NEW Generation University College

Department of Global Studies and International Relations (GSIR )

Gender and Development Studies Course (GSIR 292)

1. Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Conceptualization Gender and Development

 For decades, women were considered marginal actors in the development process,
either as victims of “underdeveloped” cultures, passive recipients of aid, or
reproductive vessels for overpopulation. The policy and discursive processes by
which women have become visible actors in development spans decades and
demonstrates the shifting (and overlapping) subject positions they have occupied:
oppressed wife, dutiful mother, empowered entrepreneur.

 Today, the dominant discourses of “Gender Equality as Smart Economics” and

the “Business Case for Gender Equality” represent the primary modes by
which girls and women visibility and agency in global governance.

 For decades, feminist advocates worked to put gender on the agenda by convincing
policy makers that they would ignore gender inequalities at their peril. Efforts to
demonstrate the intrinsic and instrumental value of gender have been
ongoing for years in development, with mixed success and slow
transformation in mainstream institutions. In recent year, narratives
emphasizing the efficiency of gender equality for states and corporations have caught
on and spread rapidly, as have arguments about the altruistic and efficient economic
behaviour of women, who are represented as unique drivers of shared growth.

 Today, the role of gender equality is widely recognized in governmental institutions

and celebrated by policy makers, who promise to deliver growth by empowering
women. The rationale tends to emphasize instrumental benefits of gender equality
that considers the following:
a) the instrumental case stresses that gender equality produces a range
of other beneficial outcomes, rather than advocating for gender
equality on the basis of its intrinsic importance.

b) This mode of instrumental advocacy of gender equality now dominates

the discourse, most notably in the years following the 2007–2008
global financial crisis .

c) The issue of low female labor force participation, for instance, is

recognized in terms of national productivity and planning inefficiency.

d) The recognition of gender inequality as a producer of economic,

social, and political inefficiencies has animated a new political
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 discourse around the need to “tap in” to women’s power, to
“unlock” their economic potential, and to educate and
empower girls in order to produce profitable returns on their
human capital in the long run.

 Gender equality does not necessarily mean equal numbers of men and women or
girls and boys in all activities, nor does it mean treating them in the same way. It
means equality of opportunity and a society in which women and men are
able to lead equally fulfilling lives.

 The aim of gender equality recognizes that men and women often have different
needs and priorities, face different constraints band have different
aspirations. Above all, the absence of gender equality means a huge loss of human
potential and has costs for both men and women and also for development.

 Rhetorical consensus on the issue of gender equality is now so widely shared

across institutions and regions that it appears as a common-sense feature of
mainstream development discourse.

History of Gender in Context of Development and Recognition of

Women’s Rights to Development

 Over more than half a century ago, in 1946, the United Nations set up the
Commission on the Status of Women. It was to have two basic functions:
a) to ‘prepare recommendations and reports to the Economic
and Social Council on promoting women’s rights in political,
economic, civil, social and educational fields’; and
b) to make recommendations on ‘urgent problems requiring
immediate attention in the field of women’s rights’ (United
Nations 1996: 13).

 The remit of the Commission remained essentially the same until 1987 when it
was expanded to include advocacy for equality, development and peace
and monitoring of the implementation of measures for the
advancement of women at regional, sectoral, national and global
levels (Memson, 2004).

 Today it is clear that progress towards gender equality in most parts of the
world is considerably less than that which was hoped for. However, disparities
between women in different countries are greater than those between men and
women in one country can have. At the beginning of the new millennium life
expectancy at birth for women varies from 82 years in Hong Kong to 38 in
Zambia, while male life expectancy is lower, ranging from 37 years in Angola
and Zambia to 77 in Hong Kong, the same as in Sweden (PRB 2002).

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 According to research carried by the UN in 2004 , globally only 69 per cent of
women but 83 per cent of men over 15 years of age are literate (PRB 2002).
The proportion of illiterates in the female population varies from 92 per cent in
Niger to less than 1 per cent in Barbados and Tajikistan, but in some countries,
such as Lesotho, Jamaica, Uruguay, Qatar and the Arab Emirates, a higher
proportion of women than men are literate (PRB 2002).

 Even within individual countries women are not homogeneous groups but can
be differentiated by class, race, ethnicity, and religion and life stage. The elite
and the young are more likely to be educated everywhere, increasing the
generational gap. The range on most socio-economic measures is wider for
women than for men and is greatest among the countries of the South.

