Women in Development

When the women of developing countries started advocating their rights against oppression, a new
trend of thought came into play which was known as Women in Development (WID). This ideology aims
at highlighting women’s status and the role of women in the development process (Erwer, 2000). It is
believed that improving women's access to credit, technology and extension services will increase their
productivity, which in turn will have a positive impact on the development process. The framework
ignores the gender relations and is deemed to overemphasize the productive side and income
generation of women and ignore the reproductive side. (Mosse, 1993). The WID framework includes
various approaches, which are known as Equity Approach, Anti-Poverty Approach and Efficiency
Approach.

Anti-Poverty Approach

The anti-poverty approach is the second type of approach in the WID framework. It became popular in
the early 1970’s. The anti-poverty approach shifts the major area of subject from the reduction of
inequality between men and women to the reduction of income inequality (Moser, 1993). The aim of
Anti-Poverty approach was poverty reduction by focusing on basic necessities, women’s role in their
family’s well-being and their role in this fight against poverty (Erwer, 2000).

Snyder and Tadesse (1995) stressed on the income generation for women through a fairer access to
credit, land and other productive resources and through this, many income generating and
entrepreneurship projects have been launched. This approach of increased employment and income
generation opportunities for women has several limitations; this anti-poverty approach tends to ignore
the reproductive role of women. Productive activities for women must take into account the
reproductive and the community managing roles of women. Women already have a huge burden of
work on their shoulders which makes saving really difficult without controlling the family income.
Another limitation is that the capacity of the informal sector to create employment and growth is
limited (Mosse, 1993)