research on gender and development

• Write for the journal

Read the journal

• News, Blogs & Events

A unique journal aiming to inspire and support development policy and practice, for social justice and gender equality.

Latest Issue

Decolonising knowledge and practice, volume 31, issue 2&3, july-november 2023.

We are pleased to present to you this year’s July-November double issue on the theme 'Decolonising Knowledge and Practice.'

This special issue is edited by a group of committed decolonial feminist researchers, thinkers, and practitioners – Julia Schöneberg, Lata Narayanaswamy, Montserrat Algarabel, and Lina Abou-Habib and the editorial team comprising Shivani Satija, Anandita Ghosh and Mahima Nayar.  The issue set out to examine the colonial, racist, ableist, casteist, and patriarchal power dynamics that undergird our knowledge and research institutions, publishing realms, development policy and practice, and our everyday lives. Contributions include pieces from rural and urban Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Oman, Palestine, Senegal, Syria and Zambia.

Latest News, Events & Calls for Contributions

Call for contribution: volume 33, issue 1 transforming land and water rights, improving rural livelihoods and carving just responses to the climate crisis, we are because she is: celebrating micere githae mugo, decolonising knowledge and practice: our new issue, call for contribution: volume 32, issue 3: disaster and resilience: intersectional approaches towards establishing resilient communities during crises (closed), past issues.

For over 25 years, Gender & Development has been publishing a range of voices from development research, policy and practice and feminist activists across the globe.

The journal publishes three issues a year on key themes.

• Women Human Rights Defenders  March 2023
• Women, Work, and the Digital Economy  November 2022
• Gender-Responsive Recovery: Ensuring Women’s Decent Work and Transforming Care Provision  March-July 2022

Gender & Development is published for Oxfam by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. For details about subscribing to the journal, please visit the  website . (There is a reduced subscription rate for low and middle-income countries.)

Articles are also available free to access via the Oxfam Policy & Practice website . Search using the article title.

Find out more

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Patterns of Gender Development

Carol lynn martin.

1 Arizona State University, School of Social and Family Dynamics, Program in Family and Human Development, Tempe, Arizona 85287-3701; ude.usa@nitramc

Diane N. Ruble

2 Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003; [email protected]

A comprehensive theory of gender development must describe and explain long-term developmental patterning and changes and how gender is experienced in the short term. This review considers multiple views on gender patterning, illustrated with contemporary research. First, because developmental research involves understanding normative patterns of change with age, several theoretically important topics illustrate gender development: how children come to recognize gender distinctions and understand stereotypes, and the emergence of prejudice and sexism. Second, developmental researchers study the stability of individual differences over time, which elucidates developmental processes. We review stability in two domains—sex segregation and activities/interests. Finally, a new approach advances understanding of developmental patterns, based on dynamic systems theory. Dynamic systems theory is a metatheoretical framework for studying stability and change, which developed from the study of complex and nonlinear systems in physics and mathematics. Some major features and examples show how dynamic approaches have been and could be applied in studying gender development.

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the changes that correspond with the passage of time is a hallmark of developmental studies, including the study of gender development. Gender developmental scientists are concerned with age-related changes in gender typing, and more broadly, with many issues about the emergence and patterning of gendered behaviors and thinking. Description of these changes is vitally important as it informs theoretical approaches to gender development. Using a broad lens on age-related changes provides important information describing how development occurs, but shorter time frames are also useful for identifying processes that may underlie developmental patterns. Gender developmental scientists are beginning to conceptualize temporal change and measurement of relevant variables over time in more nuanced ways and with new methods and analytic strategies.

Our goal in this article is not to provide an extensive review of changes in gender over childhood, but instead to focus on the perspective of developmental patterning. In selecting issues to review, we attempted to find a set of issues that would provide insights into processes underlying gender development while also being representative of contemporary issues and future directions in the field. First, to highlight developmentalists' interest in average or normative changes across age, we review the timeline of gender development for the emergence of gender understanding and stereotyping and how discrimination and prejudice develop in childhood. Second, we examine continuities within individuals over time as an important theoretical complement to the first focus on mean-level, normative patterns over time. Longitudinal studies are reviewed to examine whether individual differences are stable over time in two areas of gender typing: sex segregation and activities and interests. Finally, we discuss how dynamic systems theory may be applied in gender development and describe its potential for understanding patterns over different time frames.

HOW EARLY DO CHILDREN ACQUIRE GENDER CONCEPTS AND EXHIBIT PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION?

The first few years of life and into adolescence have been the focus of much theorizing and empirical research on gender development. Major questions have arisen about the timeline of gender development, and resolving these issues is central to understanding processes underlying gender development. In this section, we discuss two key aspects of gender development. First, the earliest emergence of gender understanding and behaviors provides insights about the origins of sex differences and the prominence of gender as a social category, and so it is not surprising that these topics have been highlighted in contemporary research on gender development. Second, because of the far-ranging implications on human social interactions, we review research evidence concerning the emergence of gender prejudice and discrimination.

Do Infants Understand and Use Gender?

A major issue that has driven research is whether children's basic understanding of gender identity motivates and organizes the development of gender-typed behaviors, an idea proposed by “self-socialization” theories of gender development. Self-socialization perspectives posit that children actively seek information about what gender means and how it applies to them and that an understanding of gender categories motivates behavior such that, in essence, they socialize themselves (see Martin et al. 2002 ). In contrast, others ( Bussey & Bandura 1999 , Campbell et al. 2002 ) have argued that gender understanding must not play an important role in the emergence of gendered behaviors because some gender-typed behaviors emerge prior to age two, presumably earlier than children's understanding or identification with gender. The evidence needed to resolve this controversy concerns whether behavior becomes increasingly gender typed with the onset of basic gender understanding, and recent findings have extended our knowledge of these fundamental issues. Much has been written about these topics and about the surrounding controversies ( Bandura & Bussey 2004 ; Martin et al. 2002 , 2004 ); here, we provide an overview and update of the evidence.

When do children begin to recognize that there are two types of people—males and females—and when are they able to link this information to other qualities to form basic stereotypes? A related question is, when do children recognize their own sex? Infants as young as three to four months of age distinguish between categories of female and male faces, as demonstrated in habituation and preferential looking paradigms ( Quinn et al. 2002 ). By about six months, infants can discriminate faces and voices by sex, habituate to faces of both sexes, and make intermodal associations between faces and voices (e.g., Fagan & Singer 1979 , Miller 1983 , Younger & Fearing 1999 ). By 10 months, infants are able to form stereotypic associations between faces of women and men and gender-typed objects (e.g., a scarf, a hammer), suggesting that they have the capacity to form primitive stereotypes ( Levy & Haaf 1994 ). Infants' early associative networks about the sexes may not carry the same conceptual or affective associations that characterize those of older children or adults, although the nature of these associations has yet to be examined in any depth (see Martin et al. 2002 ).

Because of the difficulties associated with testing infants, it has been challenging to determine when children first recognize their own or others' sex. Early studies suggested that labeling and understanding of gender may not emerge until about 30 months of age, but more recent studies have moved the age of understanding gender identity and labeling downward. In a study using a preferential looking paradigm, about 50% of 18-month-old girls showed knowledge of gender labels (“lady,” “man”), but boys did not, and 50% of 18- and 24-month-old boys and girls showed above-chance understanding of the label “boy” ( Poulin-Dubois et al. 1998 ). In another non-verbal testing situation, 24- and 30-month old children knew the gender groups to which they and others belonged ( Stennes et al. 2005 ). Similarly, most 24- and 28-month-old children select the correct picture in response to gender labels provided by an experimenter ( Campbell et al. 2002 , Levy 1999 ).

A recent study examined the naturally occurring instances of gender labels (e.g., girl, boy, woman, man, lady, guy) as indicators of knowledge of gender categories and assessed whether the onset of use of these terms related to children's observed free play with toys ( Zosuls et al. 2009 ). Information about gender labels was obtained from examining biweekly parent diaries of children's speech from 10 months of age onward. Zosuls and colleagues (2009) also analyzed videotapes of the children at 17 months and 21 months playing with a set of toys varying from high to neutral in gender typing. The results showed that 25% of children used gender labels by 17 months and 68% by 21 months. On average, girls produced labels at 18 months, one month earlier than did boys. These labeling results were used to predict changes in gender-typed behavior with the two most strongly gender-typed toys (trucks and dolls). Children who knew and used gender labels were more likely than other children to show increases in gender-typed play with toys.

Taken together, these studies suggest that most children develop the ability to label gender groups and to use gender labels in their speech between 18 and 24 months. As proposed by self-socialization theorists, the results from the Zosuls et al. study (2009) suggest that developing this ability has consequences: Knowing basic gender information was related to increased play with strongly stereotyped toys. These findings are consistent with research suggesting that children develop awareness of their own “self ” at roughly 18 months and then begin to actively engage in information seeking about what things mean and how they should behave ( Baldwin & Moses 1996 ).

When Do Children Develop Stereotypes?

Developmental researchers have identified that rudimentary stereotypes develop by about two years of age ( Kuhn et al. 1978 ), and many children develop basic stereotypes by age three ( Signorella et al. 1993 ). Children first show an understanding of sex differences associated with adult possessions (e.g., shirt and tie), physical appearance, roles, toys, and activities, and recognize some abstract associations with gender (e.g., hardness as male; softness as female) ( Leinbach et al. 1997 , Weinraub et al. 1984 ). Children develop stereotypes about physical aggression at an early age, and by age 41½, children believe that girls show more relational aggression than boys ( Giles & Heyman 2005 ). Interestingly, even when researchers examine children's spontaneous associations about boys and girls, a consistent pattern is found from preschool through fourth/fifth grade: girls are seen as nice, wearing dresses, and liking dolls, and boys are seen as having short hair, playing active games, and being rough ( Miller et al. 2009 ).

As children grow older, the range of stereotypes about sports, occupations, school tasks, and adult roles expands, and the nature of the associations becomes more sophisticated (e.g., Sinno & Killen 2009 ). Specifically, early in childhood, children make vertical associations between the category label (“girls,” “boys”) and qualities (e.g., “boys like trucks”). They appear slower to make horizontal inferences (e.g., recognizing that trucks and airplanes are associated with being “masculine”), which tend to appear around age eight. For instance, when told about an unfamiliar sex-unspecified child who likes trucks, older children but not younger ones predict that the child also likes playing with airplanes ( Martin et al. 1990 ). Concreteness of gendered items influences the ability of younger children to make these property-to-property inferences ( Bauer et al. 1998 ). In contrast, adults often rely on individuating information rather than the person's sex to make similar types of judgments ( Deaux & Lewis 1984 ). The difficulty that children have with these judgments suggests that they may not understand within-sex individual differences.

Meta-analytic studies find that stereotypes become more flexible with age ( Signorella et al. 1993 ). A longitudinal study of children from 5 to 10 years of age showed a peak in the rigidity of stereotypes at either 5 or 6 years of age and then an increase in flexibility two years later. Neither the timing nor the level of peak rigidity affected the developmental trajectory, suggesting that children generally follow the same normative path across development despite variations in when rigidity starts and how extreme it becomes ( Trautner et al. 2005 ).

Many questions remain to be answered about the developmental progression in learning the content of stereotypes and in exploring individual differences in patterns of development. For instance, when do children first begin to assume that there are similarities within one sex and dissimilarities between the sexes? Theorists are interested in examining the roles that personal interests and idiosyncratic knowledge play in the development or hindrance in stereotype formation ( Liben & Bigler 2002 , Martin & Ruble 2004 ). Furthermore, how children apply stereotypes once they have learned them is an issue of continuing interest in the field.

When Do Children Exhibit Prejudice and Discrimination?

Recent conceptual analyses suggest a range of factors that likely contribute to the development of stereotypes and prejudice, such as highly salient categorizing dimensions (e.g., sex) ( Martin & Ruble 2004 ) and labeling of these dimensions by others ( Bigler et al. 1997 ). Because recent reviews of Developmental Intergroup Theory have covered the influence of these factors and discussed studies of children's responses to novel stereotyping situations ( Arthur et al. 2008 , Bigler & Liben 2007 ), the focus here is on the age-related changes in cognitive and behavioral expressions of gender prejudice and discrimination, not with their origins.

Attitudes about the two sexes

How do children's evaluations of the two sexes change with age? This question involves a number of different kinds of attitudes and beliefs; we focus on two: ( a ) ingroup/outgroup biases, and ( b ) perceptions of status differences and discrimination. There has been relatively little research on these topics, but interest has increased recently.

Ingroup/outgroup biases

Children's growing awareness of membership in a social group (i.e., male or female) becomes an evaluative process through self-identification and thus affects how positively children regard the ingroup relative to the outgroup ( Ruble et al. 2004 ). Some research suggests that as early as preschool, children report feeling more positively about their own sex ( Yee & Brown 1994 ), and differential liking is also seen among older children (e.g., Heyman 2001 , Verkuyten & Thijs 2001 ). Studies are mixed regarding age trends, depending on the measure. Those examining negative versus positive trait ratings suggest that intergroup biases decline in elementary school (e.g., Egan & Perry 2001 , Powlishta et al. 1994 ), consistent with increasing stereotype flexibility described above; but studies tapping more affective reactions (e.g., liking the ingroup better) do not show this decline (e.g., Yee & Brown 1994 ), at least not until early adolescence ( Verkuyten & Thijs 2001 ).

We do not yet know whether and when ingroup favoritism is associated with outgroup derogation. That is, do children actually dislike or have hostile attitudes toward the other sex, or is it simply that children like their own sex better? Because many studies use difference scores, ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity are often confounded ( Brewer 2001 , Cameron et al. 2001 ). Moreover, Kowalski (2007) reports that studies of young children's interactions do involve evaluative comments between boys and girls but rarely involve animosity, suggesting that some researchers may have misinterpreted children's positive ingroup feelings in structured interviews as overt rejection of the other group. Recent research suggests that when they are decoupled, ingroup positivity effects are stronger than outgroup negativity among elementary school children ( Susskind & Hodges 2007 ). It is also not clear whether young girls' willingness to judge boys as “bad,” for example, indicates outright hostility ( Rudman & Glick 2008 ) or if, instead, such judgments reflect stereotypes about boys getting into trouble (e.g., Heyman 2001 ). On the other hand, studies showing that the other sex is disliked (e.g., Yee & Brown 1994 ) are consistent with a conclusion of negative outgroup evaluation. An important issue for future research concerns this distinction between cognitive and affective aspects of intergroup bias and its connection to the development of gender prejudice ( Halim & Ruble 2009 ).

A distinction in the adult literature between hostile and benevolent sexism ( Glick & Fiske 2001 ) represents a potentially very useful conceptualization for future developmental research. The idea is that, unlike most forms of prejudice toward outgroups, negative intergroup attitudes between males and females are likely to be complicated by intimate interdependence and thus are likely to be ambivalent, involving benevolent as well as hostile aspects. For example, women may be viewed as competitors seeking to gain power over men, but they may also be viewed as angelic (put on a pedestal) and vulnerable, in need of protection. Men may be resented for their dominance over women but also admired as providers and heroes. Applying this distinction to the developmental course of intergroup attitudes, Rudman & Glick (2008) argued that ambivalence does not characterize gender prejudice in young children, but rather that it moves from a simple form of childhood hostility toward competing groups to ambivalent sexism.

This is an interesting proposal with important implications, but questions remain. First, outgroup negativity in young children can be interpreted differently, as suggested above; their perceptions may be simple and competitive, but not extreme enough to be characterized as hostile. Perhaps, instead, children's need to master important categorical distinctions coupled with relatively limited cognitive skills make it threatening when peers cross gender boundaries ( Kowalski 2007 ). Second, young children's attitudes may involve some complexity and ambivalence, but of a different sort than for adults. For example, young children may dislike members of the other sex because they are boring (about girls) or rough (about boys) while still holding positive views about other characteristics of other-sex peers, such as girls are nice and boys play exciting games. Moreover, children begin to anticipate adult roles at an early age, and benevolent feelings could arise from a “princess” anticipating her “prince” or the expectation by two young opposite-sex friends that they will one day be husband and wife. Further examination of different interpretations of preschoolers' ingroup bias is important because knowing what it represents is critical to knowing when to intervene to minimize sexism.

Awareness of status differences and discrimination

When do children become aware of the status difference applied to males and masculine activities relative to females and feminine activities in most cultures? Although studies of gender stereotypes in young children show that they attribute greater power to males and helplessness to females ( Ruble et al. 2006 ), only a few studies have examined perceptions of inequality directly. First, research has found awareness of status differences in occupations typically held by men and women ( Liben et al. 2001 , Teig & Susskind 2008 ). Children as young as 6 years understood that jobs more likely to be held by men (e.g., business executive) are higher in status than female-typical jobs, but only older children (11-year-olds) associated fictitious “male” jobs as being higher in status ( Liben et al. 2001 ). A study of perceptions of a high-status job—the U.S. presidency—found that 87% of children aged 5–10 years knew that only men had been presidents, though knowledge increased significantly with age ( Bigler et al. 2008 ).

Second, research has examined the development of children's general perceptions of gender inequalities ( Neff et al. 2007 ). The findings showed a notable increase between 7 and 15 years of age in beliefs that males are granted more power and respect than females.

Finally, a few recent studies examined children's perceptions of gender discrimination. First, in the study of the presidency, only approximately 30% of the 5- to 10-year-old children attributed the lack of women presidents to discrimination, although this percentage increased with age. Instead, the most frequent explanation was ingroup bias: that men would not vote for women. These findings suggest that even young children are aware of how ingroup biases shape behavior and that they perceive such reasons as more important than institutional discrimination in determining the selection of the president ( Bigler et al. 2008 ). In a second study, children in two age groups (5–7 and 8–10 years) responded to a set of hypothetical stories about teachers deciding whether a boy or a girl did better on an activity ( Brown & Bigler 2005 ). The findings showed that the younger children were somewhat aware of gender discrimination, but such perceptions were higher in the older group. Children perceived discrimination, however, only when explicitly told that the teacher may be biased, not when the context was ambiguous.

