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Gender Issues and the

Challenges of Development
in the 21
st
Century

















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Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 3
A Historical Perspective: The Evolution of Women in Development to Gender and
Development ............................................................................................................................. 5
Effects of Globalization: Challenges of the 21
st
Century .......................................................... 6
Sector-wise analysis ................................................................................................................... 7
Manufacturing sector ............................................................................................................. 7
Service sector ......................................................................................................................... 8
Agriculture Sector .................................................................................................................. 8
The concept of social technology .............................................................................................. 9
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 11


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Introduction
Modernization theory has historically been used to explain the development of the third-
world nation. This theory contends that industrialization leads to economic development. As
a result of the economic development, a state of political stability is created in the country.
Political stability benefits all classes of the population. Modernization theory presumes that,
urbanization- often accompanied by increased industrialization, literacy, and exposure to the
mass media-would offer women greater occupational and educational opportunities, thereby
enhancing their status." Arguments that economic development does indeed help women in
developing nations show that though short-term results of industrialization are unfavourable
to progress of women, in the long run as wealth flows through all segments of society,
everyone benefits from the change.
The year 1970 marked a shift in perspectives on development studies- Earlier, it was
automatically assumed that men and women benefit from development in the same way.
There existed no gender perspectives in studies of economic development. However, post-
1970s marked an era where realization dawned on development economists and theorists that
economic development did not affect different sections of people in a similar manner. The
development of the economy did not eradicate poverty and the fruits of development did not
reach certain categories of people, especially women. The 1970s saw a change in
development theory that sought to include women into prevailing development paradigms.
The issue was not perceived by theorists to be an academic one, but rather a practical one;
simply integrating the women in the system would facilitate their upward mobility in the
society and get them freedom from their subordination.
Ester Boserups analysis of development in, Womens Role in Economic Development,
was a defining moment in the study of gendered development. Boserup criticized the focus
on modernization and economic development that had led discussions in the development
theory. According to Boserup, the benefits gained by a country in the process of economic
development did not reach women. Repressive social orders and the absence of women from
the formal economy are two factors that thwart economic growth in developing nations from
reaching women. Studies in the 1970s conclusively proved that the trickle-down effect to
ensure that the benefits of economic development reached different categories of people
could not be relied on. The various cusps in the form of social hierarchies and the like
prevented the fruits of development from reaching women. As an example, women produce
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60-80% of food in developing nations. Since agrarian production occurs in rural areas, and
industrialization focuses on urban areas, women benefit little.
Current gendered development theory concentrates not only on the economic restrictions
women have to face, but the social constraints as well. This approach takes a rounded
approach to the development of women and identifies the full gamut of repressive structures
that are responsible for the subordination of women:
It favours the elimination of legal, customary, and labour market constraints on womens
mobility and economic participation while realizing that these constraints are rooted in long-
standing gender ideologies and asymmetrical gender relations.
This approach recognizes that not only the public sphere but also the private sphere is
responsible for the condition of women: both the spheres are sources of oppression of
women.
The plans for execution of this most recent theory on gendered development can be seen in
the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). These goals were created at the
UN Summit in 2000 with the intention of achieving all eight MDGs by 2015. The following
are the 8 MDGs purported to be achieved by 2015-
1. End Poverty and Hunger
2. Universal Primary Education
3. Gender Equality
4. Child Health
5. Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS
7. Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership
It is clear from the above objectives of the United Nations that development of women is
primary focus of policies of the UN. The MDGs do not directly talk about economic
development. However, improvement in the conditions of women across the world in the
form of better maternal health, universal primary education and promotion of gender equality
is essential to economic development. The MDGs give authority to the claim that for the
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development of the Third World, not just economic problems but also social problems ought
to be addressed.
A Historical Perspective: The Evolution of Women in Development to
Gender and Development
Research on a sample space of African farmers in the 70s proved that development was
essentially gender blind- it was insensitive to the needs of women, far from being gender
neutral- and could possibly be detrimental to progress of women. The Women in
Development (WID) approach evolved in the 70s constructed the problem of development as
being womens marginalization from a benign process. Womens subservience was seen as
having its roots in their marginalization from the domain of the market and their restricted
contact with, and control, over resources. It was hence considered crucial to make a place for
women in development with the help of the law by trying to limit discrimination and by
encouraging their participation in education and employment. The WID approach resulted in
resources being targeted at women. The approach tended to make clear womens significant
contributions to the production process and income generation. Although the focus of WID
was greater gender equality, the approach failed to deal with the real structural problem: the
imbalanced gender roles and relations- the primary factor contributing to gender
subordination and exclusion of women. This approach tended to divert the efforts and time
spent by women from domestic activities to education or employment.
As a reaction to WID, in the 1980s, Gender and Development (GAD) approach started
gaining grounds. GAD focused on gender roles and relations to improve womens lives. The
term gender suggested a focus on both women and men. The GAD approach marks that
mere addition of women and girls to the existing processes of development is not sufficient,
but there is a need to identify as to why they are excluded in the first place. GAD advocates
that the emphasis should be on addressing the inequities of power at the basis of that
exclusion. GAD focused on the human centred concept of development rather than economic
growth. GAD schemes are all-inclusive and seek to address womens gender interests by
seeking the elimination of traditional forms of discrimination. (Molyneux 1985; Moser 1989).
