinsic injustice; in the
case of general norms everybody’s choice is limited in the same ways and to the same extent.
Moreover, some of the general social norms that curtail individuals’ freedom block access to
things that are not valuable. One problem with the majority of gendered norms is that, in general,
they make it more costly for women than for men to obtain certain valuable things such as
fulfilling careers and self-esteem, and the social recognition that comes with them. Indeed, much
of the feminist work on justice reflects this fact, and an analytically powerful way to understand
gender itself is by reference to its essential connection to social advantage or disadvantage.29
However, this is not all there is to object to gender norms. Nonhierarchical gender norms can

also entail injustice.30 In the example of gendered but equally burdening and rewarding
lifestyles, gendered expectations may well be as costly for men as they are for women: They
make women’s access to fulfilling work very costly and make equally costly men’s access to
fulfilling relationships. Imagine that fulfilling work and fulfilling relationships were equally
valuable and received equal social recognition. Even in this case – highly unrealistic as a
paradigm of the costs associated with gender in real life! – there is a problem with gender norms
They render people’s access to some central components of most, if not all, individuals’ ideas of
a good life excessively, and unequally, costly; they oppress both women and men, although in
different respects. But we cannot choose our sex at trivial costs, nor can we choose how gender
norms are to influence our lives. Hence, in a just society nobody should be burdened by gendered
norms in the pursuit of things as important as access to work and close relationships – even if
everybody was to carry an overall equal burden. One’s gender should not block access to any of
these, or make it either more or less costly than they would be for somebody similar in all
respects31 but gender.

Women's Rights & Gender Justice
Gender inequality makes women in most societies poorer.
Women face more obstacles than men in labor markets, receive lower wages for the same work,
dominate in the informal economy and have less access to credit, land, time, education, and other
productive resources. In most parts of the world poor women do the caring, feeding and cleaning
for the family, treating for the sick and dying – particularly in this era of HIV & AIDS, as well as
earning small amounts of cash through labor-intensive activities. As farmers, workers, heads of
households and community leaders they make productive and essential contributions to their
community and country. As such, poverty eradication strategies must see women as active agents
and not intrinsically vulnerable. For if women are vulnerable it is only because they have been
made vulnerable – legally, economically, culturally, sexually, structurally – for centuries.
The fight against poverty therefore requires equality and justice for women.
Sufficient income is necessary to lowering poverty, but getting communities out of poverty will
depend on women’s leadership, access to education, time, land, healthcare and credit, as well as
women enjoying their reproductive and sexual rights, freedom from violence, and equal rights in
the family and in society.
Feminist Task Force
The Feminist Task Force (FTF) was launched in March 2005 when leaders of international
women’s rights groups gathered in New York City for the annual meetings of the UN
Commission on the Status of Women. The global launch marked the start of a new alliance
aimed at ending poverty among women and putting gender equality at the core of poverty
eradication. Established under the umbrella of the Global Call to Action against Poverty
(GCAP), the Feminist Task Force calls for “Gender Equality to End Poverty.