Taken together, these studies suggest that children's awareness of the differential status of the sexes and gender discrimination are relatively late-developing phenomena. Young children show limited awareness, but only when contextual cues (e.g., explicit mention of biases) or social experiences (knowledge of status of real occupations) make inequities obvious. More subtle awareness of inequities may not emerge until later in elementary school. The slow development of this more “public” evaluation, such as recognizing status and power differences and institutional discrimination, is in stark contrast to the early developing “personal” regard shown by ingroup biases, suggesting different developmental underpinnings of the two types.

Gender prejudice and discrimination

In what ways might developmental changes in stereotypic beliefs and intergroup attitudes play out in actual choices and behavior? What little research there is on gender prejudice development has primarily focused on two types: ( a ) negative reactions to peers' violations of gender norms and ( b ) preferential treatment.

Reactions to gender norm violations

Because preschoolers have strong beliefs that boys and girls do different things, they would be expected to respond negatively to gender norm violations. Several early studies found support for this prediction ( Huston 1983 ). For example, when 3- to 5-year-olds were videotaped while playing with either a male- or female-typed toy (e.g., soldiers; dollhouse) in the presence of a same-sex peer, children were punished (e.g., ridiculed) by the peer when playing with cross-sex toys ( Langlois & Downs 1980 ).

Recent research has supported and expanded these findings. For example, teachers report that kindergarten children tend to respond in one of three ways to gender norm violations: correction (“give that girl puppet to a girl”), ridicule, and “identity negation” (e.g., “Jeff is a girl”) ( Kowalski 2007 ). Interestingly, one recent study found that preschool children are able to identify children who are more likely to enforce the gender rules and gender-segregated boundaries ( McGuire et al. 2007 ). Preschoolers were asked, “Who in your classroom says you shouldn't play because you are a boy/girl?” The findings showed that children who had greater exposure to “gender enforcer” peers were more likely to limit their play to same-sex peers. These findings suggest that there may be individual differences in overt “sexist” behavior as early as preschool, and that the actions of these gender “police” contribute more broadly to the maintenance of gender distinctions in the classroom.

Because children show age-related increases in the flexibility of stereotypes and other aspects of gender category knowledge, such as gender constancy and the ability to make multiple classifications, their negative reactions to gender norm violations should decline after preschool. Unfortunately, age trends in older children have received little attention, though examples of such behavior abound. Based on extensive qualitative ethnographic observations in middle-elementary school, Thorne (1993) found that boys who violated norms for masculinity were teased, shunned, or referred to as “girls.” For example, one girl excluded a boy from jump rope because “…you don't know how to do it, to swing it. You gotta be a girl” (p. 45). Other research documented the various “rules” that children have about maintaining gender boundaries and found that children who maintain boundaries are more popular with peers ( Sroufe et al. 1993 ). Finally, research with children exhibiting extreme gender-nonnormative behaviors suggests that girls and especially boys are teased and rejected by peers ( Zucker & Bradley 1995 ).

Studies using hypothetical stories also indicate that children make negative judgments of, and consider unpopular, peers who engage in gender-atypical behavior, especially boys. In contrast to the implications from the more behavioral studies described above, however, many of these studies fail to find negative evaluations of gender-atypical behaviors before middle-elementary school (e.g., Berndt & Heller 1986 ), and children often show increased negativity with age, although findings are mixed ( Ruble et al. 2006 ). The findings in the judgment studies may be influenced by the qualities and salience of the stimuli as well as by children's cognitive abilities and gender knowledge ( Arthur et al. 2008 , Lutz & Ruble 1995 ). For example, one recent study showed a dramatic decrease in negative judgments between 5 and 7 years of age, which was mediated by increasing gender knowledge—specifically, gender constancy ( Ruble et al. 2007b ).

Thus, conclusions about evidence of sexism in young children drawn from judgment studies can be different from conclusions drawn from studies of actual behaviors. This observation raises interesting questions for future about what exactly children are reacting to when they demonstrate seemingly sexist behaviors or attitudes toward peers engaging in atypical behavior. First, children's liking or popularity judgments in hypothetical situations may reflect egocentric considerations, such as preferring targets engaged in activities typical of their own sex (e.g., girls preferring male targets with feminine interests) ( Alexander & Hines 1994 , Zucker et al. 1995 ). Thus, young children's liking for gender nonconforming targets may not reflect their tolerance for gender nonconformity but instead their personal interest in masculine or feminine activities.

Second, it is not clear if the sexist behaviors found in preschool children (e.g., hitting a boy who wears fingernail polish) are based on global negative evaluations of such children as being gender atypical or if they reflect a more limited evaluation of a specific instance of a child breaking a rule (such as stealing cookies). Children's judgments of gender atypicality are likely influenced by additional factors such as their perceptions of the targets' dissimilarity to same-sex others (e.g., Egan & Perry 2001 ) and/or awareness of within-sex variability. Moreover, it may be only when children begin to recognize and understand the stability of behavior that individual atypical behaviors coalesce into a broader and more negative view of the person as being deviant ( Ruble & Dweck 1995 ). Unfortunately, developmental changes in children's perceptions of others' gender typicality have received little attention. This is surprising because perceptions of gender typicality are key to understanding reactions to gender norm violations and what they mean. Whether preschoolers' negative judgments and reactions reflect sexism and, if so, what form of sexism are interesting questions for future research.

Preferential treatment

Given that the in-group liking bias occurs at a young age, one might expect that children would show favoritism toward their own sex. When affiliative behavior is measured, children begin to show preferential selection of same-sex peers starting at age 3 ( La Freniere et al. 1984 ). Children also preferentially allocate resources to their own-sex group, beginning in preschool ( Yee & Brown 1994 ).

Other research has examined ingroup favoritism in terms of children's responses to hypothetical stories about excluding peers from gender stereotypic activities, such as a ballet or baseball “club” ( Killen et al. 2008 ). In these studies, there has been little evidence that children were more likely to choose same-sex members. Instead, children's exclusion and inclusion decisions were found to vary across age depending on exactly what they were told about the situation. When children were asked about a single child who wanted to join the club, most children responded that exclusion was wrong (e.g., to exclude a boy from a ballet club), even though they knew the stereotypes. Consistent with findings of increasing flexibility of stereotypes with age, however, this was true for only about 60% of preschoolers ( Theimer et al. 2001 ) versus 90% of older children ( Killen & Stangor 2001 ). When children were asked to select between a boy and a girl of equal competence, age differences in the influence of gender stereotypes on inclusion decisions appeared to be even stronger. Children in the study of preschoolers selected the stereotyped choice (e.g., the girl for the ballet class) ( Theimer et al. 2001 ). Older children, however, preferred the counterstereotypic choice ( Killen & Stangor, 2001 ) and offered justifications based on equal access (e.g., boys don't get a chance to take ballet). Such “fairness” considerations in inclusion decisions coupled with relatively low levels of exclusion are surprising in that they seem inconsistent with the observations of behavioral exclusion described above. Perhaps only a few children engage in exclusion (e.g., the “gender police”), or hypothetical situations might allow children to think instead of answering impulsively and thus may not invoke ingroup favoritism as much as more personal, immediate situations might.

In short, it appears that gender prejudice and discrimination begin as early as preschool; this finding is particularly evident in research examining actual behavior, whether naturalistic or experimental. That is, preschoolers respond negatively to violations of gender norms and favor ingroup members in actual choices of play partners (sex segregation) and allocation of resources. Findings of studies examining responses in hypothetical situations appear to be more mixed, however. From these studies, it appears that the form and bases of gender prejudice and discrimination vary across age and context. For example, in young children, prejudice may reflect simple same-sex liking biases or relatively straightforward applications of gender norms, whereas at older ages, prejudice may involve differential evaluation of capabilities and past history and thus be more closely linked to knowledge of status differences and discrimination. The few studies examining these issues have involved very different paradigms. Thus, findings that apparently conflict across studies cannot be evaluated without future research.

HOW STABLE ARE INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN GENDER TYPING?

It seems intuitively obvious that individuals vary greatly in how gender typed they are. Some girls are extremely “girly” and refuse to go anywhere without wearing a dress, often pink and frilly, whereas other girls have no such interest and instead prefer playing ball with the boys. Some men can handle any kind of tool (except kitchen tools!), whereas others lack such mechanical facility. It is commonly assumed that attributes associated with being a typical male or female are seen early on, show at least some continuity across time, and influence personal preferences and behaviors throughout life.

How much empirical support is there for these assumptions? Maccoby (2002) has argued that there is not much. According to her analysis, this is because different manifestations of gender typing in childhood do not cohere and because there is considerable situational variation in how gender typed a given child seems. Instead, she suggests that gender typing at this age may be more of a group phenomenon rather than something that reflects the dispositions of relatively more or less gender-typed children. Thus, she advocates a shift in research focus away from individual differences in gender-related outcomes and toward the study of how gender is manifested in groups of males and females.

Although we agree wholeheartedly about the importance of studying group-based elements of gender, we suggest that it may be premature to dismiss the importance of examining gender typing as an individual difference variable. Variation across contexts and domains of gender typing does not preclude the possibility that some aspects show stability across time within individuals. For example, some boys may show an interest in moving parts or vehicles that persists in different forms into adulthood, even if that interest shows no connection to rough-and-tumble play or to other male-typical interests and behaviors. Surprisingly, researchers have rarely directly examined the stability of gender-typed interests and behaviors, and the existing database is piecemeal and sketchy ( Huston 1983 , Powlishta et al. 1993 ). This is unfortunate, because knowing more about which aspects of gender typing are stable is critical to a full understanding of the nature and processes involved in gender development.

In the sections below, we provide a detailed analysis of longitudinal studies of gender typing in children and what the studies show about stability. We then reevaluate the evidence that led to Maccoby's (2002) conclusions that examining individual differences in gender typing is not productive.

Evidence of the Stability of Gender Typing from Longitudinal Studies

What do longitudinal studies of gender development tell us about stability? Although gender typing can involve a number of different features, we limit the present review to behavioral-type variables (e.g., play with same-sex peers; interests and activities) rather than cognitive-type variables such as stereotyping or gender identity. We do this because much research on gender typing has concerned young children's peer and activity preferences. It is also partly because cognitive variables show considerable variation during childhood ( Ruble et al. 2006 ) and may not be conducive to demonstrating stability, at least in young children.

Surprisingly, the few longitudinal studies of gender typing that exist have paid relatively little attention to this issue of stability. This may be partly because it has not been a primary component of major theories of gender development. Because most theories emphasize the factors that lead to gender typing, longitudinal studies have often focused on such issues as how contextual, socialization, or social-cognitive factors at one point in time affect gender-typing at a later point in time (e.g., McHale et al. 2004 ) rather than on the stability of gender typing across time. Other longitudinal studies have focused on normative changes in gender-typed behaviors or cognitions, such as attitudes or stereotyping (e.g., Bartini 2006 ).

In interpreting the theoretical significance of such studies, however, it is essential to determine whether gender typing represents some continuing characteristic of individuals that influences future beliefs and behaviors or whether it is better viewed as linked to a particular developmental time point or context, with little future implications ( Serbin et al. 1993 ). Moreover, identifying the factors that lead children to be more or less gender typed should help distinguish among alternative theories of gender typing ( Powlishta et al. 1993 ). Thus, information about which elements of gender typing are stable, over what period of time, and during which developmental periods seems essential to the study of gender development.

Longitudinal studies examining the stability of sex segregation

Some studies have used observational methods to examine the stability of preferences for spending time with same-sex versus other-sex others. Different types of assessments have been used: ( a ) split-half correlations (e.g., across odd versus even weeks), ( b ) cross-situational stability (e.g., across indoor and outdoor play); and ( c ) test-retest (temporal) stability (whether sex segregation scores are correlated over some period of time).

The findings have been mixed, both across studies and across measures, and most studies have involved small samples and relatively short time periods (six months or less). To illustrate, Maccoby & Jacklin (1987) reported nonsignificant test-retest reliability over a one-week period among 4½-year-olds (0.39) and among 6½-year-olds (0.17). They did find cross-situational (indoor-outdoor) stability in preschoolers, but for girls only (0.44). Powlishta et al. (1993) used a split-half reliability procedure across odd and even days over a four- to six-month period and found that sex segregation showed significant stability for preschool boys (0.73) but not for girls (0.20). Lloyd & Duveen (1992) found significant temporal stability (0.40) in children ranging in age from about 4 to 7 years when they correlated the proportion of same-sex play from one term to the next. Turner et al. (1993) also examined temporal stability in a large sample (n = 161) of 4- to 4½-year-old children from two countries across eight sessions. Sex segregation scores in sessions one to four were correlated with sessions five to eight at significant or marginal levels (0.3 to 0.7).

As a final example of studies examining relatively short-term stability, Martin & Fabes (2001) assessed sex segregation over two consecutive academic terms for preschool and kindergarten children. Observations took place inside and outside every weekday for six months. This study is unusual because of the large number of observations (about 300 per child) and because of the use of multiple forms of stability assessment. First, split-half procedures (odd and even weeks) showed high and significant correlations for both sexes and for younger and older children (0.69–0.84). Second, as suggested by Epstein (1980) , they calculated stability coefficients with data aggregated over differing lengths of time, a procedure that reduces error of measurement. The one-week coefficients were low (below 0.3), but as the number of weeks of aggregated data increased, the stability coefficients showed large increases, such that when data were aggregated over eight-week periods, stability coefficients rose to the 0.5 to 0.6 range and continued to rise across larger units of time. Finally, they found considerable temporal stability (>0.7) across the two academic terms. These findings suggest that a relatively large number of observations, spread over time, may be needed to observe stability in sex segregation. Thus, prior conclusions about a lack of individual stability in same-sex peer preferences may be misleading.

In short, some longitudinal studies show reasonably impressive stability of individual differences in sex segregation. One problem with these studies, however, is that stability is examined within a group context that does not change. That is, stability may be found not because of individual differences in same-sex preferences, but rather because groups are formed early in the class year, and these structures are maintained ( Maccoby & Jacklin 1987 ). Thus, the results of longitudinal studies involving longer periods of time are of considerable interest.

Unfortunately, few studies have examined temporal stability for longer than six months, and, as with short-duration research, the findings are mixed. For example, Maccoby & Jacklin (1987) examined stability in sex segregation in children across a two-year period (4½ to 6½ years). Given the low level of short-term stability found in this study, as described above, the authors did not expect to find, and did not find, much evidence of temporal stability, except for a significant correlation (0.31) over time for boys, but only for outdoor play. In contrast, Serbin et al. (1993) did find long-term temporal stability from one year to the next using a peer-nomination procedure (e.g., participants selecting photos of the children with whom they most like to play) in 5- to 12-year-olds. It is not clear exactly why this paper-and-pencil measure might yield more stable estimates, but it may be that the situational variation in observations was eliminated and that only the strongest relationships were assessed this way. Regardless, it is impressive that temporal stability was found across a time period when classrooms had changed.

Taken together, despite some nonsignificant findings, it seems fair to conclude that individual differences in sex segregation do show both internal consistency (split-half reliability) and temporal stability, given sufficient power and numbers of observations. Although observational data suggest that a child may vary in same-sex play from week to week, when observations are aggregated across multiple weeks, stability is seen. It would be helpful in future research to use data-aggregation procedures to see how many weeks of observations are needed to show temporal stability across one year or more. It would also be worthwhile to examine how long individual differences in segregation are maintained. For example, do preschool preferences predict preferences in middle-elementary school?

Longitudinal studies of the stability of interests and activity preferences

Studies of other indices of gender typing have been somewhat more consistent in finding temporal stability. Some observational studies of preschoolers and/or kindergartners have shown short-term, test-retest temporal stability in stereotyped toy and activity choices during free play (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987 , Martin & Fabes 2001 ). Other observational studies have shown significant stability in terms of split-half consistency (e.g., Connor & Serbin 1977 , Powlishta et al. 1993 ). In addition, gender-stereotyped activity preferences have shown moderate to high stability over varying periods of time, as assessed with test-retest reliability involving pencil-and-paper measures completed either by the children themselves (e.g., Edelbrock & Sugawara 1978 , Golombok & Rust 1993 ) or by parents about their children (e.g., Golombok & Rust 1993 ).

One recent, impressive study examined the stability of gender typing using pencil-and-paper measures ( Golombok et al. 2008 ). This study warrants a more detailed look because it involved a much longer time period (from age 2½ to 8 years) and a much larger sample (more than 2700 girls and 2700 boys) than has been typical. When the children were ages 2½, 3½, and 5 years old, parents completed a toy and activity questionnaire (Pre-School Activities Inventory, or PSAI; Golombok & Rust 1993 ) about their child's preferences; at age 8, the children completed an age-appropriate modified version, the Children's Activities Inventory (CAI). To examine temporal stability during the preschool years (test-retest reliability), intercorrelations in PSAI scores were examined among all three time points (ages 2½, 3½, and 5 years). Stability coefficients for the PSAI were high: 0.6–0.7 for adjacent time points and 0.5 from 2½ to 5 years. These levels are comparable to or even higher than those reported in earlier studies and thus demonstrate moderate to high stability in gender-typed interests and activities over time periods ranging from 1 to 2½ years.

Golombok et al. (2008) also examined stability between the preschool years and age 8, though not with test-retest correlations. Instead, at age 3½, boys and girls separately were divided into nine categories of gender typing based on PSAI scores; children who varied in their categories were compared on CAI scores. For both sexes, the children who were most gender typed at age 3½ continued to be so at age 8. A similar analysis compared CAI scores at age 8 with scores indicating the trajectory (acceleration in gender-typed interests) from ages 2½ to 5 years. As predicted, children showing the greatest increase in gender typing at a young age were those with higher levels of gender-typical behavior at age 8.

These findings are interesting in part because the trends run counter to what would be expected from regression to the mean, in that the children who were most gender typed to start with became relatively more so over time. Moreover, the findings suggested the possibility that individual differences in gender typing may be more stable in children who are relatively high or low in gender typing when young, a pattern that was particularly marked for the least gender-typed girls. It would be of great interest in future research to examine the stability and trajectory of gender typing among children at the extremes, such as tomboys or girly girls.

Taken together, longitudinal studies of gender-typed interests and activities show fairly compelling evidence of stability of individual differences. Future research needs to examine stability across one year or more using observations rather than paper-and-pencil measures to be certain that the apparent stability of gender typing reflects actual behaviors rather than stability in self- or parent perceptions.

