WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT

1950s when studies of economic development first brought women into its discourse, focusing on women only
as subjects of welfare policies – notably those centered on food aid and family planning.

The focus of women in development increased throughout the decade, and by 1962, the United Nations
General Assembly called for the Commission on the Status of Women to collaborate with the Secretary
General and a number of other UN sectors to develop a longstanding program dedicated to women's
advancement in developing countries.

WID was coined by development practitioners and feminists in the USA and the USAID with Office of Women
in Development was the main advocator of this approach. WID originated as a result of three major feminist
waves concerning feminine conditions; first, women fought for the equal right to vote and participate in
politics; second, feminism sought to deal with the remaining social and cultural inequalities women were faced
with in everyday affair i.e. sexual violence, reproductive rights, sexual discrimination and glass ceilings; and the
third was by Ester Boserup’s publication which sent a shock wave through northern development agencies and
humanitarian organization as it explained why women were being deprived an equal share among men in
social benefits and economic gains (Collins, 2013). Boserup’s book, Womens Role in Economic Development
(1970), challenged the assumptions of the welfare approach and highlighted women’s importance to the
agricultural economy. WID advocates rejected the narrow view of women’s roles (as mothers and wives)
underlying much of development policy concerning women. The WID approach is a liberal approach that
emphasized a focus on interventions to reduce poverty and its origins of WID have always been attached to
the early theories of development especially modernization which partly aimed at maximizing utilization of
resources, with assumptions that through industrialization, countries would economically develop and benefits
trickle down to all households thus eliminating poverty.

Since Boserup's consider that development affects men and women differently, the study of gender's relation
to development has gathered major interest amongst scholars and international policymakers. Boserup was
the first to systematically delineate on a global level the sexual division of labor that existed in agrarian
economies. She analyzed the changes that occur in traditional agricultural practices as societies became
modernized and examined the differential impact of those changes on the work done by men and women. She
concluded that in sparsely populated regions where shifting agriculture is practiced, women tend to do the
majority of agricultural work, in more de17se1y populated regions, where ploughs and other simple
technologies are used, men tend to do more of the agricultural work. Finally, in areas of intensive, irrigation-
based cultivation, both men and women share in agricultural tasks. Boserup's work was remarkable in that it
was based on analysis of data and evidence which had long been available to social scientists and development
planners, but she was the first to systematically use gender as an independent variable in her analysis.
Boserup's research was later criticized by for its oversimplification of the nature of women's work and roles.

Reeves and Baden (2000) point out that the WID approach stresses the need for women to play a greater role
in the development process. According to this perspective, women's active involvement in policymaking will
lead to more successful policies overall.[15] Thus, a dominant strand of thinking within WID sought to link
women's issues with development, highlighting how such issues acted as impediments to economic growth;
this “relevance” approach stemmed from the experience of WID advocates which illustrated that it was more
effective if demands of equity and social justice for women were strategically linked to mainstream
development concerns, in an attempt to have WID policy goals taken up by development agencies.[16] The
Women in Development approach was the first contemporary movement to specifically integrate women in
the broader development agenda and acted as the precursor to later movements such as the Women and
Development (WAD), and ultimately, the Gender and Development approach, departing from some of the
criticized aspects imputed to the WID.
By the 1970s, this view of modernization, was being questioned by many reseachers. It was argued that the
relative position of women had, in fact, improved very little over the past two decades. There was even
evidence which suggested that the position of some women had declined (Boserup, 1970; Tinker and Bramson,
1976; Boulding, 1976; Kelly and Elliot, 1982). For example, in general, women were less likely to benefit from
the surge of educational expansion (Muchena 1982). Enrolment figures, especially at the tertiary level, tended
to be lower for females. Research in the 1970s confirmed Boserup's earlier findings. As new technologies were
introduced into the agricultural sector, they usually were directed at men rather than women.