Gender Justice, Development and Rights
The end of the Cold War signaled a more confident assertion of economic and political
liberalism, but also a greater emphasis on human rights. In the 1990s a wave of UN Summits
sought to place issues of democracy, justice and rights on the development agenda. In the context
of the worldwide process of democratic consolidation that characterized the decade, a
transnational zed women's movement was able to focus its attention on issues of rights and
democracy and sought to take advantage of a favorable policy environment to press for a greater.
Issues of democracy, rights and justice were both revitalized and radicalized in this process, as
social movements used the language of rights to press governments for social reforms. If the
1990s were an extraordinary period for international policy making and standard setting, they
also saw substantial legal and political changes at the national level. The papers commissioned
under this project analyse the implications of these political and legal developments, looking at
how, within contrasting national contexts, women's movements engaged the language of rights
and the practice of democracy with varying degrees of success. While they show how democracy
and legal reform have the potential for achieving greater gender equality.
The commissioned papers explore, from a gender perspective, how issues of rights and
democracy have been taken up in a variety of regional contexts-Chile, Iran, Malaysia, Peru,
Poland and South Africa, among others. The papers fall under three thematic areas.
The first thematic area is broadly concerned with the interface between basic needs, social rights
and the delivery of welfare. It considers how the currently dominant economic agenda is being
articulated with social policies and with the "care economy", and the extent to which this has
enhanced or undermined women's capabilities and social rights in different national settings.
Rights of any kind depend on prior political conditions. Without political and civil rights there is
no guarantee that other rights, even when they are inscribed in laws and constitutions, may be
made effective. The absence of powers to make governments accountable and responsive to their
citizens is one of the greatest obstacles to rights-based agendas, and those rights. The second
thematic area therefore focuses on the political arena and the constraints on women's
representation in political parties and in national legislatures. It also assesses the role, capacity
and strategies of national women's movements during periods of regime change, their success in
cultivating a constituency and in forging alliances with other political forces.
A related, and perhaps the most politically sensitive, issue surrounding rights-based strategies is
whether and how such strategies might find a universal application without denying cultural
specificity. This topic is dealt with under the third thematic area of the project. Multiculturalism
represents an important recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples to their cultural identity.

How different is the present from the past
The issue of the extent to which family relations have changed feeds into the current question
about whether the “crisis in the family” is a crisis, and whether or not it is likely to be mortal.
Recent debates about the family have revealed a split between those who claim that the current
diversity of family forms is nothing new and those who say that there is a breakdown in the
family and the origins of this breakdown are to be located in a collapse of value systems. In the
light of this division, it is necessary to try and specify what, if any, are the changes that
contemporary families are facing that were not faced by families in the past. One of the key
determinants of family forms and household composition is demography. Fertility and mortality
rates are crucial in this regard, and it is clear that current levels of population growth, combined
with improvements in mother and infant mortality rates, are unprecedented. However, there are
gross disparities between countries with regard to population growth and mortality rates—both
of which are closely correlated with, but not straightforwardly determined by, economic
opportunity and welfare provision. Improved life expectancy, particularly in industrialized
countries, has altered household composition, as some individuals now have to care for elderly
parents as well as children. In some industrialized countries, changes in age at marriage and
improved participation in the labor market for women, as well as other factors, have led to a
substantial rise in the number of cohabiting couples and single-person households. However,
these increases, at least for the United Kingdom, are the result of comparisons with data from
earlier decades in the twentieth century. Before the 1800s, significant numbers of individuals
never married and either lived alone or with other single persons. Cohabiting may not have been
common in the past for the middle and upper classes, but it was certainly very common for
working class women and men. It does seem evident that divorce rates are rising, but for many
developing countries there are no good data on divorce rates for earlier periods. Modern statistics
on divorce rates have to be correlated with changing legal and customary definitions of marriage,
in order to be certain that divorce rates are not rising simply because marriage rates are. Current
debates on the family in Europe and the United States stress that divorce has an adverse effect on
children, and many argue that children from “broken homes” are likely to do less well at school
and exhibit antisocial behavior of a variety of sorts. However, divorce is not the sole cause of
broken homes and stepfamilies. In the past in Europe— and at the present time in some
developing countries in spite of improved life expectancy—many families are broken by death.
Significant numbers of those who are widowed do remarry—although widowers remarry much
more quickly than widows—and establish new households. In many parts of the world at the
moment, parental death and orphan hood are on the increase because of armed conflict.
Significant and unprecedented changes have been brought about in family forms and household
composition through migration and urbanization. Labor migration has meant that many
households, particularly in developing countries, are de facto, if not de jure, headed by women
who have to provide for their children and for household reproduction, often in the absence of
regular or substantial remittances. Female labor migration has increased markedly in recent
years, and this is tied to the opportunities for women both in the informal sector of the urban