Interpretations and Conclusions About the Evidence from Longitudinal Studies

As we discussed in the introduction to this section, Maccoby (2002) suggested that the study of individual differences in gender typing was no longer productive on the basis of various types of evidence, most notably: ( a ) the idea that sex typing is multidimensional and lacks coherence, and ( b ) the situational variability of gender typing. In our review of the longitudinal data, we identified some reasons why prior findings might have led to Maccoby's conclusions. Most importantly, the longitudinal studies suggest that a lack of power and insufficient reliability may have made it difficult to observe temporal stability within domains or coherence across domains. The case is particularly clear for studies of sex segregation. The studies of very short-term stability suggest that children do vary from day-to-day and week-to-week in the proportion of time spent with same- versus other-sex peers. Over greater numbers of data points and amounts of time, however, relative consistency of individual children can be seen (e.g., Martin & Fabes 2001 ). This observation also speaks to the apparent lack of coherence seen across different indices of gender typing. Indeed, when stable, reliable measures are used, coherence across indices is often observed (e.g., Martin & Fabes 2001 , Serbin et al. 1993 ). In short, based on the findings reviewed, we conclude that the study of individual differences in gender typing may be more productive than has recently been thought. Nevertheless, we also urge caution: It would be unreasonable to conclude that gender typing is strong and stable throughout life, because the database is limited in a number of ways.

First, it is not clear how long such differences remain stable. For example, gender-typed behavior is perhaps most visible in young children, when rigid distinctions appear in children's appearance and play. Many if not most preschool girls show some manifestation of extreme “girliness,” refusing to wear anything but a dress, often pink and frilly, whereas boys are draped with superman capes or are holding swords and acting as superheroes ( Dunn & Hughes 2001 , Halim et al. 2009 , Maccoby 1998 , Ruble et al. 2007a ). We know almost nothing about the stability of such behaviors after preschool, however. It may be necessary to examine how one kind of gender typing at one age relates to a different kind at a later age ( McHale et al. 2004 ). Does a lack of interest in dresses predict later interest in sports or playing with boys? Future research using both longitudinal and retrospective methods may provide answers to such questions.

Second, it is not clear which forms of gender typing may be most stable and best characterize the essence of individual differences. The review of longitudinal studies focused on two frequently examined elements of gender typing (sex segregation and interests/activity preferences). Other aspects of gender development may turn out to be more fundamental, however, at least at some ages. One such candidate is a sense of oneself in relation to males and females. How important or central is gender to self-concept? How typical does one feel as a male or female? Multidimensional theories of social identity demonstrate the significance of such distinctions after the early elementary school years ( Ashmore et al. 2004 , Egan & Perry 2001 ). Moreover, perhaps stable individual differences are characterized not only by general feelings of typicality and centrality but also by the specific nature of one's fit with gender ( Tobin et al. 2009 ). For example, one preadolescent girl may recognize that she is not a typical female in the sense of having more interest than other females have in sports and less interest in room decoration or make-up, but she may feel part of girls as a group and want to look and act feminine in manner. Other children's sense of gender may emphasize avoiding gender-typical characteristics that they dislike: a girl may eschew the giggly, girly stuff; a boy may try to distance himself from macho elements of maleness.

Finally, future research might examine whether stable individual differences in certain gender-related cognitions emerge after preschool. Most children pass through a phase of believing that it is morally wrong for a boy to wear nail polish or for a girl to play football, but this typically ends by early elementary school ( Ruble et al. 2006 ). Thus, individual differences in tolerance of gender atypical behaviors may be found later. Indeed, recent research has shown quite high levels of stability (0.5–0.6) in gender role attitudes over a two-year period in 10- to 12-year-olds ( McHale et al. 2004 ). Also, a recent study provided direct support for the idea that once the period of rigidity has passed, individual differences may emerge. Stable individual differences in reactions to gender role violations were found across two time points and related to self-esteem only for children 5 years or older, past peak rigidity ( Lurye et al. 2008 ).

In short, our analysis of longitudinal research suggests that conclusions about the lack of evidence for stable individual differences in gender typing may have been limited by looking too hard and with too few data points for some unified construct. Although gender typing is clearly multidimensional, there may be stable elements in some components (e.g., behavior/interests) but not in others (e.g., attitudes/stereotypes), at least at particular ages. Perhaps, then, it would be productive to examine individual differences in gender typing as a developmentally malleable construct. Developmental factors may limit the extent to which biological predispositions can be expressed, change the way children are cognitively capable of thinking about gender, and expose them to varying social influences. Thus, the form of gender typing that is paramount may vary at different phases of life, and different combinations of biological, cognitive, and socialization processes could contribute to indi vidual differences in gender typing at different times.

HOW DOES THE STUDY OF GENDER DEVELOPMENT BENEFIT FROM DYNAMIC ANALYSES?

Gender development research has been guided by theories that offer differing explanations about the origins of gender typing and sex differences. These theories emphasize a variety of different processes, including cognitive developmental changes (e.g., Bigler & Liben 2007 , Kohlberg 1966 , Martin & Halverson 1981 ), socialization ( Bussey & Bandura 1999 , Mischel 1966 ), and proximal ( McCarthy & Arnold 2008 ) and distal biological influences (e.g., evolutionary pressures) (see Ruble et al. 2006 for a review of these theories as well as the multiple distinctions currently being made for each type of process). Despite differences, a common element among these theories is reliance on data collected at one or few time points, and in rare cases, multiple assessments are made over time and then are aggregated. Aggregation and limited assessment methods provide information about concurrent relations and long-term patterns; however, these methods sacrifice important information about variability over time, and are not focused on assessing short-term, moment-to-moment changes.

By applying methods and concepts used in the physical and biological sciences, the variation that most psychologists have considered error or background noise may be found to contain “the dynamic signature of purposive behavior” ( Van Orden et al. 2003 , p. 331). Dynamic studies of this background noise in behavior are beginning to reveal new and potentially important insights about a range of psychological and social processes, including motor development (e.g., Adolph et al. 2003 , Kelso 1995 ), emotional development ( Lewis & Granic 2000 ), dyadic play ( Steenbeek & van Geert 2008 ), structure of the self ( Nowak et al. 2000 ), cognitive development ( van Geert 2003 ), and stereotyping (e.g., Correll 2008 ). This revolutionary approach to describing and understanding patterns, based on complexity theory ( Waldrop 1992 ) or commonly labeled “dynamic systems approach” or “dynamic systems theory” ( Thelen & Smith 1998 ), has been gaining ground across fields.

Dynamic systems (DS) approaches have potential for illuminating processes involved in gender development by providing both conceptual and methodological advances that enable researchers to assess fine-grained as well as larger-grained developmental temporal variations ( Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al. 2008 ) and, especially important for developmental research, to delineate relationships between different timescales (e.g., Lewis 2002 ). A comprehensive theory of gender development needs to describe and explain long-term developmental changes but must also describe how gender is experienced and plays out in short-term interactions with objects and people. DS approaches provide conceptual underpinnings and methods for identifying patterns of behavior change over time, and in some cases, how these patterns may relate to one another.

The DS approach is appealing for a number of other reasons. Gender-related topics (e.g., work and family issues) have taken center stage in heated discussions about the roles of nature versus nurture, mainly concerning the origins and nature of sex differences. Because the DS approach advocates no distinctions between the sources of influence on a system ( Oyama 2000 ), they offer a rapprochement for debates about nature versus nurture. Furthermore, the DS approach has potential to provide a theoretical umbrella that would incorporate aspects of many gender development theories. Specifically, adopting a DS approach suggests new ways to collect, analyze, and describe data but provides limited guidance on which parameters to study; existing theories help to fill that gap.

Thus far, DS analysis of gender development has been limited to a few topics: sexual orientation (e.g., Diamond 2007 ), children's sex segregation ( Martin 2008 , Martin et al. 2005 ), and mother-infant interactions ( Fausto-Sterling et al. 2008 ). Below, we provide a description of basic concepts of DS approaches and then employ topics on gender development and review empirical studies to illustrate some of the major features of dynamic approaches (see Thelen & Smith 1994 , 1998 , 2006 ).

Dynamics and Complex Systems: Basic Concepts

Dynamic analyses are applied to complex systems, which are systems characterized by simple, interrelated interacting elements, where the interactions of these elements give rise to higher-order global patterns (e.g., Waldrop 1992 ). This process, called self-organization, does not require a higher-order agent and is not preprogrammed. Structures arise as the elements spontaneously organize and reorganize into emergent systems that are larger and more complex (e.g., Williams 1997 ). Examples of complex systems abound: heart-rate variability, army ant swarms, termite nest building, and the formation of hurricanes.

Scientists interested in applying dynamic systems must first identify and define the variable that represents the system of interest, called the collective variable ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). The collective variable should be clearly defined and observable, and understanding how it behaves over different conditions is important. In developmental psychology, some classic examples of collective variables that have been studied include walking, reaching, and word learning.

Dynamic systems are marked by fluctuations from factors internal and external to the system, and this inherent activity provides potential for changes to occur in the system. In some cases, the system dampens down the fluctuations, allowing stability; in other cases, the system is “perturbed,” that is, it loses coherence, exhibits high degrees of variability, and may experience a qualitative change (i.e., phase shift) to a new coordinated state. As dynamic systems experience fluctuations, they have certain preferred states that occur with a high probability under certain conditions (called attractors). When displaced from these preferred states, the system tends to return there ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). Some of these attractors are strong; others are weaker and have less “pull” on behavior. Other states act as repellors because behavior never or seldom settles there.

A goal for researchers is to understand and map both the immediate and longer-term stability/variability of complex systems. Researchers strive to identify the shifts among states because this is when the agents of change are most easily identified. These change agents (called control parameters) may be obvious (e.g., practice facilitating learning), but they also may appear incidental or minor ( Thelen & Smith 2006 ). For instance, in a classic study, King & West (1988) found that male cowbird song development was influenced by a seemingly unimportant factor—the patterning of brief wing flickering in female cowbirds. In developmental research, an aspect of language development that may appear unrelated to another domain of language development has been identified as an agent of change: Children who show a fast rate of word learning are limited in their ability to access well-known words ( Gershkoff-Stowe & Smith 1997 ). Regardless of their salience, such agents of change are more easily identified at transition points because they vary with changes in the collective variable.

Children's Play Choices: Sex Segregation as a Dynamic System

Children's tendency to assort by sex is an example of a complex system. Sex segregation is a pervasive, early-developing pattern that increases over childhood until interactions are so segregated that boys and girls have been described as growing up in separate cultures ( Maccoby & Jacklin 1987 ). A DS analysis of sex segregation may focus on the patterns that emerge over time in a child's choice of play partners and examine how these choices vary over the school year. Important variables to examine when children first begin congregating with peers (e.g., in a new class) might include social factors (e.g., each child's prior experiences with peers) as well as biological factors (e.g., hormone levels) or biosocial influences, such as the child's temperament (e.g., being inhibited). Children's choices are interdependent with others in the class: Choices are constrained by who is available to play on a given day, at a given time, and depend upon the choices made by others in the class immediately before the child decides to find a partner. Degrees of freedom for choosing a partner are lost the more other children have already claimed a partner.

Through repeated interactions and reshuffling, patterns of play may change as interactions become increasingly governed by children's experiences with classmates; their responsiveness to bids, play styles, and shared interests. Individual children may settle into particular patterns of play with particular partners. For instance, from individual children's experiences, more and longer-playing same-sex dyads may emerge in the system. As these processes play out over longer time intervals, a child's dyadic play may grow into larger groups of same-sex children, and these groupings may be formed and maintained depending upon the interests of children or the desires or openness of the initial dyad to including other children. Interestingly, simulations have demonstrated that even when individuals show only very slight preferences for similar others, segregation emerges ( Schelling 1971 , Wilensky 1997 ).

Play patterns can also be viewed from the perspective of the entire class. A series of bird'seye snapshots of a playground would show that the number of children in class who are involved in sex-segregated play varies as pairings and groupings of children form and break up, with groupings shifting over time. With more children involved in same-sex groupings, these groups may have enhanced appeal, and so other children will be drawn into the groups, thus illustrating how the higher-order structure of same-sex groups may also influence patterning of interactions. Sex segregation as an emergent structure of the system may become increasingly evident at both the individual-child and classroom levels. Although no one person directed the class or an individual child to choose same-sex partners for play, sex-segregation can emerge, suggesting a self-organizing system.

Variability in Systems: Sex Segregation, Gender-Typed Activities, and Gender Identity

Dynamic systems analyses involve studying temporal patterning—how a system transforms from one state to another over time. Scientists studying a system need to understand the short- and long-term stability and change in the system so the regular variability is distinguishable from extreme variability. Extreme variability holds particular fascination as it may signal a shift of a system from one kind of attractor to a new kind of attractor, or to a more highly organized state. For this reason, scientists using dynamic analyses may use cross-sectional data to narrow their focus to the time frames of most interest and then collect intensive data about variations in the primary variables of interest as well as about potential agents of change.

A gender application to illustrate this point would be the theoretically important issue of how gender-typed toy choices emerge. Since cross-sectional research suggests that boys begin to show gender-typed toy choices (e.g., playing with trucks) around the age of two ( Berenbaum et al. 2008 , Ruble et al. 2006 ), bracketing this time with intensive data collection about toy choices would be particularly interesting. Also, to better understand factors influencing such choices, other information about the play situation (e.g., other available toys, presence of peers), parents (e.g., stereotypic beliefs), and children (e.g., gender knowledge, activity level) should be collected. Developmental changes in any of these may influence boys' sense of control or feelings of pressure concerning toy selection. Studies of fine-grained changes from day-to-day or moment-to-moment gain import, and multiple data points are needed to detect these patterns.

When children enter preschool, qualitative changes may occur in their toy and activity choices. Preschool is a dramatically different setting from that at home; more peers of both sexes are available as play partners, and adult supervision may be low. Dynamic analyses involving longitudinal data about toy choices at home and school would shed light on this transition. Analysis of the activities children engage in at home versus at preschool, and the presence and reactions of peers, would provide insights into whether children's preferences change dynamically in preschool, where many toys are available, peers may tease them for “gender-inappropriate” play, and adults may react differently than their parents.

Fine-grained data have been collected on young children's peer choices, making this topic suitable for illustrating both stability and variability in dynamic systems. Controversy has arisen about the stability of sex segregation (see How Stable Are Individual Differences in Gender Typing section, above), but it appears that as more snapshots of behavior are aggregated, sex segregation becomes more stable until it reaches a moderately high level ( Martin & Fabes 2001 ). The stability of sex segregation may be questioned in part because of the variability in this behavior from day-to-day. To illustrate this more clearly, notice the day-to-day variation in children's play partners, based on observations conducted during the fall term for four children depicted in Figure 1 . Variability is apparent, although two children also show strong same-sex preferences day-to-day, but the other two children do not. There also is stability over time; children's patterns remain similar into the spring term of data collection. Extending this type of analysis to explore when and how variations occur would be fascinating.

Day-to-day variations in children's play partner choices as a function of sex of child and long-term patterning. Observed play partner choices were summed and averaged per day of observation using the following: Each boy play partner was given a +1; each girl was given a −1. Children with ID numbers 1032 and 1022 were girls; children with ID numbers 1041 and 1045 were boys. For girls, data below the 0 point represent same-sex peer play; for boys, data above the 0 point represent same-sex play. The graphs at the top of the page (1032 and 1041) represent patterns of children who tend to show long-term preferences for same-sex play; the graphs at the bottom of the page represent patterns of children who tend to show long-term preferences for playing with both sexes. Variability is apparent in all the graphs ( DiDonato & Martin 2009 ).

Another approach for applying dynamic analysis is to focus on the potential instability of constructs believed to be stable. Walking is a stable feature of most humans' behavior, but the exact form of walking at any given time depends on many different factors, including the type of surface being walked upon (e.g., thick rug versus tiled floor, slope of surface). Most researchers think of gender identity as being a stable feature, but if we consider when variations in gender identity might occur, it broadens the perspective on gender identity. An interesting analysis would be to explore variations in feelings (e.g., gender typicality, comfort) and displays of gender identity (e.g., style of dressing, voice, gestures) over different types of social “surfaces” (e.g., being in a sports bar, holding a baby) ( Martin 2000 ). Analysis of moment-to-moment changes in the patterning of gender identity may reveal surprising insights about gender development (a similar point is made about identity formation in Lichtwarck-Aschoff et al. 2008 ). For instance, collecting intensive time-series data about feelings of gender typicality (e.g., “How similar do you feel to your own sex right now?”) over a range of situations may illustrate that feelings of gender typicality are strong and show little variability in situations where one is a minority member, but that gender typicality is low but more variable when one is in a same-sex situation.

Dynamic Contexts: Gender Cognitions and Socialization

An important feature of dynamic analysis is how “context” is viewed. Although context is considered important in gender theories, it is often conceptualized as being distal (i.e., cultural contexts). In contrast, DS theorists view context as a dynamic characteristic of interactions, one that is temporally and spatially close and is an aspect of the interaction process itself ( Steenbeek & van Geert 2008 ). Even influences typically considered distal, stable, or abstract are represented and carried forward in time by their embodiment within everyday interactions. For instance, gender stereotypes and gender identity become embodied as children dynamically engage in “gendering”—remembering gender and acting on gender—incorporating the immediate contextual factors, and this being carried forward to the next moment of knowing and acting on gender.

Developmental processes that occur in real time then carry over and become consolidated and generalized across different contexts ( Fischer & Bidell 1998 ), and these then influence and constrain behavior (e.g., Lewis 2000 ) (although there is controversy about the extent to which this happens) (for review of the issue, see Witherington 2007 ). For instance, as toddlers come to understand their sex, become motivated by same-sex expectations, and begin to develop stereotypes, these features can be carried into interactions with others. The patterning and display of the gendered self may evolve into new forms (e.g., styles of dress, play partners, activities), which vary from moment-to-moment and over longer time periods. Thinking of gender as being enacted in each interaction is similar to proposals from sociological research traditions focusing on the social construction of gender ( West & Zimmerman 1991 ).