The 1990s saw the rise of rights as many NGOs and agencies embraced a rights-based
method of development. Rights escalate the acknowledgment that womens demands are
reasonable claims. The establishment of sexual and reproductive rights is a step forward in
ensuring women their rights. Among other rights, efforts have been made to ensure the right
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to live free from violence to women. The rights approach has broadened the understanding of
violence against women from domestic to gender based. Focus also shifted in
understanding development from mere economic development to a more holistic social
development. However, economic growth remains the main driving force. WID has mostly
been replaced by GAD, which has been institutionalised within the notion of gender
mainstreaming. Mainstreaming includes assuring that a gendered perspective is vital to all
activities, including planning, implementation and monitoring of all programmes, projects,
and legislation. While criticized if undertaken merely as a tick box exercise, gender
mainstreaming proposes a possibility of placing gender at the centre of development. A
dismal fact of the present-day is that womens rights, particularly sexual and reproductive
health rights, are not generally recognized as rights, and violence against women remains
predominant across the world. Women still lack full and equal participation in economic and
political life. Mainstreaming has yet bear fruits and integration of women into the system
needs prioritization.
Effects of Globalization: Challenges of the 21
st
Century
Participation of women in paid work rapidly increased in the previous century. Not only has
it climbed in almost all regions of the world but it has also spearheaded the overall
employment growth in recent years. Womens employment all over the world has grown
significantly faster than mens since 1980, except in Africa. With a slugging (or somewhat
declining) male labour force participation rate, the differences between male and female
labour force participation rates have contracted significantly in many regions. Among OECD
countries, womens entry into the labour force has been most evident in the Netherlands and
Spain- countries where women had previously (1980s) been less active. In Canada, the
United States of America, and the Scandinavian countries, women now comprise nearly half
of the active population, with activity rates of over 70 per cent in the core age groups. In
developing countries, womens labour force participation rate has also been rising and
currently well exceeds 60 per cent. However in most of the Middle East countries, the female
contribution in economic activity remains low. Women in the developing nations who are
economically active in the rural and urban informal sectors are frequently undercounted.
Nevertheless, the overall tendency seems distinctive: womens participation in paid
employment has been increasing progressively in developing countries as well. The impact of
economic forces released by globalization and changing labour market undercurrents has
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played a vital role in this ascendance. Admittedly, there have also been other key factors.
Among these are secular enhancements in womens level of educational accomplishment,
decreasing fertility rates, improved access to health care, as well as changing lifestyles and
attitudes. However, the link between general advances in a countrys social development
indicators, which are strongly associated with most of the above-mentioned factors, and
female labour force participation rates is not an upfront one. Given the intricacies, the
emphasis here is reasonably narrow. It is limited to employment effects that can directly be
tied to (a) development in trade and FDI flows on the one hand, and (b) changing structure of
output and restructuring of production on the other. Developing countries figure more
prominently than the developed in the former, while the reverse is the case in the latter.
Sector-wise analysis
Manufacturing sector
Participation of women workers in the recently industrialized countries, where manufacturing
production has been heavily oriented towards exports, has increased considerably. In fact, no
country has increased its exports of manufactured goods without resorting to women workers.
It is now acknowledged formally that industrialization in the context of globalization is as
much female-led as it is export-led. In some developing countries, the employment effect of
export orientation has been a drastic turning point for womens engagement in the money
economy. As an example, Bangladesh in 1978 had only four garment factories; however, by
1995 it had 2400 employing 1.2 million workers of which ninety per cent were women under
the age of 25. The garment manufacturing sector employed 70 per cent of the women in wage
employment in the country. Besides Bangladesh, many other countries have seen such
dramatic increases both in export manufacturing volume and in the share of women in the
manufacturing labour force like the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Mauritius, and the
Philippines etc. Usually, the greater volume of exports of labour-intensive goods, such as
clothing, semiconductors, toys, sporting goods and shoes, the higher is the proportion of
women workers. Besides, for the same product categories within the export sector, in the
foreign-owned firm, the number of women seems to be higher. However, transformation
from labour-intensive production methods to skill and capital-intensive methods since late in
the 1980s has led, in many middle-income countries, for the demand for womens labour in
manufacturing sector to be reduced. The examples in this case are Puerto Rico, Singapore and
Taiwan Province of China. In the Republic of Korea also, the composition of the labour force
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in the electronics industry has altered in favour of male workers, as production in this sector
shifted to more sophisticated communication and information technology. Likewise, in the
assembly-plants of Mexico, the share of female workers fell from 77 per cent in 1982 to
under 60 per cent in 1990. These trends are suggestive of the fact that female gains in
manufacturing employment occur only when the techniques of manufacturing are labour
intensive. The shift to capital intensive and skill intensive techniques results in a fall in
womens participation in the production process.