economy and in wage labor in certain enterprises, including textiles and electronics. Women who
migrate to urban areas often leave one or more of their children with their own mother, thus
creating households without resident wage-earners. In parts of Africa, for example, households
comprising grandparents and grandchildren are on the increase not only because of labor
migration but also because of the ravages of AIDS. The size of urban centers has grown
massively all over the world during this century.5 Increasing numbers of individuals are
dependent on waged employment or informal sector activities for their livelihoods. The very
rapid rate of population growth in the developing nations has meant that fewer people are able to
earn their living on the land, and resources of all kinds are under increasing pressure. Urban
poverty is now a phenomenon on a large scale; whether it is worse than the poverty of nineteenth
century London or nineteenth century Shanghai is not known. What is clear is that immoderation
and deprivation are on the increase, and that in this process women and children—in part
because of their relative disadvantage in labor markets—are especially vulnerable. The large
numbers of children living on the streets in cities all over the world—combined with rising
crime, increasing substance abuse and lack of education—are symbolic for many of the crisis in
the family. The size of populations and the scale of migration and urbanization are without
precedent but, given the effect of the market and wage labor rates on family forms, a further
factor needs consideration. The extent of globalization and the degree of market integration have
provided a political and economic context for the current changes in family/household relations
that is quite unlike anything that has preceded it. Progressive market integration has led to
increasing differentiation both between and within countries. Processes of social and economic
differentiation have intensified along lines of gender, race and class with potentially disastrous
effects for certain groups within populations.

Social Sector Restructuring and Social Rights
If states have a duty to create the material and institutional prerequisites that can best secure the
enjoyment of human rights, as the theoretical reflections by Nussbaum, Elson and Phillips
suggest, then an important arena of positive state action must be that of social provision.
Needless to say, the nature and extent of state responsibility for social provision is highly
variable, even among the bloc of countries that established welfare states in the twentieth
century. Nordic countries and France, for example, retain a commitment to more universalist,
citizenship-based entitlements, while in other parts of continental Europe the welfare state
evolved along more corporatist lines where social entitlements derived principally from
employment (with its in-built gender bias) rather than from universalist principles of citizenship
as in the Nordic model. Moreover, both contrast with the residua list model that is dominant in
the United States, where social entitlements derive from proven need. Thus while the postwar
Western welfare states expressed rather similar objectives, they differ(end) both in terms of
ambition and how they did it (Espying-Andersen 1996:6). Moreover, as these same welfare
states seek to adapt to the pressures of globalization, they do so differently, largely because of
institutional legacies, inherited system characteristics, and the vested interests that these cultivate
(Espying-Andersen 1996:6). A recent ILO research project, for example, found certain regional
clusters and marked heterogeneity in recent welfare policy developments with a striking degree
of country-specific variation (Abler and Standing 2000:112). Beyond the institutionalized
welfare states, in the developing and post-transition countries, there is again considerable
diversity of approach as resource constraints and different political and institutional histories
bear upon the policy environment and influence the impact and application of neoliberal
agendas. The three case studies in part two document how systems of welfare provision are being
restructured in very different regional contexts. While a fuller picture of welfare reform in these
diverse regions would require far more comprehensive comparative empirical research than is
currently available, what is clear even from the existing studies of social policy is the absence of
a uniform response to the pressures of globalization. Ironically the region with a history of
extensive social policiesóCentral and Eastern Europe also appears to be the one where there have
been significant policy reversals, even though the authors of the above-mentioned ILO study find
the notion of asocial dumping, or abandoning welfare commitments in response to globalization,
inadequate when it comes to describing the social policy reforms undertaken in the region. They
argue that while there has been some privatization (for example, education and housing), the
social expenditure ratio increased rather than declined in most countries, and that various taxes
have been raised. A good number of countries in the region appear, therefore, to be moving
toward different Western European welfare state models rather than toward the residua list,
liberal model the outcomes having been largely determined by political battles in which
supranational and national actors were intertwined in various coalitions. These findings do not
take into account how social policy reforms have impacted differently on men and women in the
region. This is, however, a common concern running through the case studies in part two of this
project, which probe the tensions between women is economic and social rights and the ongoing