 As we enter the new millennium the development focus is on alleviating world

poverty. The empowerment of women and the promotion of gender equality is
one of the eight internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
designed to achieve this. There is a great deal of evidence drawn from
comparisons at the national and sub-national scale that societies that
discriminate on the basis of gender pay a price in more poverty, slower
growth and a lower quality of life, while gender equality enhances
development.

 For example it has been estimated that increasing the education and
access to inputs of female farmers relative to male farmers in Kenya
would raise yields by as much as one-fifth. Literate mothers have better-
fed children who are more likely to attend school. Yet in no country in the
developing world do women enjoy equality with men in terms of political,
legal, social and economic rights.

 In general, women in Eastern Europe have the greatest equality of rights, but
this has declined in the last decade. The lowest equality of rights is found in
South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. There are no
global comparative data on rights more recent than 1990 but there is some
evidence that equality of rights has improved since the 1995 Fourth World
Conference on Women held in Beijing.

 The Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination

against Women (CEDAW) was established in 1979 and came into force in
1981 after it had been ratified by 20 countries (Elson 2000). By 1996, 152
countries had become party to the Convention but in 2002 the United States
had still not ratified it. Unfortunately, ratification of CEDAW does not necessarily
lead to an immediate reduction in gender discrimination but it does enforce
regular reporting on progress.

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 1.1. The Concept of Gender and Related Terms

 The term Gender means different things to different. In this course we can consider
to be Gender (the socially acquired notions of masculinity and femininity by which
women and men are identified)( Memson, 2020).This one is a widely used and often
misunderstood term. It is sometimes mistakenly conflated with sex or used to
refer only to women.

 Gender identities, because they are socially acquired, are flexible and not simple
binary constructions. Women and girls with non-conforming sexual identities
including lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered and inter-sex (LBGTI) persons may
be especially vulnerable to gender-based violence (GBV).

 Gender relations on the hand, is the socially constructed form of relations between
women and men) have been interrogated in terms of the way development policies
change the balance of power between women and men. Gender roles (the household
tasks and types of employment socially assigned to women and men) are not fixed
and globally consistent and indeed become more flexible with the changes
brought about by economic development.

 Hence, everywhere gender is crosscut by differences in class, race, ethnicity,

religion, age and disability. The much-criticized binary division between ‘Western’
women and the ‘Other’, between white and non-white and between colonizer and
colonized is both patronizing and simplistic (Mohanty 1984) in (Memson, 2020).

 Feminists have often seen women as socially constituted as a homogeneous group

on the basis of shared oppression. But in order to understand these gender relations
we must interpret them within specific societies and on the basis of historical and
political practice, not a priori on gender terms alone. Different places and societies
have different practices and it is necessary to be cognizant of this heterogeneity
within a certain global homogeneity of gender roles.

 At the same time we need to be aware of different voices and to give them agency.
The subaltern voice is hard to hear but by presenting experiences from fieldwork, I
have tried to incorporate it. The voices of educated women and men of the South
can interpret post-coloniality, but because they write in the colonizers’ languages,
their voices have to be listened to on several levels. By combining an appreciation of
different places and different voices we can arrive at an understanding of how the
process of economic change in the South and in the post-communist countries is
impacting people and communities (Kinnaird and Momsen 1993).

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 World Bank Definition of Gender

 According to World Ban (2004) , the term gender refers to socially constructed
and socially learned behaviours and expectations associated with females and males.
All cultures interpret and elaborate the biological differences between women and
men into a set of social expectations about what behaviours and activities are
appropriate and what rights, resources, and power women and men possess.
 Like race, ethnicity, and class, gender is a social category that largely establishes
one’s life chances. It shapes one’s participation in society and in the economy. Some
societies do not experience racial or ethnic divides, but all societies experience gender
asymmetries—differences and disparities—to varying degrees. Often those
asymmetries take time to change, but they are far from static and can, at times,
change quite rapidly in response to policy and shifting socioeconomic conditions.
 While the term gender refers to men and women, in a report by the World Bank ,
gender refers to the condition of women in the MENA ( Middle East and Northern
Africa ) societies.

Definition of Gender Equality.