Service sector
The fast growing international financial services sector also seems to employ a high
percentage of female workers, though mostly in areas of low skill application such as data
entry. Outsourcing by corporations in data-reliant services, such as credit card providers, mail
order businesses, airlines and rail systems employs a significant percentage of women. The
Caribbean and some Asian countries (China, India, Malaysia and the Philippines) are
recognised centres for such businesses. The labour force in the Caribbean almost completely
consists of females. Other customized, higher-skill business services are increasingly being
relocated to developing countries and employs relatively high proportions of women, even at
higher grades (the software design, computer programming, and financial services).
However, there are not enough consolidated data on this type of employment in this sector to
establish its worldwide importance or trends. In many developing countries, in addition to
export-oriented manufacturing, trade-related employment in the service sector (tourism,
finance, and information processing) has also been rising. As an instance, in Thailand by
1982 tourism had become the largest provider of foreign exchange, and by 1990 was
generating 7 per cent of total export value.
Agriculture Sector
Market liberalization coupled with the promotion of export crops in agriculture, which has
generally accompanied trade liberalization in developing countries, have had ambiguous
employment effects. Latin Americas export crop expansion has displaced women from
permanent agricultural employment into seasonal employment. Women lost employment on
subsistence plots, but could more easily find seasonal employment in low paying jobs
requiring intensive manual labour in the area of agricultural exports including harvesting
coffee, cotton and tobacco in Brazil; cultivating strawberries in Mexico, peanuts in Brazil,
fruits in Chile and flowers in Colombia. The cultivation of non-traditional export crops in
Caribbean has provided low-paying jobs for women but at the same time has undermined the
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production of food for the local market. This is likely to have disproportionately affected
women, since they have traditionally been the producers and marketers of food for the local
market. The case is somewhat different in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. These countries
have diversified their commodity exports to include non-traditional agricultural exports
(NTAEs), from which earnings have increased very rapidly in recent years. This sector has
transformed in that production and employment have been organized in large-scale
enterprises along quasi-industrial lines. Women usually comprise the great majority (about 90
per cent) of the workforce in this sector, not just in Kenya but also in other African countries,
and are paid cash in direct exchange for their labour. In the small-farm context, however, the
revenue from NTAEs controlled by women is far less than what they contribute in labour
input to production. The NTAEs also depend primarily on female labour force in Latin
American countries, especially Colombia and Mexico, where the sector is well established. In
these countries, where wages to profits ratio is low and occupational hazards can be severe,
there are marked gender inequalities. For example, the introduction of some non-traditional
crops in a number of poor communities in Guatemala, men were found to share the work with
women but not the profits from sales, which they appropriated in a unequal manner. In
Thailand, women have begun to contract out to MNCs on family-owned plots, producing
baby corn and asparagus on lands where formerly paddy was grown. Similarly, raising
shrimp under contract to foreign companies, women in southern Thailand have been able to
earn more in a shorter work day than what they could by cultivating rice. Many researchers,
however, have questioned the sustainability of this type of work, drawing attention to its
adverse environmental effects, health hazards and market fluctuations.
The concept of social technology
Professor Amartya Sen talks about the concept of social technology. He believes that
technology should not be viewed only in the narrow sense of particular mechanical or
chemical or biological processes used in making one good or another. The production process
involves not merely the relationship between, raw materials and final products, but also the
social organization that allows the use of specific techniques of production in factories or
workshops, or on land. Technology is not only about equipment and its operational
characteristics, but also about social arrangements that permit the equipment to be used and
the so-called productive processes to be carried on. On the one hand, it is not denied that the
sustenance, survival and reproduction of workers are obviously essential for the workers
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being available for outside work. On the other, the activities that produce or support that
sustenance, survival or reproduction are typically not regarded as contributing to output, and
are often classified as 'unproductive' labour. It is important to take an integrated view of the
pattern of activities outside and inside the home that together make up the production
processes in traditional as well as in modern societies. The prosperity of the household
depends on the totality of various activities - getting money incomes, purchasing or directly
producing (in the case of, say, peasants) food materials and other goods, producing eatable
food out of food materials, and so on. But in addition to aggregate prosperity, even the
divisions between sexes in general, and specifically those within the household, may also be
deeply influenced by the pattern of gender division of work.
The concept of social technology is of utmost important for an underdeveloped economy
where it forms a significant support system for the family in particular and communities in
general. The nature of 'social technology' has a deep effect on relating production and
earnings to the distribution of that earning between men and women and to gender divisions
of work and resources. The divisional arrangements that, on the one hand, may help in the
economic survival and in the over-all affluence of families and societies, may also impose,
through the same process, a typically unequal division of job-opportunities and work-
freedoms. They influence the division of fruits of joint activities - sometimes sustaining
inequalities in the commodities consumed in relation to needs (e.g. of food in poorer
economies). The nature of the co-operative arrangements implicitly influences the
distributional parameters and the household's response to conflicts of interests.

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Bibliography
1. 1999 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Globalization, Gender
and Work (Report of the Secretary General)
2. Amartya Sen, Gender and Cooperative Conflicts, Wider Working Papers, July 1987.
3. Sarah Bradshaw, Womens role in economic development: Overcoming the
constraints, May 2013
4. Enhancing Women's Participation in Economic Development World Bank Policy
Paper, 1014-8124