economic and social policy reforms. In some contexts (for example, Poland and Chile), these are
threatening to undermine the gains that have already been made, while elsewhere (such as India)
they deny even the prospect of the progressive realization of a non-discriminatory system of
decent jobs and public services, and broad-based social security systems. In the case of Poland,
which is considered by the ILO study to be moving toward an institutionalized welfare state
model, women have experienced a severe erosion of their social rights according to Jacqueline
Heine and Stephaney Ported. It is appropriate, therefore, to ask what kind of an institutionalized
welfare state model is being created in Poland if women is entitlements have been so undermined
in the process? Heine and Ported document a large number of legal and policy changes
introduced in Poland since the transition to democracy and the advent of a market economy that
have eroded longstanding social rights that primarily benefited women. These reforms have
taken liberal principles of autonomy, individualism and indeed equality as the justification for
stripping women of what in Poland are called their especial privileges. At the same time severe
cuts in the state budget have dealt a heavy blow to the public provision of infant care and
childcare services, while economic rationalization and privatization have led to the widespread
closure of preschools and subsidized infant care facilities previously provided by enterprises.
Such privileges as paid leave to take care of sick children and entitlements to free or subsidized
childcare services might be argued as necessary mechanisms to ensure a more level playing field
for those who are otherwise disadvantaged. In the emerging model of welfare, comprehensive
access to social rights, particularly to social security, is increasingly dependent on economic
status: only those who are economically active, whether as employees or employers, have full
access to these rights. But in Poland, as in many other former socialist countries, women is
official labor force participation rate has fallen since the collapse of state socialism, while
women are by far the most severely affected by unemployment, particularly long-term
unemployment state of affairs that reflects, among other things, the inadequacy of affordable
infant care and childcare facilities, as well as hiring preferences that favor men. This has
coincided with an increasing gender gap in wages in many sectors; it is estimated that women
earn on average 20 to 30 per cent less than men who have similar educational qualifications and
experience. Hence many social benefits (pensions, health insurance and so on) that used to be
universal rights in socialist regimes are now available only to those enjoying direct access to the
formal labor market, which, if not directly discriminating against women, indirectly places many
at a disadvantage revealing a male bias in social policy (Lewis 1992; Elson and Chagatai 2000).
The 1999 reform of the Polish social security system, which introduced funded pension plans,
has further reinforced the link between the level of income and social citizenship. While
previously access to a state pension depended on a system of mutual aid and was an automatic
right for both men and women, it now depends much more strictly on past earnings and ability to
contribute on a monthly basis to a pension fund. Hence women, who constitute 75 per cent of
those who earn below-average wages and the majority of the unemployed, have had their
entitlements curtailed because of their marginal economic status. Yet Heine and Portentous
account of social and political citizenship in Poland ends on an optimistic note. There is

mounting criticism of the growing inequalities in Poland, including a distinct feminist critique
that underscores the dangers of constructing a masculine democracy. Concrete proposals have
been put forward to give women a genuine voice and presence in democratic fore, such as a
recent legislative bill to establish quotas for women on electoral slates in anticipation of the 2002
legislative elections. The prohibition on termination of pregnancy in 1993 was a reminder of how
deeply gender-biased liberal principles of individualism, autonomy and the separation of the
public and the private realm can be in their application, yet it may have instilled a sense of
urgency about the need to increase women is representation in the political arena. This is all the
more necessary if women are not to lose out in the process of democratic consolidation and
integration into the European Union, as was true in the early phase of the transition process. A
somewhat similar trend toward the privatization of social security has been underway in Chile
for far longer, as Veronica Schild shows. The centre-left coalition known as the Concertos An,
which came to power in Chile in 1990 and has survived two elections since then, was heir to a
military dictatorship (1973ñ1989) that launched the first experiment in neoliberal policies in
Latin America. The regime of General Augusto Pinochet, notorious for the human rights
violations committed in its efforts to crush opposition, set about implementing a programmer of
radical social and economic reform that achieved average growth rates of 7 per cent over a
decade and a half. The Concertos An governments continued to pursue integration into the global
economy through orthodox macroeconomic policies. These have sustained economic growth but
social inequalities have deepened (ECLAC 1998). There has, however, been a distinct shift in
both the language (growth with equity) and the social policy package since the Pinochet years.
Child demonstrates how the social policies of the 1990s represent both a change and a
continuation of the reforms implemented during the Pinochet era. Perhaps the most significant
element of continuity is the retreat from the universalist principles of provision characteristic of
the pre-Pinochet period with the turn to targeted social assistance. Developed under the
dictatorship, these targeted programmers were judged by many commentators as successful in
mitigating the worst effects of the adjustment process (Angell and Graham 1995). Under the
coalition, these programmers were refined and extended and, together with employment
generation schemes, a 36 per cent rise in the minimum wage and buoyant growth, a million
people were taken out of poverty by 1993. However, the high rates of income concentration have
remained constant. Chile is one of the most unequal countries in a region known for its skewed
income distribution (ECLAC 1998). An important lesson from comparative social policy is that
the countries that have more equitable income distribution are not only those with high levels of
social welfare provision accessible to all, but are also those where the professional and middle
classes have a stake in these services that is, they help fund them through taxation and they use
them (Deacon 2000). Targeting and means testing separate the ultra poor from the rest of the
population, thereby deepening social divisions between the needy and those who are expected to
turn to the market for social services (Mackintosh 2000). The Chilean model is also associated
with an extensive privatization of social security. Initiated under the military dictatorship, the
privatization of the public pension system proceeded on the basis of largely unsubstantiated