 In the context of this course we define gender equality in terms of equality under
the law, equality of opportunity (including equality of rewards for work and equality
in access to human capital and other productive resources that enable opportunity),
and equality of voice (the ability to influence and contribute to the development
process).
 For two reasons, this course stops short of defining gender equality as equality of
outcomes:
a) First different cultures and societies can follow different paths in their
pursuit of gender equality

b) Second, attaining gender equality demands a recognition that current

social, economic, cultural, and political systems are gendered; that
women’s differential status is pervasive, therefore limiting both men’s and
women’s flexibility to choose; that this pattern is further affected by
race, ethnicity, and disability; and that it is necessary to
incorporate women’s specificity, priorities, and values into all
major social institutions.

Empowerment and Women Empowerment

 Empowerment Par according to Part, . et al, (2002) has become a popular, largely
unquestioned ‘good’ aspired to by such diverse and contradictory institutions as the
World Bank, Oxfam and many more radical non-government organizations (NGOs).
Initially, the term was most commonly associated with alternative approaches to
development, with their concern for local, grassroots community-based movements

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 and initiatives, and their growing disenchantment with mainstream, top-down
approaches to development.

 More recently, empowerment has been adopted by mainstream development

agencies as well, albeit more to improve productivity within the status quo
than to foster social transformation. Empowerment has thus become a
‘motherhood’ term, comfortable and unquestionable, something very different
institutions and practices seem to be able to agree on. Yet this very agreement
braises important questions such as:
1) Why is empowerment acceptable to such disparate bedfellows?
2) What can empowerment mean if it is the watchword of such different and
often conflicting development approaches and institutions?
3) How can such a fluid, poorly defined term address issues of women’s
empowerment in a still largely male dominated world?\

 According to these authors, they are only scholars raising these questions.
Empowerment, especially for women, has been on the minds of a number of scholars
and practitioners, most notably Haleh Afshar (1998), Jo Rowlands (1997), Naila Kabeer
(1994) and Srilatha Batliwala (1994).

 However, most interrogations of the term have focused on ways to improve its
effectiveness at the local level. The emphasis has been on grassroots, participatory
methods and their empowerment potential for the ‘poorest of the poor’ (especially
women).

 While a welcome antidote to the development community’s long-standing preference for

state-led, top-down development, we believe this focus on the local also has profound
limitations. In particular, it tends to underplay or ignore the impact of global and national
forces on prospects for poor people’s (especially women’s) empowerment, and
encourages a rather romantic equation between empowerment, inclusion and voice
that papers over the complexities of em(power)ment, both as a process and
a goal.

In this regards, we propose a new approach to women’s empowerment, focusing on four

issues:

a) Since even the most marginalized, impoverished communities are affected by

global and national forces, we believe empowerment must be analysed in global
and national as well as local terms. Global forces, whether economic, political
or cultural, are both marginalizing some and enhancing the power of
others. But no one is left untouched. Moreover, this is a highly gendered
process. To ignore the multilevel, interrelated character of these struggles, even

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 in poor, marginalized communities, is to misunderstand empowerment in our
increasingly interconnected global/local world, Part, . et al, (2002)

b) Understanding and facilitating women’s empowerment requires a more nuanced

analysis of power. Empowerment is not simply the ability to exert power over
people and resources. Drawing on Foucault’s writings, we argue that empowerment
involves the exercise rather than possession of power. This approach
reminds us that empowerment cannot transcend power relations; it is enmeshed in
relations of power at all levels of society. At the same time, such an analysis allows
us to open up development praxis to scrutiny by feminist theories of power in order
to explore issues of structure and agency. In agreement with Rowlands, we believe
empowerment must be understood as including both individual
conscientization (power within) as well as the ability to work collectively,
which can lead to politicized power with others, which provides the power
to bring about change.

c) Although empowerment is a process whereby women and men experience as well

as challenge and subvert power relationships, it takes place in institutional,
material and discursive contexts. Whether gaining skills, developing
consciousness or making decisions, individual empowerment takes place within the
structural constraints of institutions and discursive practices. Groups become
empowered through collective action, but that action is enabled or constrained by
the structures of power that they encounter. We believe much closer
attention must be paid to the broad political and economic structures, cultural
assumptions and discourses, notions of human rights, laws and practices
in which women and men seek to survive and even flourish in
marginalized communities around the world.

d) We believe empowerment is both a process and an outcome. It is a process in that

it is fluid, often unpredictable, and requires attention to the specificities of
struggles over time and place. Empowerment can also be seen as an outcome
that can be measured against expected accomplishments. Attempts to
measure outcomes are important as a means for keeping development practitioners
and policy-makers honest. At the same time, we caution against a too ready
assumption that the achievement of stated goals is proof of individual or group
empowerment.