Gender socialization provides a good example of how both the child's and parents' cognitions are enacted in moment-to-moment interactions through the dynamic embodiment of gender. Parental expectations about what it means to have a child who is either a boy or girl (expectations colored by cultural values, etc.) become displayed as actions with the child (e.g., glances, touching, toy offering), and these embodied expectations interact with the child's phenotypic and early behavioral features. Thus, gender socialization involves parents and siblings, peers, other socialization agents, and the individual child, who all act and interact in varied contexts.

Methods and Analyses of Dynamic Systems

Studying complex systems involves identifying the collective variables that capture the behavior of interest and then collecting a long time series of data to watch the emergence of behaviors. Social scientists may avoid dynamic analyses because they expect that they will have to collect thousands of observations to identify complex patterns of behavior. However, even shorter time frames and smaller sets of time-series data may reveal important features that traditional methods may not disclose ( Williams 1997 ), especially when investigators use some of the newly proposed analytic techniques (e.g., Finan et al. 2008).

The recognition and study of complex systems have promoted development of an array of techniques designed to understand these systems, including techniques for nonlinear dynamics, time-series analyses, data visualization (e.g., Lamey et al. 2004 ), and computer simulations to model the behavior of systems (e.g., Griffin et al. 2004 , Schafer et al. 2009 ). This new and expanded toolbox provides better ways of describing, analyzing, and interpreting temporal data of all types ( Ward 2002 ). The mathematics involved in describing systems can be complex and unfamiliar to psychologists (e.g., May 1976 ); thus, DS ideas often are applied heuristically for thinking about patterns and for directing the kinds of data that are obtained rather than using the toolkit of analyses that describe obtained time-series data. However, psychologists have become increasingly interested in developing and applying these analytic tools (see Boker & Wenger 2007 , van Geert 2003 ). For instance, Thelen and colleagues (2001) conducted rigorous modeling of a developmental phenomenon involving touching patterns of infants (the A-not-B effect), which was originally identified by Piaget. Others are refining and expanding upon DS approaches to better integrate these ideas with connectionist models (e.g., Spencer & Schoner 2003 ) and neurobiology ( Lewis 2005 ). Regardless of how it is employed, DS perspectives hold promise for revealing patterns of gender development previously unrecognized.

Dynamic Analyses of Gendered Play Partners and Activities

Not all the applications of DS to gender development are as abstract as we have presented above. In this section, we outline specific examples of studies that have been conducted to apply a dynamic systems approach to gender development.

Data visualization, attractors, and repellors in children's sex segregation

In a dynamic view of sex segregation, children are seen to settle into certain behavioral patterns. This illustrates a characteristic of a dynamic system: Despite a large number of possible patterns among system elements, only a few ever stabilize. Dynamic analyses have been used to study the patterns of children's play partners in preschool classes and the role of gender in these interactions. Martin and colleagues (2005) used a new data-visualization tool, called state space grids (SSGs), to explore the extent to which preschool children showed attraction for same-sex and behaviorally similar children. Developmental scientists interested in applying DS methods (e.g., Granic & Lamey 2002 , Hollenstein et al. 2004 ) recognized the need for a methodology to visualize system dynamics; thus, they developed the SSG technique (e.g., Lewis et al. 1999 ).

SSGs involve mapping of dimensions onto a state space to determine the regularity or stability of the patterns (for a description of how to use GridWare, see Hollenstein 2007 ). In Martin et al. (2005) , SSGs were constructed based on children's choices of play partners derived from scan observations of three classes of preschool children over several months in order to examine whether sex of peers and behavioral tendencies act as attractors. Children were divided into types using cluster analysis: externalizing, internalizing, and socially competent children; play patterns of target children with types of peers (rather than one other child) were analyzed using SSGs. If children's play partner choices related strongly to behavioral similarity, then competent children should choose other competent children regardless of sex; if their selections relate to sex, then children should choose on the basis of similar sex regardless of behavior.

Attractors were characterized in three ways. First, a high number of individual interactions in the state space regions representing play with same-sex peers or particular peer qualities (e.g., externalizing) would indicate that those spaces are attractors. If same-sex peers act as attractors, then we would expect, for instance, that girls would have more interactions in the “girl peer” region than in the “boy peer” region. Second, when a region is an attractor, children should enter it quickly; for instance, early in the time series, girls would be expected to play with girls and would have few (or no) interactions with boys before they move into the “girl peer” region. Third, if a region is an attractor, children should return to the region quickly. Whenever girls leave the “girl peer” region, they would be expected to have relatively few interactions with boys before moving back to playing with girls.

The results supported these ideas. Same-sex peers were strong attractors for children: Both sexes had more than twice as many interactions with same-sex than with other-sex peers, were faster to return to same-sex peers, and started playing with them more quickly. Interestingly, these patterns were apparent even in the first 20 observations obtained on children after only several weeks of preschool. Figure 2 illustrates a typical pattern for a girl's first 20 interactions. The SSG shows data from a competent girl, whose first coded play bout is with a girl (open circle), and the pattern shows that she plays with girls more than with boys. Externalizing and social competence also contributed to behavioral states, but patterns varied by sex of child and peer (e.g., boys were more attracted to externalizing boys than to externalizing girls). As Figure 2 illustrates, the competent girl played much more with competent girls than with other girls, but she did not play with competent boys at all. Overall, the findings suggest that both the sex of peers and their behavioral qualities help fashion the social organization in the classroom.

A socially competent girl's state space grid, illustrating her patterns of play with peers of different sexes and different behavioral qualities over the first 20 observed interactions. The x -axis represents the sex of the peer with whom the target girl interacts; the y -axis represents the behavioral quality of the peers as determined by clustering teacher ratings of children's behavior. Each solid circle represents a single observed interaction, and the open circle represents the first observed interaction (with a socially competent girl). Lines between circles represent the ordering of observations. This girl showed strong sex selection: 16 of her first 20 interactions were with girls. She also showed a preference for interacting with socially competent girls but not boys ( Martin 2008 ).

In a similar study, Martin (2008) compared patterns of children who were highly gender typed in play to those with less gender-typed play patterns in order to examine whether children who differed in their overall patterns showed differences early in the time series of observations. Interestingly, within the first 20 observed interactions, highly gender-typed children experienced more positive emotions with same-sex than with other-sex peers; less gender-typed children showed no difference. These findings suggest that children who have early positive emotional experiences with same-sex peers but not with other-sex peers incorporate these experiences into their play, such that same-sex peers have increasing appeal, whereas other-sex peers lose their appeal. In this way, emotional experiences with peers appear to contribute to the overall patterning of children's play and to sex segregation in the class.

These studies use data-visualization techniques to illustrate a new approach to examining peer interaction patterns and suggest that both the sex of peers and peers' behavior act as attractors. Additional research involving moment-to-moment coding of behavior and new techniques for analyzing group patterns will allow for an even more detailed dynamic analyses of children's behavior with peers.

Self-organized criticality in the temporal patterning of children's gendered behavior

Many complex systems show a particularly intriguing pattern of organization, called self-organization near a critical state. These systems are balanced between enough stability to maintain order and enough instability or variation to be adaptive to change ( Bak et al. 1989 ). Adaptability is enhanced because new alternatives can be generated as needed in response to varying circumstances (e.g., Van Orden et al. 2003 ). In physiological systems, self-organized criticality is associated with well-being and health, and its loss or deterioration is related to disease, depression, and aging ( Goldberger 1996 , Linkenkaer-Hansen et al. 2005 , Sosnoff & Newell 2008 ).

Self-organization near a critical state involves “self-similarity” across time-scales; in other words, if one small portion of the time series is magnified, its appearance is similar to the larger time series in which it is embedded. That is, small-scale patterns reflect the patterns that would be expected at larger scales, such that identifying a regularity in a 2-minute window of time may share similarity to a pattern found in a 16-minute window, and both may share similarity to a pattern found on a much longer timescale (e.g., developmental changes that occur from early to later childhood). This self-organization near a critical state is represented by the presence of long-term, positively correlated variability in a time series ( Treffner & Kelso 1999 , Van Orden et al. 2003 ). Time series with completely independent data do not exhibit self-similarity. Given the implications for understanding different timescales and how they relate to one another, the implications of finding self-similarity in systems are far-ranging, especially for developmental scientists.

DiDonato (2008) applied both dynamic and traditional analyses to explore whether children's gendered behavior shows self-organized criticality and whether temporal patterns relate to children's adjustment. Brief observations of preschool children's activities and play partners were conducted daily over several months. By combining gender typing of activities and play partners across observations each day, DiDonato derived a single indicator of gendered behavior. Each child's time series was plotted and analyzed for self-organized criticality (e.g., Hurst 1951 ), and the results indicated this pattern, suggesting that children exhibited flexibility in their gendered behavior. For example, the implication of the findings is that a girl who normally plays with girls may adapt her behavior by playing with a boy if he is playing with her favorite toy. Furthermore, flexibility in gendered behavior was positively related to adjustment in girls but not in boys. Boys' restricted gender roles may constrain the relation between flexible behavior and adjustment.

These findings have implications for debates about how gender roles relate to adjustment and provide a compelling example of how both traditional and dynamic approaches can be combined to yield more information than would either approach alone. In this case, the short-term patterning of activities and partners related to adjustment, and it suggests that further explorations of changes in children's gendered behavior at different timescales are warranted.

In sum, DS approaches have potential for providing a new lens for viewing gender development. DS approaches adopt unique views of context, focus on describing variability, provide information about patterning of behavior over both short and longer developmental time frames, and suggest new techniques and different methods of data analyses and collection. Adopting a DS approach also has the potential to provide an all-encompassing theoretical umbrella and deflates controversy surrounding the roles of nature and nurture in gender development. At a broader level, DS approaches crosscut disciplinary boundaries, bridging methods and concepts across disciplines. Highlights of the appeal of exploring DS approaches include discovering new answers to old problems, recognizing new types of questions, and ultimately advancing alternative accounts of gender development.

CONCLUSIONS

Children's gender development unfolds over long time frames of average or normative change, over shorter time frames such as the emergence of relatively stable individual preferences in with whom or with what to play during the early school years, and over much shorter time frames—micro timescales—such as when an individual child selects an outfit to wear or carries on an interaction with a peer over a toy. In the present review, we illustrated each of these time frames in terms of a few specific current, and sometimes controversial, topics in the field of gender development.

First, we took the long view, examining normative changes from infancy through middle adolescence in key aspects of children's beliefs and behaviors regarding gender distinctions. In this way, we were able to speak to the question of temporal ordering of different elements of gender development and, thereby, analyze certain controversies within the field about how early children understand gender distinctions and how that understanding relates to behavior. Moreover, the analysis of temporal ordering helps generate hypotheses for future research about what indications of gender prejudice, such as ingroup favoritism, might represent for young children who can understand gender stereotypes but not necessarily status inequities between the sexes.

Normative trends involve only averages across individuals; they do not, however, inform us about whether there are stable individual differences in expressions of gender typing. Whether there are continuities in individual gender typing over time has been another important but controversial topic in gender development. For instance, identifying stability in sex segregation would suggest that individual children vary in their preferences and that sex segregation is not simply due to situational variability or normative constraints as had previously been assumed. Thus, in the second section, we reviewed studies of longitudinal change within individuals over shorter periods of time. We discovered that there is more stability in sex segregation and gender-typed activities and preferences than previously thought. However, future research must determine how long stability exists and over which periods of development.

Another advantage of normative trends is that they indicate at what points developmentally it would be useful to search for stable individual differences, such as after periods of rapid change, as when children first enter preschool. In the third section, we described a new tool for taking advantage of such opportunities. Dynamic systems theory provides a coherent set of principles and methods for examining change over differing time frames. Socialization, cognitive, and biological processes can be explored over multiple time frames using techniques that focus on temporal patterning of behavior. Dynamic systems theory complements existing theories by providing more nuanced views of gender at different timescales. For instance, sex segregation exhibits both variability and stability from a dynamic perspective. Particularly intriguing is the potential for small-scale patterns to provide insights into large-scale patterns. For systems that exhibit self-similarity, a pattern that appears at a microlevel time frame mimics the pattern found at a more macrolevel time frame. Considering similarity across timescales is an idea that, in our view, has no counterpart in developmental research or theorizing.

Developmental research on gender has primarily focused attention on the longer timescales to assess normative developmental patterning. Less attention has been focused on shorter timescales to explore individual patterns and stability of behavior, and very little has been done to explore gender development in terms of micro timescales. We hope our review has made it clear that comprehensive explanations of gender need to consider each of these timescale perspectives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This review was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1 R01 HD45816) and a grant from the T. Denny Sanford Foundation awarded to Carol Lynn Martin; a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Research Grant (1 R01 HD04994) to Diane N. Ruble; and a National Science Foundation IRADS grant (0721383). We are very grateful to Faith Greulich for assistance in preparing the manuscript and to Nia Amazeen, Matt DiDonato, May Ling Halim, Tom Hollenstein, and Kristina Zosuls for comments on an earlier draft.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