claims about the superiority of the private system compared to all other policy options.23 The
ConcertaciÛn governments did not undertake any major institutional changes in social policy,
although taxes were raised to increase social expenditure (Huber and Stephens 2000). As in the
case of Poland, a major drawback of the funded pension plan is its in-built gender bias. In a
system where benefits are calculated strictly based on contributions, women tend to be at a
disadvantage as their incomes are generally less than minis and their working lives shorter and
more interrupted. This is indicative of a broader problem, namely that privatized systems have
not favoured redistribution and seem to have exacerbated existing inequalities. There are some
novel features in the Chilean system of social provisioning, in particular the role that NGOs are
playing in the delivery of welfare. However, while there clearly are some positive aspects to this
involvement, Schild argues that it depends upon an unpaid or poorly paid and unregulated
workforce of female extension workers. Ultimately what this means is that claims for more
inefficient social spending, through a partnership of state and civil society, rely on what Elson
refers to as the unspoken and invisible safety net of women is unpaid work (pp. 5ñ6), whether in
their capacity as mothers and wives or as NGO and community workers. Furthermore, there are
questions as to the adequacy of the coverage and the quality of service delivered by this
patchwork of NGOs with their poorly paid staff and army of volunteers. Child is also pessimistic
about the political implications of the new model of social provisioning. Neoliberals in Chile has
been associated with the demobilization of women is long-standing grassroots activities and their
selective institutionalization into NGOs competing for government funds, imbued in a neoliberal
ethos that is focused on individual autonomy, choice and responsibility. There is little in her
account to suggest that the top-down mode of delivering social services has been replaced by an
empowering bottom-up or ìdemand-drivenî process of welfare provisioning over which citizens
and communities exercise meaningful control. On the contrary, project choices and designs, she
argues, are often decided by officials in SERNAM (Service National de la Muter, the ministry
for women) and other government ministries, with standardized programmers that are not
tailored to the wishes or needs of the communities criticisms that are frequently leveled against
government provision.

