GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT

UGANDA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY – MUKONO
FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
COURSE: MA DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

COURSE UNIT: GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT
NATAMBA SHADRACK

Question: Explain the evolvement of the theories of Gender and Development from the 1970s to 2000.


'Gender' refers to the socially constructed roles of and relations between men and women, while 'Sex' refers to biological characteristics which define humans as female or male. These biological characteristics are not mutually exclusive however, as there are individuals who possess both whereas development according to Mubonjuje (1977 & 1980) is an intense concentration of activities requiring high degree of synchronization and sequential/ordering over the period of time during which social, economic fabric of the societies are transformed and the spatial structures recognised to effect the better change for majority of the people.
In this essay, I expect to see evidence that you understand how WID first entered into the discourse of development and how the explanations (theories) about women and their disadvantages worldwide and the solutions to these advantages have changed over time. Who are the people doing the explaining, which global trends have influenced the development thinking in general and GAD in particular?
During the past few years, the term "women in development" has become common currency both inside and outside academic settings. But while "women in development" or "WID", is understood to mean the integration of women into global processes of economic, political and social growth and change, there often is confusion about the meaning of two more recent acronyms, "WAD" and "GAD".

The student begins by examining the meanings and assumptions embedded in "WID," "WAD" and "GAD" and then looks at the extent to which differing views of the relationship between gender and development have influenced research, policymaking and international agency thinking since the mid- 1960s up todate. It is suggested that each term has been associated with a varying set of assumptions and has led to the formulation of different strategies for the participation of women in development strategies.

The term "women in development" came into use in the early 1970s, after the publication of Ester Boserup's Women's Role in Economic Development (1970). Boserup was the first to systematically define on a global level the sexual division of administrative changes to ensure that women would be better integrated into economic systems (Jaquette 1982).
They placed primary emphasis on egalitarianism/social equaliity and on the development of strategies and action programs aimed at minimizing the disadvantages of women in the productive sector and ending discrimination against them.

The WID perspective was closely linked with the modernization paradigm which dominated mainstream thinking on international development during the 1960s and into the 1970s. In the 1950s and 160s, conventional wisdom decreed that "modernization," which was usually equated with industrialization, would improve the standards of living of the developing countries.

It was argued that through massive expansion of education systems, stocks of well-trained workers and managers would emerge; this in turn would enable the evolution of static, essentially agrarian societies into industrialized and modernized ones. With the growth of the economies of these countries, the benefits of modernization, i.e. better living conditions, wages, education, adequate health services, etc. would "trickle down" to all segments of the society.

Women rarely, if ever, were considered as a separate unit of analysis in the modernization literature of this period. It was assumed that the norm of the male experience was generalizable to females and that all would benefit equally as societies increasingly became modernized.
By the 1970s, this view of modernization was being questioned by many researchers. It was argued that the relative position of women had, in fact, improved very little over the past two decades.

There was even evidence which suggested that the position of some women had declined (Boserup, 1970; Tinker and Bramson, 1976; Boulding, 1976; Kelly and Elliot, 1982). For example, in general, women were less likely to benefit from the course of educational expansion (Muchena 1982). Enrolment figures, especially at the tertiary level, tended to be lower for females.

In the formal industrial sector, women often were relegated to the lowest-paying, most monotonous and sometimes health-impairing jobs, a condition due in part to their low levels of education, but also due to the role assigned to them as supplementary rattier than principal wage earners (Lim 1981)
.
Under the rubric of WID, the position of women in various sectors of the economy for the first time was studied separate from that of men. The recognition that women's experience of development and of societal change differed from that of men and it became justifiable for research to focus specifically on women's experiences and perceptions.

Nonetheless the WID approach was based on several assumptions which were at odds with critical trends in social sciences research in the 1970s.

First, statistics were beginning to show that women had fared less well from development efforts of the 1960s therefore a new strategy was called for. By the mid-170s, donor agencies were beginning to implement intervention programs to adjust the imbalance of development "pay-off." For the most part, the solutions adopted were within the realm of the "technological fix" with attention given to the transfer of technology, the provision of extension services and credit facilities or the development of so-called appropriate technologies which would lighten women's workloads (Stamp 1989 forthcoming).

Second, and related to the point above, the WID approach began from an acceptance of existing social structures. Rather than examine why women had fared less well from development strategies during the past decade, the WID approach focused only on how women could better be integrated into ongoing development initiatives.

