LECTURE FIVE: GENDER APPROACHES IN DEVELOPMENT

Learning objectives

Explain the rationale of gender approaches

Explain and evaluate the ideas of each approach

 According to the World Development Report (WDR) 2012, gender is defined as socially
constructed norms and ideologies which determine the behavior and actions of men and
women. 
 Development is a process that aims at improving wellbeing of societal members.
 Gender is an important consideration in development.
 It is a way of looking at how social norms and power structures impact on the lives and
opportunities available to different groups of men and women.
 Women have not benefited from development processes, programmes and projects to the
same extent as men. Free primary education 2003, free secondary education for all 2008.
Emerging concerns and challenges in implementing the programmes include,
overcrowding in schools, inadequate physical facilities , high cost of special equipment
and materials, gender , socio economic and regional disparities that impact negatively
on access, retention, participation and quality particularly among girls and the most
vulnerable( Republic of Kenya, education for all end decade Assessment 2001-2010)
 There are currently 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty in the world , and two
thirds of these people are women
 In the global South , 80% of employment opportunities for are in the informal sector
 Of the 110 million children who do not have access to education, two thirds of them are
girls. (medium.com/@DevonOMatthews/wid-wad-gad-or-what-9242552bb67e)
 Two Thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate adults are women, globally about
39million girls of lower secondary age were not in enrolled in either primary or
secondary education (UNESCO 2011).
 Women are very often not included in the planning or implementation of development
  Globally, more women than men live in poverty. Women are also less likely than men to
receive basic education and to be appointed to a political position nationally and
internationally.
 Understanding that men and women, boys and girls experience poverty differently and
face different barriers in accessing services, economic resources and political
opportunities helps to target interventions.
 These models seek to explain how development affects women and why women and men
are affected by development differently (social, economic development). Often with a
more negative impact on women, this undermines women’s role, status and position
within society. These models/approaches are discussed in some detail below

WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT (WID)

 By the 1970s it had become very clear that women were being left out of development.
Esther Boserup publication titled “Women’s Role in Economic development” in 1970
signaled the origins of WID approach.
 They were not benefiting significantly from it and in some instances their existing status
and position in society was actually being made worse by development. Development
should mean fewer gaps in wellbeing between males and females.
 Proponents of the approach made the following observations;
 The WID approach saw the problem as the exclusion of women from development
programmes and approaches.
 The WID (or Women in Development) approach calls for greater attention to women in
development policy and practice, and emphasises the need to integrate them into the
development process.
 Remedy to development problem is the inclusion of women in the development process
 As a result, the solution was seen as integrating women into such programmes. WID saw
women as a group being treated as lacking opportunity to participate in development.
 The main task, therefore, was to improve women’s access to resources and their
participation in development.
 The WID approach argued for the integration of women into development programmes
and planning.
 Advocated for income-generating projects for women as a means of integration.
Programmes informed by a WID approach addressed women’s practical needs, for
example, creating employment and income-generating opportunities, improving access to
credit and to education.
 The WID approach, although it had limitations, increased the visibility of women in
development issues. One of the major achievements of the decade was the establishment
of women in development structures or machineries.
 In Zambia, for instance, it was during this time that the Women’s League of the then
ruling political party United National Independence Party (UNIP) was formed as the
 national machinery to address women’s development issues. The Women’s League
developed a programme of action and a campaign to promote the integration of women in
the development process at every level.
 A WID Unit was established in 1986 at the National Commission for Development
Planning, the central planning and coordinating body of government, later upgraded into
a whole department

Shortcomings

 Although the WID approach made demands for women’s inclusion in development, it did
not call for changes in the overall social structure or economic system in which women
were to be included. As such, WID concentrated narrowly on the inequalities between
men and women and ignored the social, cultural, legal and economic factors that give rise
to those inequalities in society.
 Criticized the WID approach as being one of simply ‘add women and stir’. What benefit
is got by taking a girl child to school then she is married off the following year.
 It does not deal with disparities and power relations between men and women
 Following frustration with the slow progress of WID, other approaches emerged that is
the Women and Development (WAD) approach emphasized the need for structural
changes in the global political economy.

Activity II
Identify the role of women in development

WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT (WAD)

 As a result of criticisms of the WID approach, the Women and Development (WAD)
approach arose in the latter part of the 1970s.
 Adopting a Marxist feminist approach, the main argument of WAD was that women had
always been part of the development processes.
 WAD asserts that women have always been important economic actors. The work they
do both inside and outside the household is critical to the maintenance of society.
 Because women have always been important economically
 For example, the work women have done for centuries has been the main stay of their
families.
 For example they nourish and produce the producers who in turn produce the surplus
value.
 They argued that the focus should not be to bring women into development
 Focus not only on making women visible and including them
  According to the proponents, the question should be why women were marginalized and
excluded from mainstream or orthodox development process.
 They agitate for changes in terms of providing women access to the productive sector.
 The main focus of WAD is on the interaction / relations between women and
development processes rather than purely on strategies to integrate women into
development.
 WAD was very persuasive in raising the debate that women have a role not only in
reproduction but in production as well.
 WAD therefore argued that the integration of women into development was to their
disadvantage and only made their inequality worse.

Critique

 WAD has been criticized for assuming that the position of women will improve if and
when national and international structures become more equitable.
 It therefore underplays the role of patriarchy in undermining women’s development and
does not adequately address the question of social relations between men and women and
their impact on development.

GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT (GAD)

 In the 1980s further reflections on the development experiences of women gave rise
to Gender and Development (GAD).
 there has been a growing consensus that sustainable development requires an
understanding of both women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities within the
community and their relationship to each other
 The focus of GAD has been to examine “why women systematically have been
assigned to inferior and /or secondary roles” and also to confront questions of power
and agency.
 It seeks to confront the root causes of gender inequality
 It sought to bring together both the lessons learned from, and the limitations of, the
WID and WAD approaches.
 GAD looks at the impact of development on both women and men.
 It seeks to ensure that both women and men participate in and benefit equally from
development and so emphasizes equality of benefit and control.
 The GAD approach, through gender analysis, seeks to understand the roles,
responsibilities, resources and priorities of women and men within a specific context,
examining the social, economic and environmental factors which influence their roles and
decision-making capacity.
 Gender and Development is therefore an analytical approach which considers both
women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities within the community and their
relationship to each other in order to ensure that women’s concerns and needs are
addressed in design and implementation of activities. It is thus an approach that looks at
women as an integral part of the family, community and the larger society
 It recognises that women may be involved in development, but not necessarily benefit
from it.
 GAD is not concerned with women exclusively, but with the way in which gender
relations allot specific roles, responsibilities and expectations between men and women,
often to the detriment of women.
 Development, therefore, is about deep and important changes to relations dealing with
gender inequality within society.
 This approach also pays particular attention to the oppression of women in the family or
the ‘private sphere’ of women’s lives.
 As a result, we have seen projects develop addressing issues such as violence against
women. GAD focuses on the social or gender relations (i.e. the division of labour)
between men and women in society.