Liberal and Marxist Paradigms of Women/Gender and Development

1. How is ‘development’ conceptualised in liberal approaches?

As modernization from immature, backward, traditional, poor, agrarian economy to

mature, advanced, modern, industrial system.
Driver of modernization is free flow of capital from west in form of investment and
aid, as well as difficusion of values, technology and political institutions from West.
This will stimulate economic growth.
Linear model of development based on modernization theory and neo-classical
economics
Eg. Walt Whitman Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist
manifesto (1960): ‘All societies, in their economic dimensions, [lie] within one of five
categories: the traditional society, the pre-conditions for take-off, the take-off, the
drive to maturity, and the age of high mass consumption’ (p. 4).

This is a universal model with western industrialised countries as the state to aspire to
and majority world countries in the process of ‘catching up’. Two separate economic
systems are conceptualised, traditional and modern. In traditional societies poverty
and undevelopment are seen as inevitable, the natural state of things.

Critique of modernization theory:

Empirically untrue that undevelopment is original state of traditional societies

The two economic systems are not separate
Ahistorical
No analysis of power relations between west and majority world
Sees state as solution; benign model of unitary state
Orientalist
Doesn’t value indigenous knowledge
Investment and aid haven’t necessarily produced growth in most of majority world
Equilibrium in, for example, wages hasn’t been reached

2. How would you characterise liberal feminist understandings of gender

and development?

Ester Boserup (1970) Women’s Role in Economic Development

Barbara Rogers (1980) The Domestication of Women
Irene Tinker (1990) Persistent Inequalities

Development is not gender-neutral but has excluded women, and the solution is to
integrate them into development (WID).

Male bias (prejudice, misinformation) by colonial and post-colonial administrators

has excluded women so they have not benefited from development, indeed their
situation may have been worsened. For example, development has targetted men as
producers, household heads and property owners, offering them new economic
opportunities, education and training, credit. Meanwhile it has treated women as
unpaid family labour and dependent reproducers needing welfare, regardless of
women’s place in production in different societies. Where development has targetted
women it has segregated them in ‘female’ projects focussed around their reproductive
role, eg. handicraft projects.

The solution is to recognise women as producers and educate and train them to help
them compete with men in formal sector employment. Women as well as men need
incentives to contribute labour to development projects and need access to labour
saving methods to increase productivity. Women need equal opportunities with men
and providing them will improve the efficiency of development projects.

Development is still understood in terms of modernization, but the system needs

adjusting for women.

Framework has documented women’s economic contribution, produced a lot of

valuable information about women’s location in production (concentrated in
agriculture and informal sectors).

Also successfully lobbied USAID for the so-called ‘Percy Amendment’ – 1973
agreement that all USAID funded development projects need gender sensitive social-
impact studies (but Bandarage says little implemented).

3. What criticisms have been made of liberal feminist approaches?

Good to recognise women as producers but this is at the expense of recognising their
unpaid household and reproductive work

Not about integrating women into productive work – they are already doing it but in
marginalized positions, low-status, low-wage, few prospects

Women’s greater share of reproductive work means even with opportunities for
education and training they will not enter productive work on equal terms with men

Neglects differences between women both within and between countries

Sees poverty and subordination of women as aberrations of a fair system

No analysis of power relations and conflict

Privileges western knowledge and fails to value women’s (and men’s) indigenous
knowledge

About majority world women but not a framework they’ve produced, not for them

Ignores the struggles and organizations of majority world women

In persuading development to integrate women focuses on efficiency argument

4. How is ‘development’ conceptualised in Marxist approaches?

Eg. Latin American sociologist Andre Gunder Frank (dependency theory)

The Development of Underdevelopment (1966)
Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967)

Development is conceived as separate, post-colonial development using state planning

to substitute for imports and reduce dependency on minority world.

Colonialism underdeveloped majority world countries, in order to develop at their

expense. De-industrialization in the majority world had been deliberately fostered
through western control over natural resources, technology, trade, labour, aid,
financial institutions etc.

Take the case of India, for example. In 1750 India produced about a quarter of world
industrial output – by 1900 only 2%. Its textile industry was decimated by loss of
export markets and then losses in the domestic market – losses filled by British
textiles. One consequence was an increasing proportion of the population depending
on subsistence agriculture.

So economies of west and ‘third world’ are not separate systems as modernization
theory assumes but integrated into one unequal economic order. The ‘third world’ is
economically subordinated to the west; it won’t catch up but fall further behind. Free
flow of capital doesn’t bring development but builds on and fosters inequalities. The
West hasn’t developed separately from the ‘third world’ but at the expense of the
‘third world’, on its back so to speak. The ‘third world’ has provided raw materials,
cheap labour and a market for exports.

What is needed to foster real development is for ‘third world’ countries to detach
themselves from this exploitative relationship and develop themselves – pursuing ISI
strategies to reduce dependence on imports, poverty reduction strategies, state
planning.

Critique of dependency theory:

Economic inequalities are within the west as well as between the west and ‘third
world’

How can industrial development in east and southeast Asia be accounted for?
ISI hasn’t resulted in economic growth
Constructs third world societies as victims, underestimates resistance

5. How would you characterise Marxist-feminist understandings of gender

and development?

Gita Sen and Lourdes Beneria (1982)

Gita Sen and Caren Grown (1987) Development Crises and Alternative Visions
Maria Mies (1986) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale
June Nash and Helen Safa (1980) Sex and Class in Latin America
Problem is not that women haven’t been integrated into development but the way
they’ve been integrated, the terms of their integration. It’s not a question of the
prejudice and misinformation of planners but structural inequalities in the
development process itself. Capitalism drives unequal development and social
conflict. The problem is not a technical one but a political one.

Key concepts: Reproduction, capital accumulation

Need to disaggregate women and recognise stratification by class and ethnicity

Women don’t all have the same interests
Class divisions separate men – not all of them benefit from development
The problem for women isn’t just sexism but also racism and class discrimination.

Need a historical approach located in particular cultural contexts.

Women’s subordination is one of the pre-conditions for western industrialisation in

both the west and the third world – their unpaid reproductive labour subsidises
capitalism.
Women’s subordination is located in men’s control over private property in the
household, her economic dependence on him and relegation to the reproductive
sphere (housewifization)

Colonialism valorized this type of gender division of labour and imposed it where it
didn’t exist – for example giving land rights only to men; assuming that men should
be the breadwinners and women the homemakers (Eleanor Leacock)

Capitalism may displace women from artisanal production and force them into
economic dependence on men and/or waged work at the bottom of the labour
hierarchy

6. What criticisms have been made of Marxist-feminist approaches?

It’s another monolithic conceptual framework with apparently universal application

Rely on highly abstract systems of domination but unclear how they work at micro
level
Power is conceptualised as power over – what about non-coercive power (norms;
values; self-discipline?)
Doesn’t accord women agency – they are victims
Resistance doesn’t have to be revolutionary
Patriarchy is one size fits all
Theoretical framework drawn from analysis of industrialized west
About majority world women but not by them

Naila Kabeer details the Subordination of Women Group (SOW) and their recognition
that social relations needed to be analysed, patriarchy needs to be disaggregated, men
and masculinities considered.