Democratization and the Politics of Gender
The central instrument for the protection of rights has been, and must remain, the state. As
women is movements turned their attention in the 1990s to rights issues, they were drawn into an
engagement with the state as rights activists and as participants in government. Whether states
advance or curtail women is rights cannot be explained in terms of any single variable, although
democratic institutions and procedures are generally assumed to allow greater voice and presence
to social forces pressing for reform. Yet, while many countries now identify themselves as
democracies, and have established institutions of representative government, the degree to which
democracy has been consolidated and institutionalized is highly variable. As the case studies in
this section bear out, in some countries even a minimal democracy has yet to be institutionalized.
Even where elections have been held, political parties often remain weakly institutionalized, all
too often serving as instruments to secure the rule of kleptocratic oligarchies and discriminatory
ethnic groups. In much of the world, the institutions for popular participation are weakly
embedded in society, civil rights are not protected, and political parties lack strongly articulated
social programmers. It is in the context of such states, some semi authoritarian or soft
dictatorships, others where institutions of liberal representative democracy are grafted onto
highly fragmented societies, that the three case studies are positioned.25 Yet in these diverse
contexts women have in recent years become a visible political force both as individuals and as a
social group, even under conditions that deny them full or indeed at times any political voice and
representation. Where the latter occurs, however, there is a danger that as womenís movements
are co-opted by states, they lose their ability to represent their constituency and to advance
programmers of radical reform. Parvin Paidar analyzes the efforts by women is movements in
Iran to contest prevailing interpretations of women is rights by the repressive Islamist regime that
has been in power for more than two decades. In particular she considers the implications for
women of the ways in which the nascent reform movement has sought to democratize political
life by strengthening and working through some of the country is existing formal democratic
institutions. The revolutionary Islamist forces, which took power through a popular uprising that
toppled the ruling monarchy in 1979, very quickly developed into an authoritarian state,
annihilating or driving its diverse opponents into exile. In its first decade the most politically and
socially repressive period in twentieth-century Iran the state took upon itself the task of
transforming social and gender relations in conformity with its re-interpreted doctrine of Shiía
Islam.
The erosion of popular support for the hard-line state was an important factor behind the
emergence of the reform movement in 1997. Authoritarianism, economic stagnation and rising
levels of unemployment, corruption and misappropriation of funds, and the states zealous
attempts to regulate the private and social lives of citizens have combined to erode the support
the Islamic Republic initially enjoyed. This has created a crisis of legitimacy for the hard-liners
who still control the key apparatuses of the state (the judiciary and the theocratic establishment).
The 1980 Constitution of the Islamic Republic combines Islamic theocracy with some forms of

democratic accountability: the political stalemate of recent years is in some ways a reflection of
the tensions between these two irreconcilable principles that the Constitution has unsuccessfully
tried to square. While the embryonic reformist movement had to confront formidable obstacles
placed in its way by hard-liners in the regime who used (and abused) all of their constitutional
powers to undermine it, it managed to some degree, to change the terms of the debate. Paidar
argues that despite the fragility of this rather broad coalition, the reform movement had the
potential to initiate positive political change. This was largely because of the strength of the
movement, which was not simply manifest in electoral terms. Across the country, the athirst for
citizenship and participation (Najmabadi 2000) became apparent on an unprecedented scale as a
widespread and diffuse grassroots movement developed, involving significant participation of
women. This diffuseness made it difficult for any particular current to monopolize or to
undermine it.

CONCLUSION
In much of the world, the institutions for popular participation are weakly embedded in society,
civil rights are not protected, and political parties lack strongly articulated social programmers. It
is in the context of such states, some semi authoritarian or soft dictatorships, others where
institutions of liberal representative democracy are grafted onto highly fragmented societies, that
the three case studies are positioned.25 Yet in these diverse contexts women have in recent years
become a visible political force both as individuals and as a social group, even under conditions
that deny them full or indeed at times any political voice and representation. Where the latter
occurs, however, there is a danger that as womenís movements are co-opted by states, they lose
their ability to represent their constituency and to advance programmers of radical reform. Parvin
Paidar analyzes the efforts by women is movements in Iran to contest prevailing interpretations
of women is rights by the repressive Islamist regime that has been in power for more than two
decades. In particular she considers the implications for women of the ways in which the nascent
reform movement has sought to democratize political life by strengthening and working through
some of the country is existing formal democratic institutions. The revolutionary Islamist forces,
which took power through a popular uprising that toppled the ruling monarchy in 1979, very
quickly developed into an authoritarian state, annihilating or driving its diverse opponents into
exile. In its first decade the most politically and socially repressive period in twentieth-century
Iran the state took upon itself the task of transforming social and gender relations in conformity
with its re-interpreted doctrine of Shiía Islam.

Gender justice

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