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INTRODUCTION

The development debate has progressed substantially since the First Development Decade of the
United Nations in the 1960s, which stressed economic growth and the “trickle-down” approach
as essential to poverty reduction. Some of the significant developments in the discussion were
the push to take gender equality as a core development feature. The first focus of this paper is to
analyse the statement by Alba in Parpart eds (2000) who contends that “one of the notable
advancements in the debate has been the move to consider gender equality as a key element of
development.” The second focus of the paper is to discuss the Androcentric assumption theory as
articulated by (Bailey, et al) cited by Parpart, eds (2000) and how the theory has affected women
in development in the Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper will begin with the definitions of key
words, and then dive into the emphasis as set out above. A conclusion is eventually to be drawn.

DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS

A debate is a conversation on a subject that people have different opinions on.

Gender equality implies equally recognized, respected and welcomed the different attitudes,
desires and needs of women and men. This does not mean that men and women will become the
same, but that their rights, duties and privileges will not rely on whether they are born male or
female.

Development is a process which creates growth, progress, positive change or adds physical,
economic, environmental, social and demographic components.

A theory is a set of ideas and concepts that describe a given phenomenon.

Androcentrism is a concept coined by feminist theorists to describe the prevailing ideology that
largely excluded women’s perspectives from its studies until recently. This term also applies to
an approach taken to information and knowledge generation.

Women in development are an approach of development projects that emerged in the 1960s,
calling for treatment of women’s issues in development projects. It is the integration of women
into the global economies by improving their status and assisting in total development.

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Geographically, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the African continent that lies south of the
Sahara.

ANALYSIS OF GENDER EQUALITY AS A KEY ELEMENT OF DEVELOPMENT

Economic growth and the “trickle-down” approach as key to reducing

poverty

Around the time, the theory of modernisation meant that everyone would benefit from a trickle-
down effect of economic growth, but Boserup suggested that a potential trickle-down effect of
progress would not benefit men and women equally. She also defined the division of labour
between men and women in three separate stages of development: rural, urban and transition
from rural to urban society. For women, these diverse backgrounds meant a variety of rewards
and hardships. Boserup criticised the modernisation theory in the sense that development would
not be equally beneficial. But she also lingered within the modernisation theory, which stated
that a developing country’s development goal was to become an industrial country. To be able to
reach the industrial stage of development it had to undergo the same stages that already had been
passed by the developed countries (Boserup, 2007).

The basic-needs strategy focusing on increasing the participation in and

benefits of the development process for the poor

At different times, several individuals and organisations have been concerned with meeting the
specific needs of women as regards gender and their strategic social preferences (Molyneux
1985). Practical gender needs are related to the everyday needs of women in caring for
themselves and their children while strategic gender priorities are related to the challenge of
reforming gender roles and questioning the subordinate status of women.

Women’s groups have worked in the South over the last century for causes of social justice,
change, and empowerment, much as they have in the West. They have also at times championed
feminist issues but dressed them in the language of welfare. The interweaving of feminist issues
and growth has given rise to a broad planning area (Moser, 1993). As we will see, alternatives
emerged in the conceptualization and operationalization of women’s empowerment strategies.

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Recognizing women’s needs and contributions to society by activists
articulated women’s issues in national and international forums

During the 1950s and 1960s the seeds of the idea of women-and-development (a broad term that
encompasses a variety of approaches to women’s development) were planted. During this time,
50 countries were freed from colonialism, and the women who had taken part in independence
movements acted on their convictions that they had to support men in creating these new nations.
For example, women from East African countries, led by Margaret Kenyatta, met at seminars in
the early 1960s to implement strategies aimed at achieving their goals. It came at a time when no
distinct voice and The Feminine Mystique (Friedan 1963) had been identified by the resurrected
feminist movement in the North yet.

Before that time, in 1947, just 2 years after the formation of the United Nations, the Commission
on the Status of Women (CSW) was established to monitor United Nations activities on behalf of
women. To a large extent, however, its efforts were limited within the legalistic context of
human rights. By the 1950s and 1960s, women of these newly independent countries began
taking their delegations to the United Nations (though in small numbers) and were able to
challenge the legalistic agenda of CSW by raising development-oriented issues.

By 1970, when the-United Nations General Assembly reviewed the results of the First
Development Decade of the 1960s, three factors that would eventually converge to foster the
various approaches to women’s development had become evident. The industrialization policies
of the 1960s were found to have been unsuccessful and had, in addition, exacerbated the lives of
the poor and women in third world countries. Therefore, the Second Growth Decade was planned
to tackle this and “bring about sustainable” change in the well-being of individuals, and to
provide benefits for all.