This non-confrontational approach avoided questioning the sources and nature of women's subordination and oppression and focused instead on advocacy for more equal participation in education, employment and other spheres of society (Mbilinyi 1984a).

Moreover, because the WID approach was rooted in modernization theory, it did not recognize the contribution of more radical or critical perspectives such as dependency theory or marxist analyses.

The WID approach also tended to be ahistorical and overlooked the impact and influence of class, race and culture ( Mbilinyi 1984b; Nijeholt 1987).

It focused on women and gender as a unit of analysis without recognizing the important divisions that exist among women and the frequent exploitation that occurs in most societies of poor women by richer ones.


Third, the wiD approach tended to focus exclusively on the productive aspects of women's work, ignoring or minimizing the reproductive side of women's lives.

Thus, WID projects typically have been income-generating activities where women are taught a particular skill or craft and sometimes are organized into marketing cooperatives. Frequently a welfare outlook is added to projects and women are taught aspects of hygiene, literacy or child care at the same time (Huvinic 1986).

Project planners and implementers often are well-intentioned volunteers with little or no previous experience. It is rare for feasibility studies to be undertaken in advance to ensure that a viable for a skill or product that will be produced and it is equally rare for project planners to take serious note of the extent to which women already are overburdened with tasks and responsibilities.

The common assumption is that access to income will be a sufficiently powerful stimulant to encourage women somehow to juggle their time in such a way as to participate in yet another activity.

When women's income-generating projects do prove to be successful and become significant sources of revenue, they often are appropriated by men.

The WID/liberal feminist approach has offered little defense against this reality because it does not challenge the basic social relations of gender.

It is based on the assumption that gender relations will change of themselves aC women become full economic partners in development.

Conclusion
Development planners have tended to impose western biases and assumptions on the south and Africa in particular and the tasks performed by women in the household, including those of social reproduction, are assigned no economic value.
The labour invested in family maintenance, including childbearing and rearing, housework, care of the ill and elderly, etc. has been considered to belong to the "private" domain and outside the purview of development projects aimed at enhancing income generating activities.

Gender and Development
The gender and development approach has emerged in the 1980s as an alternative to the earlier WID focus. It finds its theoretical roots in socialist feminism and has bridged the gap left by the modernization theorists, linking the relations of production to the relations of reproduction and taking into account all aspects of women's lives (Jaquette 1982).

Socialist feminists have identified the social construction of production and reproduction as the basis of women's oppression and have focused attention on the social relations of gender, questioning the validity of roles which have been ascribed to both women and men in different societies.

Kate Young (1987 ) has identified some of the key aspects of the GAD approach. Perhaps most significantly, the GAD approach starts from a holistic perspective, looking at "the totality of social organization, economic and political life in order to understand the shaping of particular aspects of society" (Young 1987: 2).

GAD is not concerned with women per se but with the social construction of gender and the assignment of specific roles, responsibilities and expectations to women and to men.

In contrast to the emphasis on exclusively female solidarity which is highly prized by radical feminists, the GAD approach welcomes the potential contributions of men who share a concern for issues of equity and social justice (Ben and crown 1987).

The GAD approach dues not focus singularly on productive or reproductive aspects of women's (and men's) lives to the exclusion of the other.

It analyses the nature of women's contribution within the context of work done both inside and outside the household, including non-commodity production, and rejects the public/private dichotomy which commonly has been used as a mechanism to undervalue family and household maintenance work performed by women.

Both the socialist/feminist and GAD approaches give special attention to the oppression of women in the family and enter the so-called "private sphere" to analyse the assumptions upon which conjugal relationships are based.

GAD also puts greater emphasis on the participation of the state in promoting women's emancipation, seeing it as the duty of the state to provide some of the social services which women in many countries have provided on a private and individual ba5i5r
The OAL approach sees women as, agents of change rattier than as passive recipients of development and it stresses the heed for women to organize themselves for more effective political voice.

It recognizes the importance of both class solidarities and class distinctions but it argues that the ideology of patriarchy operates within and across classes to oppress women.

Consequently, socialist feminists and researchers working within the GAD perspective are exploring both the connections among and the contradictions of gender, class, race and development (Maguire 1984).

A key focus of research being done front a GAD perspective is on the strengthening of women's legal rights, including the reform of inheritance and land laws. Research also is examining the confusions created by the co-existance of customary and statutory legal systems in many countries and the tendency for these to have been manipulated by men to the disadvantage of women.