LITERATURE CITED

• Adolph KE, Vereijken B, Shrout PE. What changes in infant walking and why. Child Dev. 2003; 74 :475–97. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Alexander GM, Hines M. Gender labels and play styles: their relative contribution to children's selection of playmates. Child Dev. 1994; 65 :869–79. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Arthur AE, Bigler RS, Liben LS, Gelman SA, Ruble DN. Gender stereotyping and prejudice: a developmental intergroup perspective. In: Levy S, Killen M, editors. Intergroup Attitudes and Relations in Childhood Through Adulthood. Oxford Univ. Press; New York: 2008. pp. 66–85. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ashmore RD, Deaux K, McLaughlin-Volpe T. An organizing framework for collective identity: articulation and significance of multidimensionality. Psychol. Bull. 2004; 130 :80–114. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bak P, Chen K, Creutz M. Self-organized criticality in the “Game of Life.” Nature. 1989; 342 :780–81. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baldwin DA, Moses LK. The ontogeny of social information gathering. Child Dev. 1996; 67 :1915–39. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bandura A, Bussey K. On broadening the cognitive, motivational, and sociocultural scope of theorizing about gender development and functioning: comment on Martin, Ruble, and Szkrybalo (2002) Psychol. Bull. 2004; 130 :691–701. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bartini M. Gender role flexibility in early adolescence: developmental change in attitudes, self-perceptions, and behaviors. Sex Roles. 2006; 55 :233–45. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bauer PJ, Liebl M, Stennes L. Pretty is to dress as brave is to suitcoat: gender-based property-to-property inferences by 4–1/2-year-old children. Merrill-Palmer Q. 1998; 44 :355–77. [ Google Scholar ]
• Berenbaum SA, Martin CL, Hanish LD, Briggs PT, Fabes RA. Sex differences in children's play. In: Becker JB, Berkley KJ, Geary N, Hampson E, Herman JP, Young EA, editors. Sex Differences in the Brain: From Genes to Behavior. Oxford Univ. Press; Oxford, UK: 2008. pp. 275–90. [ Google Scholar ]
• Berndt TJ, Heller KA. Gender stereotypes and social inferences: a developmental study. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1986; 50 :889–98. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bigler RS, Arthur AE, Hughes JM. The politics of race and gender: children's perceptions of discrimination and the U.S. presidency. Anal. Soc. Issues Public Policy. 2008; 8 :1–30. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bigler RS, Jones LC, Lobliner DB. Social categorization and the formation of intergroup attitudes in children. Child Dev. 1997; 68 :530–43. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bigler RS, Liben LS. Developmental intergroup theory: explaining and reducing children's social stereotyping and prejudice. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 16 :162–66. [ Google Scholar ]
• Boker SM, Wenger MJ. Data Analytic Techniques for Dynamical Systems. Erlbaum; Mahwah, NJ: 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brewer MB. Ingroup identification and intergroup conflict: When does ingroup love become outgroup hate? In: Ashmore RD, Jussim L, Wilder D, editors. Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction. Oxford Univ. Press; New York: 2001. pp. 17–41. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown CS, Bigler RS. Children's perceptions of discrimination: a developmental model. Child Dev. 2005; 76 :533–53. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bussey K, Bandura A. Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation. Psychol. Rev. 1999; 106 :676–713. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cameron JA, Alvarez JM, Ruble DN, Fuligni AJ. Children's lay theories about ingroups and outgroups: reconceptualizing research on “prejudice.” Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 2001; 5 :118–28. [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell A, Shirley L, Caygill L. Sex-typed preferences in three domains: Do two-year-olds need cognitive variables? Br. J. Psychol. 2002; 93 :203–17. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Connor JM, Serbin LA. Behaviorally-based masculine and feminine activity preference scales for preschoolers: correlates with other classroom behaviors and cognitive tests. Child Dev. 1977; 48 :1411–16. [ Google Scholar ]
• Correll J. 1/ f noise and effort on implicit measures of bias. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 2008; 94 :48–59. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Deaux K, Lewis LL. Structure of gender stereotypes: inter-relationships among components and gender label. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1984; 46 :991–1004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Diamond L. A dynamic systems approach to the development and expression of female same-sex sexuality. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 2 :142–61. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• DiDonato MD. Thesis. Arizona State Univ.; Tempe: 2008. Children's gendered behavior and psychological adjustment: longitudinal and dynamic relations. [ Google Scholar ]
• DiDonato MD, Martin CL. Variations in children's play patterns day to day. Tempe, AZ: 2009. Manuscript in preparation. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dunn J, Hughes C. “I got some swords and you're dead!”: violent fantasy, antisocial behavior, friendship, and moral sensibility in young children. Child Dev. 2001; 72 :491–505. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Edelbrock C, Sugawara AI. Acquisition of sex-typed preferences in preschool children. Dev. Psychol. 1978; 14 :614–23. [ Google Scholar ]
• Egan SK, Perry DG. Gender identity: a multidimensional analysis with implications for psychosocial adjustment. Dev. Psychol. 2001; 37 :451–63. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Epstein S. The stability of behavior: II. Implications for psychological research. Am. Psychol. 1980; 35 :790–806. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fagan JF, Singer LT. The role of simple feature differences in infants' recognition of faces. Infant Behav. Dev. 1979; 2 :39–45. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fausto-Sterling A, Coll CG, Schooler D. Towards a dynamic study of gender in infant development. Presented at Gender Dev. Conf.; San Francisco. 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Finan PH, Hessler EE, Amazeen PG, Butner J, Zautra AJ, Tennen H. Nonlinear oscillations in pain prediction accuracy. Nonlinear Dynamics Psychol. Life Sci. 2009 In press. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fischer KW, Bidell TR. Dynamic development of psychological structures in action and thought. In: Lerner RM, editor. Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical Models of Human Development. Wiley; New York: 1998. pp. 313–99. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gershkoff-Stowe L, Smith LB. A curvilinear trend in naming errors as a function of early vocabulary growth. Cogn. Psychol. 1997; 34 :37–71. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Giles JW, Heyman GD. Young children's beliefs about the relationship between gender and aggressive behavior. Child Dev. 2005; 76 :107–21. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Glick P, Fiske ST. Ambivalent sexism. In: Zanna MP, editor. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Academic; Thousand Oaks, CA: 2001. pp. 115–88. [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldberger AL. Non-linear dynamics for clinicians: chaos theory, fractals, and complexity at the bedside. Lancet. 1996; 347 :1312–14. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Golombok S, Rust J. The Pre-school Activities Inventory: a standardized assessment of gender role in children. Psychol. Assess. 1993; 5 :131–36. [ Google Scholar ]
• Golombok S, Rust J, Zervoulis K, Croudace T, Golding J, Hines M. Developmental trajectories of sex-typed behavior in boys and girls: a longitudinal general population study of children aged 2.5–8 years. Child Dev. 2008; 79 :1583–93. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Granic I, Lamey AV. Combining dynamic-systems and multivariate analyses to compare the mother-child interactions of externalizing subtypes. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2002; 30 :265–83. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Griffin WA, Hanish LD, Martin CL, Fabes RA, Barcelo H, Greenwood P. PlayMate: new data, new rules, and model validity. In: Sallach DL, Macal CM, North MJ, editors. Agent 2004: Social Dynamics: Interaction, Reflexivity and Emergence. Univ. Chicago & Argonne Natl. Lab.; 2004. pp. 339–51. [ Google Scholar ]
• Halim ML, Ruble DN. Gender identity and stereotyping in early and middle childhood. In: Chrisler JC, McCreary DR, editors. Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology. Springer-Verlag; New York: 2009. In press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Halim ML, Ruble DN, Greulich F, Lurye LE, Zosuls KM. Pink frilly dresses: early obsessions and social identity. 2009. Manuscript submitted. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heyman GD. Children's interpretation of ambiguous behavior: evidence for a “boys are bad” bias. Soc. Dev. 2001; 10 :230–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hollenstein T. State space grids: analyzing dynamics across development. Int. J. Behav. Dev. 2007; 31 :384–96. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hollenstein T, Granic I, Stoolmiller M, Snyder J. Rigidity in parent-child interactions and the development of externalizing and internalizing behavior in early childhood. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2004; 32 :598–602. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hurst HE. Long term storage capacity of reservoirs. Trans. Am. Soc. Civil Eng. 1951; 116 :770–99. [ Google Scholar ]
• Huston AC. Sex typing. In: Hetherington EM, editor. Handbook of Child Psychology: Socialization, Personality, and Social Development. Wiley; New York: 1983. pp. 387–467. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kelso JAS. Dynamic Patterns: The Self Organization of Brain and Behavior. MIT Press; Cambridge, MA: 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Killen M, McGlothlin H, Henning A. Implicit biases and explicit judgments: a developmental perspective. In: Levy SR, Killen M, editors. Intergroup Attitudes and Relations in Childhood Through Adulthood. Oxford Univ. Press; Oxford, UK: 2008. pp. 126–45. [ Google Scholar ]
• Killen M, Stangor C. Children's social reasoning about inclusion and exclusion in gender and race peer group contexts. Child Dev. 2001; 72 :174–86. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• King A, West M. Searching for the functional origins of cowbird song in eastern brown-headed cowbirds ( Molothrus ate rater ) Anim. Behav. 1988; 36 :1575–88. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kohlberg LA. A cognitive-developmental analysis of children's sex role concepts and attitudes. In: Maccoby EE, editor. The Development of Sex Differences. Stanford Univ. Press; Stanford, CA: 1966. pp. 82–173. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kowalski K. The development of social identity and intergroup attitudes in young children. In: Saracho ON, Spodek B, editors. Contemporary Perspectives on Social Learning in Early Childhood Education. Inform. Age Publ.; Charlotte, NC: 2007. pp. 51–84. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kuhn D, Nash SC, Brucken L. Sex role concepts of two- and three-year-olds. Child Dev. 1978; 49 :445–51. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• La Freniere P, Strayer FF, Gauthier R. The emergence of same-sex affiliative preferences among preschool peers: a developmental/ethological perspective. Child Dev. 1984; 55 :1958–65. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lamey AV, Hollenstein T, Lewis MD, Granic I. GridWare (version 1.1B) 2004 http://statespacegrids.org . GridWare (Version 1.1). http://statespacegrids.org.Freeware available at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ssg/gridware.php
• Langlois JH, Downs AC. Mothers, fathers, and peers as socialization agents of sex-typed play behaviors in young children. Child Dev. 1980; 51 :1237–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Leinbach MD, Hort BE, Fagot BI. Bears are for boys: metaphorical associations in young children's gender stereotypes. Cogn. Dev. 1997; 12 :107–30. [ Google Scholar ]
• Levy GD. Gender-typed and non-gender-typed category awareness in toddlers. Sex Roles. 1999; 41 :851–73. [ Google Scholar ]
• Levy GD, Haaf RA. Detection of gender-related categories by 10-month-old infants. Infant Behav. Dev. 1994; 17 :457–59. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis MD. The promise of dynamic systems approaches for an integrated account of human development. Child Dev. 2000; 71 :36–43. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis MD. Interacting time scales in personality (and cognitive) development: intentions, emotions, and emergent forms. In: Granott N, Parziale J, editors. Microdevelopment: Transition Processes in Development and Learning. Cambridge Univ. Press; New York: 2002. pp. 183–212. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis MD. Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling. Behav. Brain Sci. 2005; 28 :105–30. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis MD, Granic I. Emotion, Development, and Self-Organization: Dynamic Systems Approaches to Emotional Development. Cambridge Univ. Press; Cambridge, UK: 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis MD, Lamey AV, Douglas L. A new dynamic systems method for the analysis of early socioemotional development. Dev. Sci. 1999; 2 :457–75. [ Google Scholar ]
• Liben LS, Bigler RS. The developmental course of gender differentiation. In: Overton W, editor. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Blackwell Sci.; Cambridge, MA: 2002. pp. vii–147. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Liben LS, Bigler RS, Krogh HR. Pink and blue collar jobs: children's judgments of job status and job aspirations in relation to sex of worker. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 2001; 79 :346–63. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lichtwarck-Aschoff A, van Geert P, Bosma H, Kunnen S. Time and identity: a framework for research and identity formation. Dev. Rev. 2008; 28 :370–400. [ Google Scholar ]
• Linkenkaer-Hansen K, Monto S, Rytsala H, Suominen K, Isometsa E, Kahkonen S. Breakdown of long-range temporal correlations in theta oscillations in patients with major depressive disorder. J. Neurosci. 2005; 25 :10131–37. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lloyd B, Duveen G. Gender Identities and Education: The Impact of Starting School. St. Martin's Press; New York: 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lurye LE, Zosuls KM, Ruble DN. Gender identity and adjustment: understanding the impact of individual and normative differences in sex typing. New Dir. Child Adolesc. Dev. 2008; 120 :31–46. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lutz SE, Ruble DN. Children and gender prejudice: context, motivation, and the development of gender conceptions. In: Vasta R, editor. Annals of Child Development. Jessica Kingsley Publ.; London: 1995. pp. 131–66. [ Google Scholar ]
• Maccoby EE. The Two Sexes: Growing Up Apart, Coming Together. Belknap; Cambridge, MA: 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• Maccoby EE. Gender and group process: a developmental perspective. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2002; 11 :54–58. [ Google Scholar ]
• Maccoby EE, Jacklin CN. Gender segregation in childhood. In: Hayne WR, editor. Advances in Child Development and Behavior. Vol. 20. Academic; Orlando, FL: 1987. pp. 239–87. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL. Cognitive theories of gender development. In: Eckes T, Trautner HM, editors. The Developmental Social Psychology of Gender. Erlbaum; Mahwah, NJ: 2000. pp. 91–121. [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL. Moving beyond the dyad: dynamic systems, gender, and social relationships in young children. Presented at Gender Dev. Conf.; San Francisco, CA. 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Fabes RA. The stability and consequences of young children's same-sex peer interactions. Dev. Psychol. 2001; 37 :431–46. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Fabes RA, Hanish LD, Hollenstein T. Social dynamics in the preschool. Dev. Rev. 2005; 25 :299–327. [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Halverson C. A schematic processing model of sex typing and stereotyping in children. Child Dev. 1981; 52 :1119–34. [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Ruble DN. Children's search for gender cues: cognitive perspectives on gender development. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2004; 13 :67–70. [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Ruble DN, Szkrybalo J. Cognitive theories of early gender development. Psychol. Bull. 2002; 128 :903–33. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Ruble DN, Szkrybalo J. Recognizing the centrality of gender identity and stereotype knowledge in gender development and moving toward theoretical integration: reply to Bandura and Bussey (2004) Psychol. Bull. 2004; 130 :702–10. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CL, Wood CH, Little JK. The development of gender stereotype components. Child Dev. 1990; 61 :1891–904. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• May RM. Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics. Nature. 1976; 261 :64–72. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McCarthy MM, Arnold AP. Sex differences in the brain: What's old and what's new? In: Becker JB, Berkley KJ, Geary N, Hampson E, Herman JP, Young EA, editors. Sex Differences in the Brain: From Genes to Behavior. Oxford Univ. Press; Oxford, UK: 2008. pp. 15–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• McGuire J, Martin CL, Fabes RA, Hanish LD. The role of “gender enforcers” in young children's peer interactions. Poster presented at Biennial Mtg. Soc. Res. Child Dev.; Boston, MA. 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• McHale SM, Kim J, Whiteman S, Crouter AC. Links between sex-typed time use in middle-childhood and gender development in early adolescence. Dev. Psychol. 2004; 40 :868–81. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller C, Lurye LE, Zosuls KM, Ruble DN. Accessibility of gender stereotype domains: developmental and gender differences in children. Sex Roles. 2009; 60 :870–81. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller CL. Developmental changes in male/female voice classification by infants. Infant Behav. Dev. 1983; 6 :313–30. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mischel W. A social learning view of sex differences in behavior. In: Maccoby E, editor. The Development of Sex Differences. Stanford Univ. Press; Stanford, CA: 1966. pp. 57–81. [ Google Scholar ]
• Neff KD, Cooper CE, Woodruff AL. Children's and adolescents' developing perceptions of gender inequality. Soc. Dev. 2007; 16 :682–99. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nowak A, Vallacher RR, Tesser A, Borkowski W. Society of the self: the emergence of collective properties in self-structure. Psychol. Rev. 2000; 107 :39–61. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Oyama S. Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide. Duke Univ. Press; Durham, NC: 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Poulin-Dubois D, Serbin LA, Derbyshire A. Toddlers' intermodal and verbal knowledge about gender. Merrill-Palmer Q. 1998; 44 :338–54. [ Google Scholar ]
• Powlishta KK, Serbin LA, Doyle A, White DR. Gender, ethnic, and body type biases: the generality of prejudice in childhood. Dev. Psychol. 1994; 30 :526–36. [ Google Scholar ]
• Powlishta KK, Serbin LA, Moller LC. The stability of individual differences in gender typing: implications for understanding gender segregation. Sex Roles. 1993; 29 :723–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Quinn PC, Yahr J, Kuhn A, Slater AM, Pascalis O. Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: a preference for female. Perception. 2002; 31 :1109–21. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruble DN, Alvarez J, Bachman M, Cameron J, Fuligni A, et al. The development of a sense of self: the development and implications of children's collective identity. In: Bennett M, Sani F, editors. The Development of the Social Self. Psychol. Press; East Sussex, UK: 2004. pp. 29–76. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruble DN, Dweck CS. Self-perceptions, person conceptions, and their development. In: Eisenberg N, editor. Social Development. Review of Personality and Social Psychology. Ch. 15. Sage; Thousand Oaks, CA: 1995. pp. 109–39. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruble DN, Lurye LE, Zosuls KM. Pink frilly dresses (PFD) and early gender identity. Princeton Report Knowledge (P-ROK) 2007a; 2 :2. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruble DN, Martin CL, Berenbaum SA. Gender development. In: Eisenberg N, editor. Handbook of Child Development. Wiley; New York: 2006. pp. 858–932. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruble DN, Taylor LJ, Cyphers L, Greulich FK, Lurye LE, Shrout PE. The role of gender constancy in early gender development. Child Dev. 2007b; 78 :1121–36. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rudman LA, Glick P. The Social Psychology of Gender: How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations. Guilford; New York: 2008. p. 386. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schafer DR, Light JM, Fabes RA, Hanish LD, Martin CL. Fundamental principles of network formation among preschool children. Soc. Networks. 2009 In press. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schelling TC. Dynamic models of segregation. J. Math. Sociol. 1971; 1 :143–86. [ Google Scholar ]
• Serbin LS, Powlishta KK, Gulko J. The development of sex typing in middle childhood. In: Bronson WC, editor. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Univ. Chicago Press; Chicago, IL: 1993. pp. v–74. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Signorella ML, Bigler RS, Liben LS. Developmental differences in children's gender schemata about others: a meta-analytic review. Dev. Rev. 1993; 13 :147–83. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sinno SM, Killen M. Moms at work and dads at home: children's evaluations of parental roles. Appl. Dev. Sci. 2009; 13 :16–29. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sosnoff JJ, Newell KM. Age-related loss of adaptability to fast time scales in motor variability. J. Gerontol. Ser. B: Psychol. Sci. Soc. Sci. 2008; 63 :344–52. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Spencer JP, Schoner G. Bridging the representational gap in the dynamic systems approach to development. Dev. Sci. 2003; 6 :392–412. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sroufe LA, Bennett C, Englund M, Urban J, Shulman S. The significance of gender boundaries in preadolescence: contemporary correlates and antecedents of boundary violation and maintenance. Child Dev. 1993; 64 :455–66. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Steenbeek H, van Geert P. An empirical validation of a dynamic systems model of interaction: Do children of different sociometric statuses differ in their dyadic play? Dev. Sci. 2008; 11 :253–81. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stennes LM, Burch MM, Sen MG, Bauer PJ. A longitudinal study of gendered vocabulary and communicative action in young children. Dev. Psychol. 2005; 41 :75–88. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Susskind JE, Hodges C. Decoupling children's gender-based in-group positivity from out-group negativity. Sex Roles. 2007; 56 :707–16. [ Google Scholar ]
• Teig S, Susskind JE. Truck driver or nurse? The impact of gender roles and occupational status on children's occupational preferences. Sex Roles. 2008; 58 :848–63. [ Google Scholar ]
• Theimer CE, Killen M, Stangor C. Young children's evaluations of exclusion in gender-stereotypic peer contexts. Dev. Psychol. 2001; 37 :18–27. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thelen E, Schoner G, Scheier C, Smith LB. The dynamics of embodiment: a field theory of infant perseverative reaching. Behav. Brain Sci. 2001; 24 :1–34. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thelen E, Smith LA. A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action. Bradford/MIT Press; Cambridge, MA: 1994. [ Google Scholar ]
• Thelen E, Smith LB. Dynamic systems theories. In: Damon W, editor. Handbook of Child Psychology. Wiley; New York: 1998. pp. 563–634. [ Google Scholar ]
• Thelen E, Smith LB. Dynamic systems theories. In: Lerner RM, editor. Handbook of Child Psychology: Theoretical Models of Human Development. Wiley; New York: 2006. pp. 258–312. [ Google Scholar ]
• Thorne B. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. Rutgers Univ. Press; New Brunswick, NJ: 1993. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tobin DD, Menon M, Menon M, Spatta BC, Hodges EVE, Perry DG. The intrapsychics of gender: a model of self-socialization. Psychol. Rev. 2009 In press. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Trautner HM, Ruble DN, Cyphers L, Kirsten B, Behrendt R, Hartman P. Rigidity and flexibility of gender stereotypes in children: developmental or differential? Infant Child Dev. 2005; 14 :365–80. [ Google Scholar ]
• Treffner PJ, Kelso JAS. Dynamic encounters: long memory during functional stabilization. Ecol. Psychol. 1999; 11 :103–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Turner P, Gervai J, Hinde RA. Gender-typing in young children: preferences, behaviour, and cultural differences. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 1993; 11 :323–42. [ Google Scholar ]
• van Geert P. Dynamic systems approaches and modeling of developmental processes. In: Valsiner J, Connolly KJ, editors. Handbook of Developmental Psychology. Sage; London: 2003. pp. 640–72. [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Orden GC, Holden JG, Turvey MT. Self-organization of cognitive performance. J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen. 2003; 132 :331–50. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Verkuyten M, Thijs J. Ethnic and gender bias among Dutch and Turkish children in late childhood: the role of social context. Infant Child Dev. 2001; 10 :203–17. [ Google Scholar ]
• Waldrop MM. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. Simon & Schuster; New York: 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ward LM. Dynamic Cognitive Science. Bradford; Cambridge, MA: 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weinraub M, Clemens LP, Sockloff A, Etheridge R, Gracely E, Myers B. The development of sex role stereotypes in the third year: relationships to gender labeling, gender identity, sex-typed toy preferences, and family characteristics. Child Dev. 1984; 55 :1493–503. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• West C, Zimmerman DH. Doing gender. In: Lorber J, Farrell SA, editors. The Social Construction of Gender. Sage; Thousand Oaks, CA: 1991. pp. 13–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wilensky U. Learning and Computer-Based Modeling. Northwestern Univ.; Evanston, IL: 1997. NetLogo segregation model. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation . Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL. [ Google Scholar ] A NetLogo model that can be run with varying parameters; illustrates the emergence of segregation in a system
• Williams GP. Chaos Theory Tamed. Joseph Henry Press; Washington, DC: 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• Witherington DC. The dynamic systems approach as a metatheory for development psychology. Hum. Dev. 2007; 50 :127–53. [ Google Scholar ]
• Yee M, Brown R. The development of gender differentiation in young children. Br. J. Soc. Psychol. 1994; 33 :183–96. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Younger BA, Fearing DD. Parsing items into separate categories: developmental change in infant categorization. Child Dev. 1999; 70 :291–303. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zosuls KM, Ruble DN, Tamis-LeMonda CS, Shrout PE, Bornstein MH, Greulich FK. The acquisition of gender labels in infancy: implications for sex-typed play. Dev. Psychol. 2009; 45 :688–701. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zucker KJ, Bradley SJ. Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents. Guilford; New York: 1995. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zucker KJ, Wilson-Smith DN, Kurita JA, Stern A. Children's appraisals of sex-typed behavior in their peers. Sex Roles. 1995; 33 :703–25. [ Google Scholar ]

Social norms, gender and development: A review of research and practice

Publication year: 2023.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to E-mail

This discussion paper provides a “state of the evidence” on social norms change within the field of gender and development. The paper presents findings from a scoping review of studies and evaluations of programmatic interventions to shift social norms, as well as insights from a broader body of evidence tracing how social change happens. It answers four questions:

• What are social norms?
• How do social norms change?
• How are social norms measured?
• What role (if any) should global development organizations play in shifting social norms?

