Gender Interests and Needs

Reporters: Daniel, J. & Parazo P. A.

Objectives:
At the end of this chapter, the students should be able to:
1. Identify the difference between gender interests and needs;
2. Give examples of gender needs and explain how policy can be made responsive to these
needs; and
3. Discover his or her own strategic and practical gender needs.
Gender Interests and Needs in Development
Caroline Moser in her landmark book, Gender Planning and Development: Theory,
Practice and Training, discussed feminist theories in relation to trends in gender and
development and gender and planning.
It is important to determine a woman’s gender interest versus her gender needs in the
context of her culture and religious identity.
Gender Interests
 Gender interests are assumed by many to be the same for all those belonging in the
same sex.
 This view discounts women’s socialized gender roles.
 Maxine Molyneux, a feminist, defines gender interests as interests that are developed
by men or women by “virtue of their social positioning through gender attributes.”
Suggests the use of “gender interests” over “women’s interests” because the latter has
the tendency to focus on the generic notion of women based on their biological
similarities.
 Planners translate gender identities into identifiable and concrete gender needs.
 Gender interests are considered prioritized gender concerns while gender needs are
“means by which their concerns may be satisfied.”
 Gender interests are further differentiated into either practical or strategic depending
on how these gender interests are addressed.
Gender Needs
 Practical Gender Needs, in terms of planning, are not necessarily feminist in content.
 Concerned with women’s immediate needs for survival—nutrition, living conditions,
health care, and employment.
 Often involve their roles in the households as primary agents in the reproductive sphere
and domestic roles.
 The practical gender needs statement are often just universal needs under the guise of
“women’s needs”, distracting women from their true need: gender equality.
  Moser – unequal division of labor and the structures that support unequal gender
relations are not sufficiently challenged by merely addressing practical gender needs.
Dealing with practical gender needs alone will not transform social structures and
processes.
Strategic Gender Needs
 Different from women’s practical gender needs.
 Confront issues that are at the heart of the feminist movement: gender inequality,
gender justice, and women’s empowerment.
 Rooted from a woman’s strategic gender interest due to her socialized gender role as a
woman: one who has a subordinate position (gender subordination) in the society.
Gender inequality—lack of political representation, the unfair gender division of labor,
violence against women, and the non-observance of equal pay.
Challenges for the Fulfillment of Gender Needs in the Philippines
 The Philippines enacts gender mainstreaming or the strategy for the inclusion of a
gender perspective in all policies and programs.
 Philippine gender literature only assumes two genders (male and female), ignoring the
existence of LGBT people.
 Gender needs are equated to women-specific, practical, and strategic gender needs.
 Gender mainstreaming texts such as the Magna Carta of Women assumes homogeneity
that disregards LGBT people’s gender needs.
 Gender mainstreaming policies group women into one homogenous category, while
vaguely defining who women are.
 The lack of clarity in addressing women’s needs based on their roles, biology, culture,
and subordinate positions shows how gender needs may become confused.