A GAD perspective leads not only to the design of intervention and affirmative action strategies which will ensure that women are better integrated into ongoing development efforts.

It leads, inevitably, to a fundamental reexamination of social structures and institutions and, ultimately, to the loss of power of entrenched elites, which inevitably will affect some women as well as men.

Not surprisingly, a fully articulated GAD perspective is less often found in the projects and activities of international development agencies although there are some examples of partial GAD approaches.

However, it should be emphasized that just as the WID/WAD/GAD approaches are not entirely conceptually distinct it often is not possible to place a development project squarely within a single theoretical framework.

It is clear that the general notion of focussing on women separate from men in at least some projects has been accepted by a considerable number of Third World governments, national and international development agencies, and in many non-governmental organizations.

However, to some extent this is a reflection of political expediency and should not be interpreted as a sign of fundamental commitment to the liberation of women.

As will be discussed below, while the rhetoric of "integrating women into development" has been accepted by many institutions, the actual process of ensuring equity for women even within those same institutions is still far from complete.

There is no question that the majority of the projects for women which have emerged during the past two decades find their roots in the WID perspective.

In a 1984 analysis of the publications of various international development agencies which were beginning to focus of women, Patricia Maguire (1984: 13).
noted that they tended to identify the following constraints as being detrimental to the status of women in Third world societies:
- traditions, attitudes and prejudices against women's participation;
- legal barriers;
- limited access to and use of formal education, resulting in high female illiteracy;
- time-consuming nature of women's "chores";
- lacy of access to land, credit, modern agricultural equipment, techniques and extension service;
- health burden of frequent pregnancies and malnourishment;

An examination of this list confirms the tendency of mainstream development agencies to identify problems within the context of existing socioeconomic structures, that is within the WID/WAD lives, and as such was, are improvement on earlier strategies, it did not challenge existing patterns of inequality.

It did not focus on issues of redistribution of land or wealth within societies nor did it question the sexual divisor of labour within households.

As such it can be seen as another example of modernization theory-driven development.
An analysis of the programs of many multilateral and bilateral development agencies reveals a similar pattern.

Various strategies for the integration of women into on-going programs, and affirmative action to ensure greater representation of women in agency staff positions can be identified. For example, the
Development Assistance committee of the OECD has emphasized the necessity for member countries to establish formal WID strategies, to put aside special funds for women-related activities, to fund research on WID, and to advocate the employment of women in multilateral organizations and in development banks (Rathgeber 1988).

Bilateral agencies like the swedi5h SIDA, the Danish DANIDA, the British ODA and the Canadian efbA all have adopted strategies to ensure that women in developing countries benefit directly from their programs and, to varying degrees, to try to ensure that female staff are represented in positions of power within their own organizations.

However, few strategies have been developed to question or attempt to influence in a profound fashion the social relations of gender in any given society.

There have been few in-depth analyses of the actual processes of integration of women and Wofien-related concerns into the programs of donor agencies.

However, a study of US AID's WID office by Kathleen Staudt revealed that these objectives had been pursued with varying degrees of interest and commitment.

Staudt's (1982) description of the establishment of the WID office in 1974 is instructive t She notes that while each AID policy paper must have a "women impact" statement, such statements are usually no more than a paragraph and are often recycled from one document to another.

In the early 1980s, the WID office staff consisted of only five professionals, all female, in an agency that had overwhelmingly male professional and female clerical staff. Sta udt notes that "Agency personnel frequently complain that WID

Is a 'womem.n1s lib' issue being used to expert American ideas, rather than an issue grounded in development and/or equity justification" (1982: 270).

The WID office had a weak power base because of its small staff allocation, a small budget which necessitated dependency on the budgets of other bureaus within the Agency, few allies in the technical areas and a limited mandate which enabled the office to raise concerns but not to veto projects.

Moreover, Staudt notes that despite efforts to increase the number of women benefitting from AID grants, in the early 1980s the number of AID-supported international trainees who were women was 13 percent, up 4 percent from 1974 but equal to what the number had been in the early 1960s.

Staudt demonstrates quite clearly that there may exist a considerable gap between the articulation of official policy on the part of agencies and the development of support within the agencies for the implementation of such policies.

Thus the existence of official WID policies cannot be judged as an accurate indicator of commitment to gender issues within an agency.

Agencies have taken different approaches with respect to the integration of gender issues into their programs (Rathgeber 1988).