In doing so, the paper traverses a divided evidence base that, on the one hand, does not adequately reflect the varied social, political, and economic drivers behind historical changes in social norms, including the role of women’s and feminist movements, and on the other, grasps the complexity of social norms but does not lend itself to clearly defined theories of action.

Key lessons include:

• Social norms should be approached as one lever in a broader toolbox of programmatic options.
• Feminist and women’s rights movements are key agents of social norms change.
• Sustainable investments in social norms programming requires shifts within development practice itself, including how change is measured.

This paper is part of the  “UN Women discussion paper series” .

Additional documents

• Publication (PDF, 470KB)

Publishing entities

Related publications.

Gender alert no. 2: Women’s rights in Afghanistan one year after the Taliban take-over

Brochure: Strategic note 2021–2025: Côte d’Ivoire

Brochure: Strategic note 2022–2025: Türkiye

Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development

Edited by Jane L. Parpart, M. Patricia Connelly, and V. Eudine Barriteau

Published by the International Development Research Centre PO Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9

© Commonwealth of Learning 2000

Legal deposit: 2nd quarter 2000 National Library of Canada ISBN 0-88936-910-0

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the International Development Research Centre. Mention of a proprietary name does not constitute endorsement of the product and is given only for information. A microfiche edition is available.

The catalogue of IDRC Books and this publication may be consulted online at http://www.idrc.ca/booktique .

The development debate has advanced considerably since the United Nation's First Development Decade in the 1960s, which emphasized economic growth and the "trickle-down" approach as key to reducing poverty. One of the notable advancements in the debate has been the move to consider gender equality as a key element of development. Women's concerns were first integrated into the development agenda in the 1970s. Disappointment over the trickle-down approach paved the way for the adoption of the basic-needs strategy, which focused on increasing the participation in and benefits of the development process for the poor, as well as recognizing women's needs and contributions to society. Activists articulated women's issues in national and international forums. Following these events, the women-in-development movement endorsed the enhancement of women's consciousness and abilities, with a view to enabling women to examine their situations and to act to correct their disadvantaged positions. The movement also affirmed that giving women greater access to resources would contribute to an equitable and efficient development process.

The end of the 1970s ushered in the concern with gender relations in development. Microlevel studies drew our attention to the differences in entitlements, perceived capabilities, and social expectations of men and women, boys and girls. Contrary to the unified-household model, the household has been considered an arena of bargaining, cooperation, or conflict. Reflecting the norms, laws, and social values of society, the differences in the status of men and women have profound implications for how they participate in market or nonmarket work and in community life as a whole. These differences embody social and power relations that constitute the setting for the implementation of development programs, and these differences therefore influence program outcomes. In the 1980s and 1990s, research demonstrated that gender relations mediate the process of development. For example, analyses of stabilization and structural-adjustment policies showed that gender inequalities have an impact on the attainment of macroeconomic objectives.

The concern with gender relations in development has strengthened the affirmation that equality in the status of men and women is fundamental to every society. And this concern has prompted us to refine our perspective on what development should be and how to bring it about efficiently. We realize that development requires more than the creation of opportunities for people to earn sustainable livelihoods — it also requires the creation of a conducive environment for men and women to seize those opportunities. Development implies not only more and better schools but also equal access to education for boys and girls. Development requires good governments that give men and women equal voices in decision-making and policy implementation. Bearing in mind the perspective that gender matters in development, we can go on to reexamine and redefine other development concerns and objectives.

Thus, one can only agree to the advantages gained if practitioners and students of development have a grasp of the concepts, theories, and discourses that stimulate the gender debate. We will, as a result, be able to better analyze and understand gender issues and properly integrate gender interests and needs into policies and programs. Concepts and ideas — such as feminism, gender analysis, diversity, and gender mainstreaming — that have become buzz words in the development circle will be clarified and demystified. This will foster effective communication among development agents and result in a consistent view of overall development goals and in complementary, rather than contradictory, plans of action.

Clearly, there is scope for developing and increasing the accessibility of programs for education and research on women and gender. Such programs could reach a wide audience, institutionalize gender scholarship, and complement other avenues for disseminating the gender debate and advancing the cause of gender equality. Yet, researchers and students in developing countries have expressed frustration in accessing gender programs and resource materials. In developing countries, the spread and depth of these programs and resource materials are still more limited than in developed countries.

The Commonwealth of Learning and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) have helped to address this gap by supporting the development of this course module. The research and writing of the module benefited from the contributions of gender experts, including scholars, educators, and practitioners from the three campuses of the University of the West Indies (Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad), Saint Mary's University (Canada), Dalhousie University (Canada), and the International Women's Tribune Centre (United States). Further support was provided by IDRC for the publication of this module, to make it accessible to development and educational institutions in developing countries. IDRC's support for this undertaking resonates with IDRC's dedication to improving human well-being through research and the application of knowledge. Since IDRC's creation in 1970, it has funded development research in poor countries, with the objective of building the capabilities and institutions needed to conduct the relevant research in these countries. Gender is an important concern at IDRC. The Centre has taken steps to promote gender-sensitive research that improves our understanding of development problems and leads to appropriate solutions, and it has supported efforts to disseminate knowledge on gender issues, such as this book. It is hoped that this publication encourages learning, research, and action for a sustainable and equitable world.

Anneli Alba Research Fellow, Gender and Sustainable Development Unit International Development Research Centre

February 2000

This page intentionally left blank

One of the approaches to overcoming obstacles to women's advancement is to develop and exchange materials, resources, and courses in the areas of women's studies and women and development (WAD). At a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, in October 1990, the Commonwealth Ministers Responsible for Women's Affairs specifically mandated the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) to develop a program to address the needs of women in the Commonwealth countries of the South.

In April 1992, COL convened a week-long meeting at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada, to examine ways to create course modules on women-gender and development. The meeting was attended by representatives of institutions of higher education from Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Nigeria, the South Pacific, and Zimbabwe, as well as the United Nations Training and Research Institute and the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) in New York. Discussion focused on identifying the needed resources and materials and examining the capacities of various institutions to coordinate the development of modules. All the participants expressed interest in contributing to the long-term project and a desire to use the modules in courses on women-gender and development and women's studies at their own institutions.

They established a project team, comprising representatives from the three campuses of the University of the West Indies (UWI) (Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad); the Summer Institute for Gender and Development (SIGAD), a joint project of Saint Mary's and Dalhousie University; IWTC; and COL. The team convened in Kingston, Jamaica, in February 1993 to determine the specific content and design of the course modules and to assign writing tasks to team members. Two subsequent project-team meetings were convened, in New York in January and June 1994, to review and finalize draft materials prepared by the various teams of writers. COL managed the project and coordinated the activities.

The Centres for Gender and Development Studies at the three campuses of UWI and SIGAD collaboratively developed and wrote this core module, which focuses on the theoretical justification for examining women's specific roles and contributions to development initiatives. The module is concerned with the integration and recognition of women and their inclusion as decision-makers in development planning and policy-making, as well as other development activities: it also celebrates women's contributions to social, economic, and political development. The collaborative process was complicated, but rewarding. Although individuals or small teams authored specific chapters, feedback from the various writing teams enriched and enlarged everyone's writing and thinking. For example, the presentation of black feminism and Third World feminism in Chapter 3 benefited enormously from the input of Eudine Barriteau from the Barbados UWI team. The opportunity to read each of the chapters provided new ways of addressing important issues and influenced all of our writing and thinking. Input from the writing teams also assisted in the laborious process of identifying appropriate activities, excerpts, case studies, recommended readings, and key concepts. Above all, the two editorial meetings facilitated rethinking and rewriting. Representatives of the writing teams worked through the materials with the additional input of the various participants from IWTC, COL, and the International Development Research Centre. These meetings were grueling, intellectually challenging, and enormously important. Every sentence and word was examined and contested; every concept was revisited and reexamined. Participants left humbled, but inspired, by both the challenges and the benefits of South-North collaboration.

The module that emerged from this process is a comprehensive, foundational text on gender and development (GAD). The module contains narratives or case studies to further illustrate the main topics. Exercises and study questions invite the user to enhance his or her knowledge through personal research. Related further readings are provided to direct the user to additional sources of information. Key concepts (defined in Appendix 1 ) are highlighted in bold in the text. The module spans the emergence of women in development (WID), bringing us to the point where the second wave of critiques and evaluation led to the emergence of the new field of GAD. It documents, discusses, and presents the major themes and practices in the field of WID, WAD, and GAD. It also addresses emerging debates that have continued to develop since the mid-1990s, particularly those on the power of development discourse, globalization, and the concepts of difference and voice.

The module was made available to educational institutions and nongovernmental and women's organizations throughout the Commonwealth for local adaptation and use in traditional educational settings and informal situations. Its publication, in revised form, as a book is intended to enhance its usefulness and increase its availability around the world. The attribution of general editors reflects the work of moving the manuscript from a module to a book. Individual authors are listed on the chapters they wrote, but the manuscript as a whole reflects our collective endeavours.

Jane L. Parpart M. Patricia Connelly V. Eudine Barriteau

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) extends sincere appreciation to the following project team members for their significant contributions to the success of the project:

We also acknowledge the efforts of Sherrill Whittington, the former COL staff member responsible for women-and-development project coordination, and Patricia Mc Williams, who assumed responsibility for the project after Ms Whittington's departure from COL.

We are very grateful to Sue Parker, Library Technician at COL, for her help with copyright clearances; and to Beverley Gardner for the original layout and word processing. Their tremendous support helped ensure the success of the project.

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada. Eva Rathgeber, Regional Director for IDRC in Africa, played a crucial role in conceiving and supporting the project.

The opinions expressed in this document are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed in any manner to COL, the members of its Board of Governors, or the countries they represent.

C HAPTER 1 W HY T HEORY ?

Barbara Bailey, Elsa Leo-Rhynie, and Jeanette Morris

Introduction

In this chapter, we examine the process of theorizing and learn to appreciate the dynamic and flexible nature of this process. Much of our understanding of the world, our societies, and ourselves, today, rests on theories and knowledge generated historically and predominantly by men of certain nationalities and economic classes. Male-dominated and culturally specific theorizing and knowledge have generally resulted in the exclusion of women and other groups from the process of formal theorizing and knowledge-building. When applied in research, policy, and action, such theories and knowledge not only ignore women's contributions in all spheres of activity but also exclude consideration of issues particularly relevant to women.

Feminist scholars have argued that knowledge based mainly on male, culturally specific experience represents a skewed perception of reality and is only partial knowledge. The best way to correct this is to take women's daily experiences and their informal theorizing into account and, on this basis, adopt feminist approaches to building theory and knowledge.

Theorizing and theory-building have generally been seen as the business of academics in ivory towers, yet all individuals make choices and decisions based on assumptions or theories about the world. These formal, mainstream (or "male-stream") approaches to theorizing are being challenged by various groups of women who have engaged in different approaches to the process of theorizing. These women are bringing their unique perspectives to bear on issues affecting their daily lives. Women have used these new perspectives to deconstruct traditional knowledge bases and build new ones. Such reconstruction of knowledge has influenced policy and action affecting the lives of women.

The objectives of this chapter are the following:

What is theory?

Although we have no precise, universally accepted definition of theory, certain recurring elements appear in the literature, which allows us to roughly draw the boundaries of the concept. Theory is defined most commonly as scientific theory, which emphasizes a logically unified framework, generalization, and explanation. Ornstein and Hunkins (1993, p. 184) indicated that a theory is a "device for interpreting, criticizing and unifying established laws, modifying them to fit data unanticipated in their formation, and guiding the enterprise of discovering new and more powerful generalisation." Common-sense understandings of theory often use the concept to describe the rules that guide action, opinion, ideals, or a particular philosophy. Stanley and Wise (1983) suggested that the majority of persons, particularly women, have been brought up to think of theory as something mysterious and forbidding, produced by clever people, most of whom are men. Nowadays, people are questioning this divide between experts and nonexperts and adopting a more inclusive approach to theorizing.

The nature of theorizing

The traditional, mainstream process of theorizing rests on the scientific method. This is summarized in the model presented in Figure 1 .

The male-centred approach to theorizing has produced particular views of many issues, including those affecting women. These views rely on androcentric assumptions. An example of such an assumption is that women's work is biologically determined and therefore is or should be home based and restricted to nurturing and domestic chores. Such assumptions provide the basis for hypotheses such as, in this case, the hypothesis that the waged workforce tends to be predominantly male and women work at home. The information gathered during the testing of such an hypothesis has traditionally been limited to quantitative data, which are used to support the general principles posited as offering valid explanations about this issue. Researchers have, for a long time, uncritically accepted these explanations as factual and have produced theories about women's work based on questionable assumptions. Despite their questionable nature, such theories have also informed policy and action.

Figure 1 . The process of theorizing: the knowledge spiral.

Some problems associated with mainstream theorizing are listed below:

Sandra Harding expressed the following view of the traditional, scientific approach:

Scientific knowledge-seeking is supposed to be value-neutral, objective, dispassionate, disinterested, and so forth. It is supposed to be protected from political interests, goals, and desires (such as feminist ones) by the norms of science. In particular, science's "method" is supposed to protect the results of research from the social values of the researchers.

— Harding (1987a, p. 182)

When researchers use this traditional approach to theorizing, however, their biases can affect the process at every stage:

Nonetheless, theories based on this approach have been a major force in shaping perceptions of reality.

An investigation of women's work conducted by researchers with a feminist perspective would, in all likelihood, rely on a variety of assumptions related to their own experiences, as well as to the experiences of women in other situations. Such assumptions would differ according to factors such as race, class, ethnicity, and age. An investigation such as this would therefore be more likely to give the following results:

Based on this wider view, the general principle would be that women's work is not restricted to the home. Female perspectives and experiences would help to challenge the hypothesis (generated from the male perspective) that women's work is in the home and show it to be invalid. Theorizing is therefore an important, flexible, and dynamic process.

We each have assumptions about people, events, issues, etc., in our everyday lives. We may explicitly state these assumptions or allow them to remain implicit in our opinions, attitudes, and behaviours. We each interpret things differently as we bring our assumptions to bear on a situation. We test some of these assumptions formally and others informally. Informal testing of our assumptions is, in fact, a process of hypothesis testing, and the results often cause us to change our assumptions. Sandra Harding's views, reprinted in Box 1 , are particularly interesting.

The differences identified in this activity can reveal the ways the perspectives of men and women differ, and these differences also relate to the problems experienced by men and women. As Harding noted,

Many phenomena which appear problematic from the perspective of men's characteristic experiences do not appear problematic at all from the perspective of women's experiences — On the other hand, women experience many phenomena which they think do need explanation. Why do men find child care and housework so distasteful? Why do women's life opportunities tend to be constricted exactly at the moments traditional history marks as the most progressive? Why is it hard to detect black women's ideals of womanhood in studies of black families? Why is men's sexuality so "driven," so defined in terms of power? Why is risking death said to represent the distinctively human act but giving birth regarded as merely natural?

— Harding (1987b, p. 6)

If we concede that men and women often view issues differently and have different experiences, it follows that we must consider a phenomenon in relation to the individuals who experience it. Harding therefore further suggested that

Reflecting on how social phenomena get defined as problems in need of explanation in the first place quickly reveals that there is no such thing as a problem without a person (or group of those) who have this problem: a problem is always a problem for someone or other. Recognition of this fact and its implications for the structure of the scientific enterprise quickly brings feminist approaches to enquiring into conflict with traditional understandings in many ways.

— Harding (1987b, p 6)

Feminists have challenged the view of women that has developed from male theorizing. Hilary Rose explained the nature of the challenge:

Increasingly, the new scholarship drew on the concept of gender to illuminate a double process of a gendered science produced by a gendered knowledge production system. Was the seemingly taken for granted androcentricity, even misogyny, of science, a matter of "bias" which good unbiased science turned out by feminists and their allies would correct, or was the problem more profound, one that only an explicitly feminist science could displace, so as to become, in the language of the enlightenment, a "successor science"?

— Rose (1994)

Feminist approaches to research and theorizing

Once we undertake to use women's experience as a resource to generate scientific problems, hypotheses and evidence, to design research for women, and to place the researcher in the same critical plane as the research subject, traditional epistemological assumptions can no longer be made. These agendas have led feminist social scientists to ask questions about who can be a knower (only men?); what tests beliefs must pass in order to be legitimated as knowledge (only tests against men's experiences and observations?); what kinds of things can be known (can "subjective truths," ones that only women — or some women — tend to arrive at, count as knowledge?); the nature of objectivity (does it require "point-of-viewlessness"?); the appropriate relationship between the researcher and her/his research subjects (must the researcher be disinterested, dispassionate, and socially invisible to the subject?); what should be the purposes of the pursuit of knowledge (to produce information FOR men?).