Evidence was brought forward in the now classic Women’s Role in Economic Development at
Ester Boserup (1970). Boserup, an agricultural economist, used research data from Africa, Asia,
the Caribbean and Latin America to illustrate women’s central roles in the economic life of these
societies and identified the transformative impact of colonialism and modernization on the sexual
division of labour, through the implementation of the international market economy. This
method, among other things, drew men away from family labour-based production, and gave

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them almost exclusive access to economic and other resources. Boserup concluded that Third
World economic stability and prosperity will be heavily dependent on efforts to reverse this trend
and to incorporate women more completely into the development process (Boserup, 2007).

In Western countries around 1968 the feminist movement acknowledged civil rights among other
social movements. While the efforts of the movement were mainly focused internally, some
Western women used their power to pressure the foreign-aid offices of their government to
ensure that grants to the recipient countries benefited both women and men.

The key goal of the original women-and-development plan was to bring both men and women
out of poverty and to contribute to and benefit from development efforts. In their books Margaret
Snyder and Mary Tadesse described and established the following: “Gender and Development”
as an inclusive word means a philosophy and a movement whose long-range goal is social well-
being-the society of men, women and children. Its formulation is based on the assumptions that:
“Development” means, in conjunction with the Second Development Decade’s International
Development Strategy, “to bring about sustainable change in individual well-being and to bring
benefits to all.” Since women constitute more than half of human capital and are central to both
the economic and social well-being of communities, development goals cannot be completely
accomplished without their participation. Women and growth is therefore a holistic concept
wherein one’s goal cannot be accomplished without the other’s success. Therefore, women must
have “both the legal right and access to existing resources for improving themselves and society”
(Snyder and Tadesse, 1995, p. 6).

The United Nations proclaimed the International Women’s Year in 1975, and the celebration of
this at Mexico City’s First International Women’s Conference marked the movement’s
globalisation. This ground-breaking intergovernmental conference and the non-governmental
International Women’s Tribune Center (TWTC), a networking and communications
organization, brought together women from almost every country in the world under the theme
of Justice, Growth and Peace, and expanded their work during the 1976-1985 United Nations
Decade for Women. It sparked the establishment of organizations and networks worldwide, as
“women and development” became an area of technology specialization.

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Under the United Nations framework, the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Women (later
known as the United Nations Development Fund for Women) and the International Training and
Research Center for Women were soon established. IWTC and the World Bank of Women, a
loan guaranteeing organization, came into being as NGOs. “National machineries” - women’s
committees, women’s desks, and women’s offices - were soon developed in most countries at the
national level. New organizations and networks for women have sprung up at the neighbourhood
and national level. These contributed to women’s institutionalization and growth as and globally
recognised collection of principles, and did much to generalize international knowledge and
understanding about women’s issues.

The Women-in-Development Movement enhancing women’s

consciousness and abilities

Although the WAD perspective has offered a significant corrective to WID’s too ready
assumption that male-dominated states can be used to alter gender inequities, it also has its
weaknesses. As noted above, marginalization and small size have restricted women-only
organizations’ disruptive capacity, though strides have been made in raising awareness,
publicizing women's issues and getting them into the policy arena. The WAD approach is also
inclined to see women as a class, downplaying women’s differences, especially on racial and
ethnic lines, and sometimes assuming that solutions to issues affecting women in the world can
be found in the experiences and agendas of a particular group. During the 1970s, in the sense of
emerging social movements questioning authority, liberal development theory was influenced by
the dependence school claims and increasing concern with Third World poverty. International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials dedicated their institutions to waging a war on
poverty and ensuring basic human needs for all. WID experts have followed this strategy,
addressing vulnerable women as the key targets of WID policies and their basic human needs. As
Moser (1989) pointed out, this anti-poverty approach acknowledged and aimed to address the
basic needs of women in terms of gender by focusing on enhancing women’s access to income
through activities such as small-scale, income generating initiatives. Thus, in the 1970s, the
centrality of poverty alleviation was accepted by progressive and conservative growth theorists
and planners, though they disagreed about how to bring it about (Jaquette, 1982).