Some, such as SIDA (the Swedish International Development Authority) began to finance projects aimed specifically at women as early as the 19605.

Others, such as the British ODA (overseas
Development Administration), steadfastly refused to give special support to projects for women until the second half of the 1980Ef claiming that to do so would be to impose the cultural biases of the North on the South.

Private foundations engaged in the support of research in developing countries, such as Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie all have chosen not to establish separate women's offices or programs, arguing that to do so would bt to p?t rpetu;-att tht notion that ttworften'811 issues are somehow separate from those of men.

Despite the fact that they have not established WID offices however, each of the three foundations has supported many women-related projects within the context of existing program structures.

Ford Foundation, moreover, has required all institutions requesting support to provide evidence that women participate in their projects.

The World Bank has had an Advisor on Women in Development since the early 1970s, but in the mid-80s this office was expanded and given a higher profile within the Bank. A major fucu8 of the expanded office during the lath 1980s haLm been on "Safe motherhood" under the argument that: "Improving maternal health helps involve women more effectively in development" (Herz and Measham 1987).

The World Health Organitation similarly has made this a major focus. It can be argued that such initiatives, while of obvious and crucial importance, are based within a traditional view of women's roles. In 1987, AID carried out an evaluation of its experience with Women in Development between 1973-1985 (AID 1987).

The Agency identified three different kinds of projects:
i) integrated projects which require gender-sensitive designs to meet their objectives;

ii) women-only projects which usually are small in scope and labour-intensive for AID staff; and

iii) women's components in larger projects. It was found that those projects which had included a careful analysis of the sexual division of labour and responsibilities and were designed in such a way aC to realistically reflect the contexts within which men and women worked, ultimately were more efficient In meeting developmental goals.

The evaluation also revealed that income-generating projects for women rarely were successful in improving the economic positions of participants. Moreover, job training projects for women also usually failed because women lacked capital to establish small businesses where they could utilize their new skills.

Perhaps most disturbingly, however, the evaluation revealed that even In the period 1980-84, by which time the WID office had been established for several years, 40 perc=ent of the projects evaluated, made no mention at all of women.

In the earlier period, 1972-77, 64 percent of the projoctb analysed had trade no mention of women. The universe of projects analysed was only 98, therefore the numbers are too small for definitive conclusions, however they do reveal a trend which is in keeping with the attitudes reported by 5taudt (1982).

Towards the More Effective implementation of GAD
As already noted, it is difficult to find examples of development projects which have been designed from a GAD perspective.

one might speculate that such projects would be designed to empower women, to give them an equal voice by recognizing the full spectrum of their knowledge, experience and activities, including both productive and reproductive labour.

Projects designed from a GAD perspective would question traditional views of gender roles and responsibilities and point towards a more equitable definition of the very concept of "development" and of the contributions made by women and by men to the attainment of societal goals.

The Win Unit of the international Development Research Centre (IDRG) currently is supporting a number of research projects in Africa which are making a concerted attempt to view women as actors in development rather than as passive recipients of change. For example, projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria are looking at women's access to land within customary and statutory 22 law, and a5beb5ing the extent to which Wome.n'b productivity hab been negatively effected by legal systems which favour male ownership and indeed sometimes even fail to recognize femaleownership.

The research begins from the recognition that women are primary producers of food and that denial of land rights has had negative consequences not only for them personally but also for households which are dependent on their. A project in (3hana iC examining the impact of technological change on women farmers, analysing alternative methods of income generation which have been developed by female farmers after part of their land was appropriated for industrial purposes.

The researchers have discovered that as women are forced to spend longer periods of time searching for firewood, they have less time for agriculture. This in turn leads to lower crop yields with the outcome of less food for family consumption and less surplus for sale in local markets.

Second, women are beginning to cook less, serving their families cheap store-bought foods or serving food cooked several hours earlier and which may have already become tainted.

From WID to GAD: Conceptual Shifts in the Women and Development Discourse
This paper provides an introduction to the issue of women and development by tracing the main trends in the way women’s issues have been conceptualized in the development context. The first part of the paper explains the emergence of women in development (WID), highlighting a dominant strand of thinking within WID that seeks to make women’s issues relevant to development by showing the positive synergies between investing in women and reaping benefits in terms of economic growth. In the second part the author looks at the analytical and intellectual underpinnings of the shift from WID to GAD (gender and development) and highlights two main tensions that emerge from the different conceptualizations of gender.
© 1995 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD