Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
4.1 GENDER,
HOUSEHOLDS AND
DEVELOPMENT
Shifts in Thinking about Gender in
Development Policy and Planning
By the 1970s, disenchantment with modernist approaches to develop-
ment led to the emergence of a range of radical approaches to develop-
ment, as noted in Chapter 2.2. This included the recognition that
women's views, interests and experiences were an essential part of
the development process that could no longer be ignored. Thinking
about the links between gender and development has shifted over
time. The first approach, Women in Development (WID) was largely
inspired by Ester Boserup's (1970) critique of the ways that women
had been left out of economic development and her calls for women's
contributions to development to be recognized. In this approach,
specific projects were developed, focusing primarily on what were
considered 'women's issues' in inequalities in the labour market and
often resulting in women-only income-generation projects. Many of
the projects providing access to credit were unsuccessful and, in many
ways, the approach reinforced the modernist development ideology
that saw development only in terms of economic growth (see Chapter 1.1
and Chapter 2.1).
Growing criticism of the failure of WID to challenge international
structures of inequality and to recognize women's work in both the
public and the private domains led to the second approach, Women and
Development (WAD). WAD drew on the radical ideas of dependency
theory, which focused on the unequal relationship of 'dependency'
between the 'developed' and 'underdeveloped' worlds within the global
capitalist system (see Chapter 2.2). WAD analysed the ways that
development shaped inequalities in women's paid and unpaid work