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Enabling women to examine their situations and to correct their
disadvantaged positions
Marxist thinkers of earlier generations looked forward to a revolt as the principal mode of
resistance to class oppression. Many feminists pinned their hopes on collective action and
women’s mass organization to counter gender-based oppression. But Marxists and feminists’
recent work acknowledges opposition in its subtler ways. Many marginalized by their class, race
or gender - often multiple threats - may not be able to take the risk of direct and concerted action
(Scott, 1985). That does not necessarily mean the forces that oppress them are passive or
ignorant. They do not suffer from false consciousness, and many do not need “consciousness-
raising.” Simply because outsiders concerned with revolution, in pursuit of more dramatic
rebellions, have always failed to consider hidden and indirect resistance tactics. Although these
techniques can be low key, they are nevertheless successful in capturing dissent and whittling at
conditions of injustice to the degree that circumstances permit.

Several women’s resistance tactics have been reported by feminists, some of which have existed
for centuries and others which have been created more recently to meet modern conditions (Abu-
Lughod, 1990). Examples of resistance in the field of development may include sabotage and
general non-compliance, poor participation in “participatory” schemes enforced from above,
rejection of technical advice and feedback perceived by poor farmers as inappropriate to their
needs, and protection of cultural practices that call into question the hegemony of scientific logic
(Bernstein, 1979). Dominant groups are attributing many types of resistance by women and men
to racism, backwardness, laziness, and irrelevant traditionalism.

Giving women greater access to resources to contribute to equitable and

efficient development process

Under a context for modernisation, equality refers to equal legal opportunities to participate in an
internationally growing (sustained growth) capitalist economy. Equity does not mean equal
successful opportunities to engage in this system. The paradigm for modernization does not
acknowledge the structural barriers of class, race, or gender that undermine the concept of an
open society in which each person advances according to their merits. Participation, here, does

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not mean making any decisions about priorities or lifestyles - it means one can only be modern in
one way. The concept of sustained growth is followed by no ecological or temporal constraints,
and no understanding of the unequal costs and benefits of global economy.

These same words have a broad set of definitions within the institutional context of development
agencies, and hold different assumptions. Equity is the equal right and duty to participate in
programs and projects established by external agencies (government, nongovernmental, regional,
international). Non-participation is taken as evidence of backwardness, as “experts” design such
programs and initiatives to “improve” local economic and political structures. Within this sense,
sustainability is frequently associated with the low cost and productivity ideas. Examples include
centrally planned community health-care programmes designed to minimize the need and
demand for high-quality medical services or villagers to implement and sustain improvements to
the road.

A third set of definitions can be drawn from a more progressive context for the same words, with
empowerment as its core goal. In this case, equality means equal effective power (overcoming
barriers to race, class, and gender) to engage in identifying the priorities and agenda of
development processes that meet the needs of every human being for a safe and decent life, both
for present and future generations (sustainable development). Recognition of differences (along
gender, race, and other dimensions) must be the starting point for achieving those objectives.
Feminists from the Third World and others who identify with postmodernism have made
important contributions to critique and new theorization on questions of power and distinction.

Gender relations mediated by the process of development through

stabilization of structural-adjustment policies which showed that gender
inequalities have an impact on the attainment of macroeconomic
objectives

Gender relations in development focused on the disparities in entitlements, perceived abilities

and social perceptions of men and women, boys and girls since the late 18th century, social
scientists have tried to establish a strategy to understand the diversity and discrepancies in human
experience. The notion of progress was embodied by early evolutionists: human development

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from primitive, backward forms to advanced and developed ones. In the mid-20th century,
functionalist anthropologists concentrated on seeing through culture as an interconnected whole.
They could not help interpreting what they observed through their biased perspectives and based
on their customary assumptions on conclusions.

Today, while critical scholars no longer attribute meaning in terms of success or backwardness to
cultures, they do agree that pre-colonial cultures may have been at various stages of social
change. These stages are usually described in relation to the systems of production which
predominated at the time. But, as with all the plans, these definitions only provide limited
comprehension. The majority of cultures cannot be easily grouped into one or another group.
Many show signs of being in more than one “stage.” However, it must be emphasized that not all
societies necessarily go through all of the recognized stages.

Due to their ties to the conceptions of modernization and growth, some anthropologists fully
dismiss any theory of stages of social development. Instead, they argue for a non-stage approach
that looks at each society on its own terms, and sees progress (social change) in either direction.
Thus, if these are assumed to occur at all, transitions from one stage to the next are the product of
several variables that anthropologists are still investigating, including the climate of a culture and
its historical relationships with other communities. The phases are generally identified as
follows: hunter-gatherer or foraging societies, horticultural societies, matrilineal descent,
patrilineal descent, agricultural or agrarian societies, pastoral or herding societies, industrial
societies and various combinations of the above.