— Harding (1987a, p. 181)

The aim of feminist theorizing is to deconstruct and redefine concepts previously defined from a male perspective and generally accepted as factual. The deconstruction and redefinition of concepts, as well as the creation of new ones, have emphasized the following:

The result is the generation of theories from a view of the world through feminist lenses. The aim has been to change conditions adversely affecting women's lives by critically analyzing existing theories and developing new policies and social action. Hilary Rose (1994) elaborated on this in her address entitled "Alternative Knowledge Systems in Science," an excerpt of which is set out in Box 2 .

Feminist theorizing seeks to uncover

The social roles and the ways women negotiate the world also differ among women in diverse contexts (cultural, social, political, racial or ethnic, religious, etc.) and with diverse personal characteristics (age, education, sexual orientation, etc.). The excerpt from Sandra Harding's "Is There a Feminist Method?," reprinted in Box 3 , expands on this point.

In examining problems and carrying out analyses, feminists recognize that factors other than gender shape perceptions and understandings. Class, race, and culture are also powerful determinants and therefore create differences that must be taken into account. The category "women" is pluralistic, so treating women as a homogenous group results in a theorizing process no better than that of the traditional, androcentric approach.

To further accommodate these differences, feminist inquiry highlights the importance of placing the inquirer on the same "critical plane" as the subject of inquiry, with the aim of ensuring less bias and distortion. Researchers can then no longer hide behind the language of "objectivity"; they must situate themselves in their research. The excerpt from the work of Sandra Harding in Box 4 elaborates on this point.

Feminists have proposed various theories to explain their experiences on the basis of differences in their class, race, and culture. Substantial discourse among feminists has focused on these various theories. Discussing a paper by Amrita Chhachhi (Chhachhi 1988), Rawwida Baksh-Soodeen noted that

The variety of approaches within feminist theory reflect, on the one hand, divergent perceptions, and on the other, different social and historical locations in which feminists exist. From Chhachhi's point of view, the rejection of all feminist theory as "western," "eurocentric," or "ethnocentric" results from a failure to distinguish between the application of feminist theories to the historical, political and socio-cultural specificities of black/Third World women, and the notion of all theory as "white." She distinguishes ... three levels of analysis in most contemporary social theories, including feminism.

1. Basic concepts which are abstract and function as tools of analysis (e.g. relations of production, relations of reproduction, etc.);

2. Intermediate level concepts (such as patriarchy, mode of production, etc.);

3. Historically specific analysis of a concrete social phenomenon (e.g. slavery in nineteenth century Caribbean society, dowry in north India, etc.).

— Baksh-Soodeen (1993, p. 31)

Chhachhi had argued that at the first level of basic conceptual analysis (that of basic concepts), little disagreement occurs between black and white feminists who share similar approaches. However, she noted that black-Third World feminists have encouraged an important sensitivity to the need for historically specific research at levels 2 and 3 (those of intermediate-level concepts and historically specific analyses). As Baksh-Soodeen remarked,

most often the limitations of Euro-American feminist studies lie at the second and third levels of analysis in that abstract concepts are imposed mechanically and historically, and hence become a substitute for an historically specific analysis which takes into account the complexities of social reality.

Let us examine how women from different social contexts might have divergent perceptions and explanations of the same phenomenon.

Hilary Rose's comments in Box 5 illustrate how theoretical positions can also be used to exert power and influence over the lives of women.

Case Study 1

Women's work in the philippines.

In the mid-1970s, Gelia Castillo noted that about 60 percent of the women in the rural areas of the Philippines were engaged in agriculture or related activities, such as fishing, an increase from the 1965 figure of 53.6 percent. In roughly two decades (from 1956 to 1974), the proportion of all Filipinos in agricultural and related activities decreased from about 59 to 55 percent, and the proportion of all women and girls over ten years old decreased slightly more (from 48.1 percent to 36.6 percent). The overall decline in the proportion of women employed in agriculture coupled with the increased proportion of rural women in agriculture from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s could suggest that there were more opportunities for urban employment and/or fewer opportunities for non-agricultural rural employment. It is also possible that farm women were counted differently in the 1970s, if, as may people contend, agricultural women are generally underenumerated, the 1970s figures could reflect greater accuracy (Castillo did not address this issue in her study).

Of these agricultural women, the vast majority are crop workers in rice and com farming, and the burden of the women's work is in non-mechanized tasks such as weeding and transplanting. In one study carried out in the provinces of Bulacan and Tatangas, planting/transplanting, harvesting, and post-harvest activities accounted for nearly 70 percent of the female contribution to farming those regions. These are activities that can be done in a relatively short span of time, so they are compatible with the major household duties for which the women are also responsible. The kind of work Filipinas do helps to explain why there are substantial seasonal variations in the agricultural employment of women. Castillo notes, for instance, that the

percentage of women working full time in agriculture can increase between 6 and 10 percent between February and May.

A detailed study of time allocation in rural households in Laguna, a province of the Philippines, showed that mothers were less involved in agricultural activities than either fathers or children. On the average, the women in the sample spent slightly over one hour a day on pre-and post-harvest activities, vegetable production, livestock raising, and the like — men and children spent well over three hours a day on these same activities — but the 5 percent of the women in the sample who reported that their primary occupation was farming averaged about three and one-third hours a day on farming alone. Overall, farming and non-farming women in this rural area spent an additional seven and one-half hours on household work or home production.

As in most countries, rural women are among the most economically disadvantaged people in Filipino society. There are more unpaid family workers among women than among men, and almost 90 percent of all male unpaid workers in 1975 were in the rural areas and engaged in agricultural work. Despite this general condition, however, both rural and urban Filipinas are viewed by a number of scholars as having considerable status and power compared to women in other Asian countries, and Filipina influence extends to important decision-making roles in agricultural matters. Justin Green, for example, noted that women are better educated than men, and he has also argued that women have a good deal of behind-the-scenes or privately exercised power. People who think that the traditional method of reckoning kinship and the prevalence of bride price or dowry are indicators of male-female status might note that historically, Filipinos have traced kinship through both parents and bride price has been common (whereas dowry prevails in India). For rural Filipino women, a practical consequence of this relative equity is that the sexual division of labor is not as rigid as in many societies. Women can handle a plow if necessary, and a husband will do the cooking if his wife is away or do the laundry if his wife has just delivered a child.

— Charlton (1984)

Relationship of theory and knowledge

The theorizing process both uses and produces knowledge. Androcentric theories generate knowledge that embodies the assumptions of these theories and ignores the experiences and perspectives of women. One of the tenets of feminist theorizing is that knowledge should be formulated from a broader base of experience. Thus, a new, more comprehensive, more all-encompassing knowledge is built up through feminist theorizing. Such theorizing seeks to provide a more complete representation of women's realities. As Sandra Harding expressed it,

Knowledge is supposed to be based on experience, and the reason the feminist claims can turn out to be scientifically preferable is that they originate in, and are tested against, a more complete and less distorting kind of social experience. Women's experiences, informed by feminist theory, provide a potential grounding for more complete and less distorted knowledge claims than do men's.

— Harding (1987a, pp. 184-185)

Harding's analysis represents a feminist-standpoint theoretical approach. Like others, feminist-standpoint theorists have their own assumptions. They assume there is an objective reality that can be made better if women's experiences and knowledges are added to mainstream or androcentric epistemologies .

Postmodernist-feminist theorizing supports the investigation of women's experiences and knowledges as a basis for creating new feminist-informed knowledges. This approach differs from feminist-standpoint theorizing in several ways. Postmodernist-feminist theorists do not assume there is a complete, coherent reality to which women's experiences can be added; rather, they assume there are multiple realities and experiences. Postmodernist-feminist theorists see these experiences and their influence on the generation of knowledge as fluid, contingent, diverse, and historically and culturally specific. They do not argue that feminist claims are scientifically preferable, as they are more sceptical about the faith placed in rationality, objectivity, and science. However, they support the position that knowledge claims should be formulated from a broader base of experience and should recognize that women's experiences will differ across race, class, culture, and sexual orientation.

Thus, there are diverse feminist theoretical approaches. Although they converge on the core issue of women's subordination, they differ in their assumptions about the causes or sources of that subordination. These differences reflect the richness of women's lives and the need to integrate the experiences and knowledges of women in the South, as well as all women in the North, if we are to move toward a more inclusive, sensitive theorizing about both women's subordination and their power. Hilary Rose's remarks in Box 6 illustrate some of the new thinking of feminists in the South and North.

This more comprehensive knowledge base enables a wide cross section of experiences and measures to inform policy and action. Chapter 4 will examine existing policies and those being developed, to illustrate how they reflect and satisfy the needs of women.

This chapter discusses theorizing as a process used to test assumptions about a number of phenomena in order to generate principles and theories to explain these phenomena. This chapter also points out that traditionally this process has been male centred and related to the cultures, nationalities, and dominant economic classes of the theorists, who did not take into account the perspectives and experiences of women or the problems and issues that affect women. Until feminist theorists began critiquing existing knowledges, these theories were used to produce programs and policies that adversely affected the lives of women.

The readings highlight the feminist challenges to the traditional, androcentric approach to theorizing and discuss some of the characteristics of feminist approaches. These approaches not only take into account differences in experiences of women and men but also recognize that women themselves do not constitute a homogenous group.

Using these approaches, feminists have deconstructed androcentric theories and knowledge and produced a comprehensive view of women's multiple realities. The knowledges they have generated provide a basis for critiquing existing policies and determining alternative policies and activities to address the problems affecting women.

Recognizing that factors such as class, race, ethnicity, age, social status, and sexual orientation shape perceptions and experience points to the social character of gender and gender relations. In the next chapter, you will examine a number of theories on gender and development that have evolved from a process of both women's and men's theorizing in different contexts and situations.

Baksh-Soodeen, R. 1993. Is there an international feminism? Alternative Approach 24 (Summer), 22-32.

Charlton, S.E. 1984. Women in Third World development. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.

Chhachhi, A. 1988. Concepts in feminist theory: consensus and controversy. In Mohammed, P.; Shepherd, C, ed., Gender in Caribbean development. Women and Development Studies Group, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados; Mona, Jamaica; St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, pp. 76-96.

Harding, S. 1987a. Conclusion: epistemological questions. In Harding, S., ed., Feminism and methodology: social science issues. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA. pp. 181-190.

_____ 1987b. Introduction: Is there a feminist method? In Harding, S., ed., Feminism and methodology: social science issues. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA. pp. 1-14.

Ornstein, A.C.; Hunkins, F.P. 1993. Curriculum — foundations, principles and issues. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA, USA.

Rose, H. 1994. Alternative knowledge systems in science: can feminism rebuild the sciences? In Bailey, B.; McClenan, V., ed., Readings in gender, science and technology. Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, pp. 1-6.

Stanley, L.; Wise, S. 1983. Breaking out: feminist consciousness and feminist research. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, UK.

Suggested reading

Harding, S. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Cornell University Press, New York, NY, USA.

hooks, b. 1988. Talking back — thinking feminism, thinking black. Between the Lines, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Seibold, C.; Richards, L.; Simons, D. Feminist method and qualitative research about mid-life. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 19, 394-402.

Shiva, V. 1988. Staying alive. Zed Press, London, UK.

C HAPTER 2 W HY G ENDER ?W HY D EVELOPMENT ?

Rhoda Reddock

This chapter introduces the concepts of gender and development and the factors that gave rise to their emergence. It also provides an explanation of the precolonial experience of so-called Third World people, especially with respect to gender relations and the experiences of women and men in social, political, and economic life. The discussion challenges simplistic characterizations and generalizations of precolonial societies and points to their rich diversity and difference.

This chapter provides a framework for considering alternative ways of perceiving human social and cultural development and organizing social, economic, and political life. It also provides information that challenges traditional monolithic assumptions about women and the sexual division of labour .

Why development?

In ordinary usage, development (a noun derived from the verb develop ) implies movement from one level to another, usually with some increase in size, number, or quality of some sort. In the Penguin English Dictionary, the verb develop means "to unfold, bring out latent powers of; expand; strengthen; spread; grow; evolve; become more mature; show by degrees; explain more fully; elaborate; exploit the potentialities (of a site) by building, mining, etc." (Penguin 1977).

For our purposes, these meanings of development apply to human societies. The usage of the word in this context was popularized in the post-World War n period to describe the process through which countries and societies outside North America and Europe (many of them former colonial territories) were to be transformed into modern, developed nations from what their colonizers saw as backward, primitive, underdeveloped societies (see Box 1 ).

Which were these societies?

These areas comprised most of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, the Pacific region, and South and Central America. Today, this grouping includes former colonial, largely but not totally tropical, countries, peopled mainly by non-Europeans. It is usually referred to as the Third World, underdeveloped countries, developing countries, and, more recently, the South or the economic South.

Although it would be helpful to have one term to designate all of these countries, none of the above terms is really adequate. All are based on assumptions that we should be aware of when we use them. They are an improvement, however, on the terms first used in development writing, such as backward or economically backward countries .

It is important to note that before European colonial domination, many societies had already felt the impact of other dominating forces. For example, in North Africa the spread of the Islamic influence wrought great changes in the lifestyle of the native people — so much so that, now, some people hardly have any memory of a pre-Islamic past. In India, the spread of Hinduism over the continent had a similar, although more varied, impact. In some instances, the colonizers entered countries already controlled by well-established, stratified, patriarchal structures and introduced yet another controlling force into women's lives.

In this chapter, I briefly explore each of these concepts and the contexts within which they arose.

Underdeveloped-developing countries

The concept of underdeveloped-developing countries emerged as part of the work of early development economists in the 1950s, who theorized very simplistically about the stages of development mat societies had to pass through to become "developed," or "modern." These concepts sought to encompass all of the countries and areas to which I referred earlier, ignoring the vast differences among them. In addition, the history of Western industrialized countries was used as a broad model for the process through which all societies were to pass.

These development economists coined the following triad:

Underdeveloped ⇒ Developing ⇒ Developed

Around the 1960s, with nationalist sentiments becoming vocal, the term less developed was added, as it was considered less pejorative than underdeveloped . This approach is sometimes critically referred to as developmentalism.

Not much later, a school of mainly sociologists and political scientists emerged. They were eventually referred to as modernization theorists because they described this process as one of becoming modem. They, too, developed a triad:

Traditional⇒ Transitional⇒ Modern

In the words of Shyama Charan Dube,

Modernity may be understood as the common behaviourial system historically associated with the urban, industrial, literate, and participant societies of Western Europe and North America. The system is characterised by a rational and scientific world view, growth and ever-increasing application of science and technology, together with continuous adaptation of the institutions of society to the imperatives of the new world view and the emerging technological ethos.

— Dube (1988, p. 17)

One of the main features common to these two approaches is that they equated development (or modernity) with industrialization. Industrialization and its companion, urbanization (the emergence of towns and cities), were considered the only ways for backward societies to become modern, or developed. Progress and advancement were also seen in this light.

There was little appreciation of the social, cultural, economic, or political attributes of non-Western societies. Indeed, these approaches accepted to a large degree the colonial feeling of superiority over indigenous peoples, many of whom were decimated, robbed of their land, or confined to reservations or territories (for example, in Australia, Canada, and the United States), or marginalized and forced to flee into the mountains (for example, in parts of Asia and most of South and Central America) (see Box 2 ).

These approaches also had little to say about women. Women were largely linked to the traditional and backward aspects of these societies and most resistant to change. Because the theorists used traditional in such a general sense, with little recourse to history or social anthropology, they little realized the diversity in women and men's relations, in modes of domestic and family organization, or in social, economic, and political life.

Third World

"Third World" is the English translation of le tiers monde, developed in France in the 1950s. It emerged with the heightened anticolonial consciousness that arose with the coming of the new nation-states in Africa and Asia. This was also a time when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union-Eastern Europe was dividing the world along ideological and geopolitical lines.

In this context, the newly independent states of Africa and Asia (including Ghana, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria), as well as Yugoslavia, met in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955. They adopted the position of nonalignment with either camp, arguing the need for a third, alternative world grouping. The term Third World was adopted by many of these countries to differentiate themselves from the First World (the North Atlantic capitalist world, or the world of advanced market economies) and the Second World (the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union). The Third World consisted of all other nations — usually in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and South and Central America, including the centrally planned economies in these areas.

One of the main criticisms of the concept of the Third World has been that it suggests a hierarchy of nations. Some people argue that to accept third place is to accept a lower status in the world order. The people who coined the phrase probably never considered this but simply saw Third World as an alternative to the two main options their countries were being pushed to accept, options that, as history would show, they would eventually agree to.

North-South

North-South became a popular term around 1980, after the publication of the report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, popularly known as the Brandt Commission because it was led by the late Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of West Germany (see Brandt 1980). According to one source,

The expression was selected by the Commission to emphasize the economic divide between the North (rich nations) and the South (poor nations) and to highlight the presumed desirability of a North-South dialogue grounded in a common concern for global problems and freed from the complications of East-West political interests.

— Hulme (1990, p. 8)

This division, like many associated with relations of power, is geographically incorrect. Some countries in the South are neither low income nor not former colonial countries; likewise, some economies and conditions of life in the North, such as can be found in Eastern and Southern Europe, have little in common with the leading industrialized capitalist economies of the North. For some, this terminology reflects global restructuring and the changes taking place in the global economy. Economic South was a term coined to further delineate this grouping in economic and political terms, rather than in purely geographic ones.

Development today

The heyday of developmentalism — in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s — fostered some strong beliefs, such as

Today, although much of this sentiment has changed, much has remained the same. The dominant thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s has been that the state has a leading, but only facilitating, role in the economy. Development is now seen as the responsibility of private companies and, increasingly, private nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In addition, the market is seen as the main arbiter of decision-making.

This approach is based on the renewed influence of liberal economic thinking (now called neoliberal economics), which has affected international economic

policy and development thinking. All this has taken place within the context of a Third World debt crisis, within which economic restructuring and structural-adjustment policies are advocated as mechanisms for generating income to repay debt. Such thinking has become reality through the conditions on the stabilization and structural-adjustment loans offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) to countries facing balance-of-payments difficulties.