1.2. Concept of sustainable Development and Gender Equity

Concepts of Development
 Global development as an industry distributes resources from networks of wealthy
institutions toward their approved recipient agencies on behalf of perceived publics.
The narrative guiding the development industry begins with the recognition and

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 framing of problems that can be solved through strategic intervention, feasibly
funded and implemented by partner agencies, with the power to assert their
institutional missions and their strategic visions.

 The meaning and concept of development in this context is to act to promote a

public good, conceptualized beyond the institutional parameters of the acting
agencies.

 The goal is to benefit people outside of the donor community is critical in

differentiating “development” as strategic social change, with a mission to
improve the conditions not just of the individual or organization funding
the intervention, but also of a broader community.

 What defines public benefit, and how best to achieve social change toward that
benefit, is contingent upon narratives of development that structure the allocation of
resources as well as the articulation of the nature of the social change
process, the problem and its solution, and the people expected to receive
the benefit .

The Concepts of Sustainable Development

Melissa et, L ( 2018) have this to say about interconnectivity between sustainable
development , gender equality and environment

 Women in Kenya struggle to produce crops to feed their families amidst drying
climates and insecure land tenure, on holdings diminished by privatesector ‘land
grabs’.

 In many villages and cities, vital work to care for the people who sustain
economies and societies is compromised and rendered more difficult, because
the basic water, sanitation, health and energy services needed aren’t within
reach.
 Environmental and economic problems are blamed on population growth and the ‘excessive fertility’ of
women – especially in Africa – encouraging a resurgence of coercive policies that undermine their bodily
integrity and control.

 Forest user groups in India with strong women’s involvement render landscapes
greener and richer in biodiversity and climate mitigation potential, while also
satisfying vital needs for livelihoods, food and fuel.

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  Waste picker networks with women at their heart combine livelihoods with ‘green’
circular economies both in their communities and through up scaling into global
networks
 Vignettes like these highlight vital interconnections between gender, environment and
development. Environmental degradation has different impacts on women and men.
Development patterns that neglect everyday environmental and economic needs can
worsen women’s positions, but so can environment and development discourses that
target women inappropriately. Yet in an era when development is becoming sustainable
development, women are also leading the way in new practices that combine
environmental, economic and social goals.

 This portion in this chapter highlights the vital synergies between sustainable
development and gender equality, but also the need for transformational change if
negative interactions are to be averted and positive pathways built.

 Accelerating sustainable development and enhancing gender equality are both current
imperatives in research, policy and public debate

 Pursuing either sustainability or gender equality without attention to the other is doomed
to failure on practical, moral and political grounds; the challenge, therefore, is to find
pathways that build synergies between these concerns, towards sustainable and just
futures for all. But how is this to be done, and by whom? How are gender equality,
sustainability and their interlinkages to be understood, and how might the challenge of
integrating them be addressed?

 Dominant narratives of development still rely on modernization as a foundational

paradigm, even though for decades scholars have critiqued this framework through
critical analysis of national dependencies and growing inequalities, pointing out the
elitist and patriarchal assumptions made, and the lack of more open structures for
participatory decision making.

 But the idea that nations, through their receipt of foreign aid, channeled in appropriate
directions with the blessing of their donors, can improve the conditions of their citizens
through strategic planning and targeted intervention relies on the
expectation of modernization.Through the use of technology and the process
of bureaucratic management, modernization offers a vision of how serious
development problems can be solved.

 Our starting point in this argument is that there is glaring evidence that dominant
patterns of production, consumption and distribution are heading in deeply
unsustainable directions. In a world in which humanity has become a key driver of
Earth system processes, we are seeing over-exploitation of natural resources, the
loss of key habitats and biodiversity, and pollution of land, seas and the atmosphere.
These authors, however, argue that scientific understandings are clarifying the huge

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 social, environmental and economic challenges posed by threats such as climate change
and loss of essential ecosystem services, as humanity approaches or exceeds so-called
‘planetary boundaries.