Feminist anthropologists have also argued that the organisation of social and productive
relationships such as social stratification, the monogamous family, land ownership, and modes of
work and development have profoundly affected the disparities in gender relations across the
world. In some instances, prior to the arrival of European colonizers societies were extremely
stratified patriarchies. Sometimes this was the result of domination by other patriarchal and
highly stratified groups, or an existing social stratification system. Nevertheless, the introduction
of stereotypes about the place of a woman or man in the new stratification structures based on
notions of class and racial or ethnic dominance complicated or removed these tactics (Mermssi
1987, p. 78).

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The dominant thinking of the late 1980s and early 1990s has been that the state has a leading role
in the economy, but only facilitating. Technology is now seen as the responsibility of private
businesses, and increasingly private NGOs. Furthermore, the market is seen as the prime
decision-making arbiter.

This approach is focused on the revived impact of liberal economic theory (now known as
neoliberal economics) which has influenced international economic policy and theory about
growth. All this took place in the context of a Third World debt crisis, in which economic
stabilization and structural adjustment programs are proposed as income-generating strategies for
debt repayments. Through the conditions on the stabilization and structural adjustment loans
offered by the International Monetary Fund ( IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (the World Bank) to countries in trouble with the balance of payments, such
thought has become a reality.

The IMF and the World Bank were established in the United States in 1944, in Bretton Woods,
New Hampshire. At this conference, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed
a framework to promote the post-World War II reconstruction of Western Europe . The main aim
of the new organizations was to provide a foundation for monetary and currency stability in
order to increase trade and develop these economies. This was to be done by offering financial
assistance during times of difficulty with the balance of payments, that is, when imports
surpassed exports. The General agreement on tariffs and trade Agreement was later introduced,
and according to Dennis Pantin both of these institutions would play a complementary role in
managing a world economy that did not limit the movement of goods, services and capital
(Pantin, 1989).

The Bretton Woods Agreement has broadened in scope since the emergence of the new nation-
states in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s. The role of this
agreement has expanded because of the current trend in monetarist, or neoliberal, economics.
The IMF offers short-term stabilisation assistance to countries with challenges in funding
payments, provided they adopt such fiscal and monetary policies. On the other hand, the World
Bank is more concerned with long-term transition, by reforming host economies along fixed
lines. It can sum up its policies as follows (Blackden, 1993): stabilization or reduction of budget
or balance of payments deficits, reduction of budget deficits or freezes in public-sector

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employment, cutbacks in public-sector investment, elimination of public-sector subsidies
(usually away from agriculture and social-sector to private-sector business), and tax reform;
promotion of the private sector through public service contracting, the sale of state-owned
enterprises and deregulation; market liberalization and price deregulation in which the local
market is opened up to greater foreign and domestic competition; liberalization of exchange
rates, typically devaluations or floating of local currency to promote exports; and elimination of
price controls and local industry support; Rationalisation of institutions in the public sector,
including civil service (public sector); and Reform, privatization of state-owned enterprises and
social-sector reform to make it cost-effective.

Aspects of these neoliberal policies have also been introduced in northern countries since the
1980s, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and in continental Europe,
more recently. In addition, many governments have implemented programmes for economic
adjustment without involvement in an IMF or World Bank program.

These systems have been heavily criticized in the Third World Countries for the following
reasons: they are not suited to individual economies’ unique needs; contribute to major
reductions in living conditions, including dietary levels, quality of education, job rates and access
to social support systems; more responsibility for health care, schooling and caring for sick and
elderly people is transferred to women who are still burdened by unpaid employment; raise
social ills, such as violence against women, substance addiction and murder; they result in
increased levels of migration from the South to the North (legal and illegal).

HOW THE ANDROCENTRIC ASSUMPTION THEORY HAS AFFECTED

WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT IN THE SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Androcentric theories produce knowledge that reflects these theories’ beliefs, and lacks women’s
views and perspectives. One of the pillars of feminist theorizing is the need to derive insight
from a wider base of experience. Thus, through feminist theorisation, a new, more detailed, more
all-encompassing awareness is built up. Such theorizing seeks to provide a more complete
depiction of the realities of women. As Sandra Harding put it, understanding is supposed to be
founded on experience, and the reason the feminist arguments can turn out to be scientifically
superior is that they arise in a fuller and less distorting kind of social experience, and are checked

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against. Women’s perspectives, influenced by feminist theory, provide possible context for
claims to information that are more accurate and less skewed than men’s (Harding, 1987: 184-
185).

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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