 Already, human interactions with the environment are producing unprecedented shocks
and stresses, felt in floods, droughts, and devastated urban and rural landscapes and
livelihoods, while many people and places have suffered from a ‘nexus’ of food, energy,
environmental and financial crises. These unsustainable patterns add to poverty
and inequality today – especially for the third of the world’s population
directly dependent on natural resources for their wellbeing (Unmüßig et al,
2012 in Leach et.al m,2018) – and create deep threats for future generations. And
their effects often intensify gender inequality

Causes of Unsustainability of Development AND Gender Inequality

 The causes and underlying drivers of unsustainability and of gender inequality are
deeply interlocked. According to Leach et.al, (2018) are produced by political–
economic relations in late capitalism that support particular types of neoliberal, market-
led growth. These involve the following ones :

a) Extreme privatization, financialization and concentration of capital;

production geared to short-term profits;
b) Unfettered material consumption; and
c) Unprecedented levels of militarism – very often at the expense of
state regulation and redistribution, reproduction and care

 These political–economic relations rely on and reproduce gender inequalities,

exploiting women’s labour and provision of unpaid care, and often their
bodies too. They are leading, in many settings, to crises of social reproduction, while
undermining people’s rights and dignity.

 The same political–economic relations also produce environmental problems,

as market actors seek and secure profit in ways that rely on the over-exploitation of
natural resources and the pollution of climates, land and oceans. Such market-
led pathways are leading in directions that are unsustainable in social and
ecological terms, and ultimately in economic terms too, undermining the
conditions for future progress Leach et, al. (20`8).

 Growing international attention and debate now highlight the need to move economies
and societies onto more sustainable paths, whether to avert crisis and
catastrophe, or enable prosperity through ‘green economies’. Yet often missing
in these debates is a sense of the politics involved. The challenge is often seen in
technical and managerial terms, as a matter of getting the technologies, prices and
regulations right. This overlooks the more profound restructuring of social, economic

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 and political systems that we may require to transform unsustainable patterns. Equally,
‘sustainability’ is often presented as if it were a clear, uncontested term. Yet many
tensions and trade-offs arise:

a) For instance between finance for different kinds of low-carbon energy;

between prioritizing food or biofuels in land use,
b) Or forests for carbon to mitigate global climate change or to meet local
livelihood needs, to name a few.

 Yet this is also a time of opportunity. Examples are accumulating around the world of
alternative pathways that move towards sustainability and gender equality, uniting these
in powerful synergies. Some are rooted in the everyday practices through which women
and men access, control, use and manage forests, soils and urban landscapes in ways
that sustain livelihoods and wellbeing. Others are evident in movements and collectives,
many led by women, to build alternative food and resource sovereignty, agro-
ecology, urban transitions or solidarity economies. While some of these offer
alternatives or modifications within current capitalist relations, others suggest routes to
more profound ‘green transformations.’

In this regards , according Leach et ,al ,.(2018) integrating gender equality and
sustainable development is therefore important for the foolwing reason several
reasons.

a) First, this is a moral and ethical imperative: building more equitable gender
relations that support the human rights, dignity and capabilities of all women and
men, intersected by differences of class, race, sexuality, age, ability and
circumstances, is a central requirement of an ethical world order.

b) Second, an integrated approach is vital to avoid women becoming victims,

redressing the all-too- common pattern whereby women suffer most from
environmental, climatic and economic shocks and stresses, undermining their vital
roles in sustaining their families and communities.

c) But third, and most significantly, an integrated approach offers opportunities to

build on people’s agency. Attention to gender offers routes to improve resource
productivity and efficiency; to enhance ecosystem conservation and sustainable
use, and to build more sustainable, low-carbon food, energy, water and health
systems.

 Not just victims, the argument in this portion of the chapter is to show how women
have been, and can be, central actors in pathways to sustainability and green
transformation. Yet, crucially, this must not mean adding ‘environment’ to women’s
caring roles, or instrumentalizing women as the new ‘sustainability saviours’. It

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means recognition and respect for their knowledge, rights, capabilities and
bodily integrity, and ensuring that roles are matched with rights and
control over resources and decision-making power.

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