The IMF and the World Bank were established in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States. At this meeting, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States set up a system to facilitate the reconstruction of Western Europe after World War H. The main purpose of the new organizations was to provide a basis for monetary and currency stability for increased trade and expansion of these economies. This was to be accomplished by providing financial support during periods of balance-of-payments difficulties, that is, when imports exceeded exports. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was later added, and, according to Dennis Pantin, each of these institutions would play a complementary role in the management of a world economy that did not restrict the movement of goods, services, and money (Pantin 1989).

Since the emergence of the new nation-states in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s, the Bretton Woods Agreement has widened in scope. As a result of the current trend in monetarist, or neoliberal, economics, the role of this agreement has expanded. The IMF provides short-term stabilization assistance to countries with balance-of-payments difficulties, on condition that they implement certain fiscal and monetary policies. The World Bank, on the other hand, is more concerned with long-term adjustment through restructuring of host economies along fixed lines. Its policies can be summarized as follows (Blackden 1993):

Aspects of these neoliberal policies have also been implemented since the 1980s in Northern countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and, more recently, in continental Europe. Additionally, many governments have implemented economic-adjustment programs without being involved in an IMF or World Bank program.

In the Third World, these programs have been severely criticized for the following reasons:

Sustainable development

In many parts of the North and South, women's organizations and NGOs are involved in developing sustainable and economically feasible alternatives to these neoliberal policies of structural adjustment.

The term sustainable development came into popular use after the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, popularly known as the Brundtland Report and the Brundtiand Commission, respectively. The report was largely a response to the growing international environmental and ecological lobby. It defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987, p. 43). According to Donald Brooks (1990), the paradigm, or worldview, emerging around this concept recognized the need to ensure and facilitate the following:

This comprehensive approach does not reflect all approaches to sustainable development. Some economists, for example, speak of "sustainable growth." Critics agree, however, that economic growth (that is, continuous increase in the quantity of economic production) cannot be sustained indefinitely, given the renewable and nonrenewable resources of the planet. Nevertheless, a more equitable distribution of existing resources could lead to improvements in the quality of life.

Feminist activists have been central to the movement against environmental degradation and for sustainability right from the movement's inception. They have also often gone beyond the narrower definitions of the issues to include the struggle for peace and the struggle against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Whereas most of the discussions on sustainable development have taken place within the context of mainstream development economics, feminist activists have for the most part seen sustainable development as part of a larger alternative model of development or societal transformation.

Kamla Bhasin [1993] identified the following components of sustainable development:

In short, sustainable development for many feminists from the South and North implies a new kind of political, economic, social, and cultural system and a new value orientation.

The women's challenge to modernization and development 1

The seeds of the women-and-development concept (a broad-based term that includes a number of approaches to women's development; see below) were planted during the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, 50 countries were freed from colonialism, and the women who had participated in independence movements acted on their convictions that they must join with men in building these new nations. For example, at the beginning of the 1960s, women of East African countries, led by Margaret Kenyatta, met at seminars to adopt strategies aimed at reaching their goals. This was at a time when the revived feminist movement in the North had not yet found a distinct voice and The Feminine Mystique (Friedan 1963),

1 This section benefited greatly from the contributions of Margaret Snyder and Mary Tadesse (1995).

the book that some credit with signaling the revival of feminism and launching the women's liberation movement in Northern countries, had not yet been written.

Before that time, in 1947, just 2 years after the formation of the United Nations, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was established to monitor United Nations activities on behalf of women. To a large extent, however, its efforts were limited within the legalistic context of human rights. By the 1950s and 1960s, women of these newly independent countries began taking their delegations to the United Nations (though in small numbers) and were able to challenge the legalistic agenda of CSW by raising development-oriented issues.

By 1970, when the-United Nations General Assembly reviewed the results of the First Development Decade of the 1960s, three factors that would eventually converge to foster the various approaches to women's development had become evident:

The central point of the original women-and-development approach was that both women and men must be lifted from poverty and both women and men must contribute to and benefit from development efforts. Margaret Snyder and Mary Tadesse, in their book, African Women and Development: A History, defined women and development as follows:

"Women and Development" is an inclusive term used throughout this book to signify a concept and a movement whose long-range goal is the well-being of society — the community of men, women and children. Its formulation is based on the following suppositions:

— Snyder and Tadesse (1995, p. 6)

International Women's Year was declared by the United Nations in 1975, and the celebration of this at the First International Women's Conference in Mexico City marked the globalization of the movement. This unique intergovernmental conference and the nongovernmental International Women's Tribune Centre (TWTC), a networking and communications institution, brought together women from nearly all countries of the world under the theme Equality, Development and Peace and extended its work during the United Nations Decade for Women, 1976-85. This sparked the creation of institutions and networks world-wide as "women and development" became an area of specialization in the development field.

The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Women (later called the United Nations Development Fund for Women) and the International Training and Research Centre for Women were soon established within the United Nations system. IWTC and the Women's World Bank, a loan-guaranteeing organization, came into existence as NGOs. At the national level, "national machineries" — commissions on women, women's desks, and women's bureaus — were soon established in most countries. New women's organizations and networks sprang up at the community and national levels. These contributed to the institutionalization of women and development as an internationally recognized set of concepts and did much to generalize knowledge and consciousness about women's issues internationally.

Why gender?

The concern with gender emerged as feminist theorists sought to understand the complexities of women's subordination. The word gender came into mainly academic use some 15 years after the reemergence of late-20th-century feminism, which has, unlike its earlier manifestations, made a significant dent in male-dominated (androcentric) scholarship (at least, I like to think so).

Feminist scholars argued that the Western academic tradition, of which most universities and colleges in the world are part, has systematically ignored the experiences of women in its fields of learning, concepts, theories, and research methods. Additionally, although claiming to be scientific, it has really embodied mythical assumptions about women's and men's capabilities, the sexual division of labour in early human history, and, as a result, women's place in today's society. These assumptions were extended to non-Western societies, with the result that Western assumptions and values influenced relations between the sexes and between groups within each sex, relations that ranged from egalitarian to highly patriarchal and stratified.

The word gender, like development, had a specific usage before feminist theorists extended its meaning. One of the earliest uses of gender in feminist theory can be traced to the 1976 University of Sussex Workshop on the Subordination of Women and the school of thought that emerged from this workshop. Scholars such as Olivia Harris, Maureen Mackintosh, Felicity Odium, Ann Whitehead, and Kate Young argued that women, like men, are biological beings but that women's subordination was socially constructed and not biologically determined. They argued further that to conceptually differentiate between these two realities, it is necessary to identify "sex" as the biological differentiation between male and female, and "gender" as the differentiation between masculinity and femininity as constructed through socialization and education, among other factors. What is biological is fixed and unchangeable, but what is social is subject to change and should be the focus of attention for feminist theorists.

In its more recent use, as you will see in Chapter 3 , gender has come to be used, like class and ethnicity or race, to designate an analytical social category, one that interacts with other social factors in influencing life experiences of groups and individuals (see Box 3 ).

Since that time this concept has gained widespread acceptance in a range of groups and often for different reasons. Some of these reasons are as follows:

Those who worried that women's studies scholarship focused too narrowly and separately on women used the term ... to introduce a relational notion into our analytic vocabulary.

— Scott (1989, p. 16)

In its simplest recent usage, "gender" is a synonym for "women." Any number of books and articles whose subject is women's history have in the past few years substituted "gender" for "women" in their titles. In some cases this usage ... is about political acceptability hi the field. In these instances, the use of "gender" is meant to denote scholarly seriousness of a work, for "gender" has a more neutral and objective sound than does "women."

Recently, the phrase "women in development" (WID) is also being replaced in some circles by "gender and development" (GAD) or "gender concerns in development" (GCID) The details of these approaches will be dealt with in more explicitly in Chapter 3 .

Today, however, two types of critiques have emerged in relation to the concept of gender. One of these comes from a movement perspective. As noted by Joan W. Scott, gender has become a useful and almost inescapable concept in women's studies and feminist theory (Scott 1989). Many people in the women's movement fear, however, that this is leading to a situation in which women are once more invisible. They note that the fields of WID, GAD, GCID, feminist theory, and women's studies all owe their origins to the women's movement and the struggles of women in the streets, towns, villages, and academies. Yet, today, with the growing acceptance of academic women's studies and gender specialists, the concern with the day-to-day problems and struggles of women and the movement is being marginalized and, indeed, no longer even acknowledged.

The other critique comes from a theoretical perspective. It is now being found that

Although the concept of gender can never substitute for that of woman, it has added to our understanding of the complexities of human social relations in numerous ways. Clearly, it is a concept that is here to stay.

Gender and society before the development era

It is important that we recall the richness of the history of most developing countries before colonialism and the era of development. It is also important for us to understand the nature of social relations in the earlier periods of that history. As I noted earlier, the Third World, or the South, really comprises most of the world. It is a mistake to speak of this vast and varied area as if it were all the same.

Until recently, most of our history of this region was androcentric. It focused on the period after the encounter with Western Europe and emphasized male action or agency. In addition, it was often first written in Western languages by Western male scholars who, with few exceptions, were Eurocentric and intolerant of the people they studied. As a result, our historical records are laced with racism, sexism, and imperialist sentiments. The following 17th-century European male's description of matrilineality in West Africa is a clear example:

The Right of Inheritance is very oddly adjusted; as far as I could observe, the Brother's and Sister's Children are the right and lawful Heirs, in the manner following. They do not jointly inherit, but the eldest Son of his Mother is Heir to his Mother's Brother or her Son, as the eldest Daughter is Heiress of her Mother's Sister or her Daughter: neither the Father him-self or his Relations as Brothers, Sisters etc. have any claim to the Goods of the Defunct, for what Reason they can't tell: But I am of the Opinion that this Custom was introduc'd on account of the Whoredom of the Women, herein following the custom of some East-Indian Kings who (as Authors Fay) educate their Sister's Son as their own, and appoint him to succeed in the Throne, because they are more sure that their Sister's Son is of their Blood than they can be of their own [sic] .

— Bosman (1967, p. 203)

Although development theorists paid little attention to the complexities of these societies before the era of development, social anthropologists did. However, they also took with them androcentric and ethnocentric biases that clouded their view of these societies and of gender relations in these societies.

In the heyday of Third World nationalism, in the 1960s and 1970s, indigenous historians sought to correct this wrong. Most of these historians were male or trained in the androcentric worldview, so knowledge of women's experiences in precolonial society continued to be hidden. To counteract centuries of what Peter Worsley (1970) called "imperialist history," nationalist historians often distorted this history to highlight a great and glorious past, stressing the kings and queens, wealth and empire. In so doing, they often ignored the traditional egalitarianism of many precolonial societies, in which women had greater power and autonomy and life was more in tune with nature and the environment, not based on its destruction.

Today, as feminist activists and other concerned scholars reevaluate development and modernization, there is a renewed appreciation of the positive features of the ways of life in earlier societies, although we realize the limitations of those times. We also understand the need to preserve and protect the egalitarian and environmentally friendly practices that have survived in our societies and have been adapted to serve people's needs, often outside mainstream political and economic structures.

Gender relations and social change

Since the late 18th century, social scientists have sought to develop a schema to explain the variety and differences in human experience. Early evolutionists incorporated the notion of progress: human development moving from primitive, backward forms to advanced and developed ones. Functionalist anthropologists in the mid-20th century concentrated on seeing each society as an integrated whole. They could not help interpreting what they observed through their biased perspectives and basing conclusions on their customary assumptions.

Today, although critical scholars no longer attribute value to societies in terms of progress or backwardness, they do recognize that precolonial societies may have been at different stages of social development. These stages are usually described in relation to the production systems that predominated at the time. Like all schemas, however, these descriptions provide only a partial understanding. Most societies cannot be neatly classified in one category or another. Many show signs of being at more than one "stage." In addition, it must be stressed that all societies do not necessarily pass through all the recognized stages.

Some anthropologists totally reject any theory of stages of social development because of their links to the notions of modernization and progress. They argue, instead, for a nonstage approach that examines each society on its own terms and sees movement (social change) taking place in any direction. Transitions from one stage to another, if these are thought to occur at all, are therefore the result of many factors that anthropologists are still exploring, including a society's environment and its historical relationships with other groups. The stages are usually identified as follows:

Hunter-gatherer or foraging societies

Horticultural societies

⇒Matrilineal descent

⇒Patrilineal descent

Agricultural or agrarian societies

Pastoral or herding societies

Industrial societies

Various combinations of the above

Feminist anthropologists have also argued that the organization of social and production relations — such as social stratification , the monogamous family, ownership of property, and forms of work and production — has greatly influenced the differences in gender relations around the world.

In some instances, as discussed earlier, societies were extremely stratified patriarchies before the arrival of European colonizers. This was sometimes the result of domination by other patriarchal and highly stratified groups or an existing system of social stratification. In many other instances, however, this was not the case, especially in matrilineal societies, as shown in Fatima Mernissi's description of Morocco before its Islamization:

The panorama of female sexual rights in pre-Islamic culture reveals that women's sexuality was not bound by the concept of legitimacy. Children belonged to their mother's tribe. Women had sexual freedom to enter into and break off unions with more than one man, either simultaneously or successively. A woman could either reserve herself to one man at a time, on a more or less temporary basis, as in a mut'a marriage, or she could be visited by many husbands at different times whenever their nomadic tribe or trade caravan came through the woman's town or camping ground. The husband would come and go; the main unit was the mother and child with an entourage of kinfolk.

— Mermssi 1987, p. 78)

In all situations, women had been able to create spaces and possibilities for autonomy within the structures of subordination existing in their societies (see Case Studies 1-4). However, these strategies were complicated or removed by the imposition of assumptions about a woman's or man's place in the new systems of stratification that were based on notions of class and racial or ethnic superiority.

The Bari of Columbia

Elisa Buenaventura-Posso and Susan E. Brown, in their study of the Bari, an indigenous people of Columbia, traced the Bari's historical background and described their society as "fully egalitarian," a society without stratification, differential access to resources, or accumulation of wealth; exhibiting full sexual symmetry and individual autonomy; and valuing each person's work as socially equal. Buenaventura-Posso and Brown (1976) made their assessment through analyses of the processes of leadership, stratification, decision-making, division of labour, ritual, interpersonal relationships, and general social atmosphere.

The ferocity with which the Bari resisted usurpation arid extinction by powerful external forces for 400 years contrasts sharply with their harmonious, classless, internal social organization and very high regard for peace. In 1772, a colonial envoy noted that "they do not live subject to anyone's domination ... [but] in fraternal union, making decisions by unanimous agreement."

Two hundred years later, a visiting Capuchin monk made similar observations, adding that "there are no privileged classes ... everyone is equal and for everyone exist the same opportunities. The head of the group cannot be called a chief... but... primus inter pares. Everyone enjoys absolute freedom within ... required norms." Buenaventura-Posso and Brown concurred and explained that sanctions for inappropriate behaviour among the Bari come through social-control mechanisms such as group pressure and public opinion. There are special positions of responsibility, which may be changed, but they do not carry even temporary authority.

The Bari are forest horticulturists who live in autonomous groups of 40-80, occupying two or more dwellings several days' travel apart from one another. House members belong to three groups, named after the positions of their hearths — east, west, and centre — and the people in these groups cook and share food together. Each group has its own hearth, and each individual has his or her own space. Order is maintained, collective activities are performed, and each individual has a recognized place. No one has more access to strategic resources, authority, or knowledge than any other person.

The organization and division of labour between the sexes and among children are practical, flexible, and complementary, with little prohibition against interchange. Although a few tasks are restricted, many are communal or, like house-building, performed by both sexes. Inter-dependence is high, and consequently there are no resulting hierarchies, social divisions, or antagonisms between the sexes.

The Bari's few rituals and ceremonies display full sexual symmetry. These rituals and ceremonies help each group maintain alliances with other groups. Both men and women can invite guests of the same sex, exchange gifts, and sing songs about their respective activities over days or weeks. Sexual independence is maintained before and after marriage. Unions are generally stable but are dissolved without a fuss when they are not.

Interpersonal relations are shaped by complex, subtle connections, pacts, alliances, and kinships among the separate, autonomous groups. All Bari are either ojibara (ally) or sadodi (kin) to one another, and sagdoji-okjibara is the linking principle, promoting order and taking the place of genealogical descent. Like earlier observers, Buenaventura-Posso and Brown noted the harmonious, egalitarian, and gentle relations between man and woman, as well as in the general social atmosphere.

Source: Buenaventura-Posso and Brown (1990)

Case Study 2

The nayar of south india.

Studies considering gender hegemonies from medieval times to the early postcolonial period in south India indicate that within the strictures of caste, class, and gender stratifications, Nayar matrilineal social structure vested leadership and power in the male and allowed various degrees of autonomy to women.

Kalpana Kannabiran, in her thesis, "Temple Women in South India: A Study in Political Economy and Social History", suggested that the matrilinearity of the Hindu Nayar caste may hinge, in a sense, on the patrilineal structure of their close, but superior, caste Brahmin neighbours, the Nambudiri (Kannabiran 1992).

Paul Thomas' (1964) observations on the Nayar of Kerala in south India in Indian Women Through the Ages, from his research during the early 1950s, are remarkably similar to those of Robin Jeffrey (1993) in her Politics, Women and Well-Being .

Kerala has a caste-based society and an agricultural economy with a per capita income well below the national average. Yet, other statistics indicate higher standards of living in most vital aspects than found in the rest of the country: birth rates and infant mortality rates are lower; life expectancy is longer; and education and literacy levels are higher. The figures are particularly striking for women (who live longer in Kerala), and explanations have been sought in the social history and development of the people of the region.

The Nayar constitute a numerous fourth-level martial Hindu caste in Kerala, south India. Until the middle of this century, their social system was matrilineal. Theirs was a humane system in which the eldest male managed the family affairs but descent was traced through the female line from a female ancestor. Properties were jointly owned by families in the name of the senior female. A woman was free to move about the locality and had a say in choosing her own husband.

The Nayar marriage ceremony, Sambandam, comprised a single reception and the presentation of a gift of cloth from the bridegroom to the bride. Although liaisons did not have to be permanent, there was considerable constancy. Divorce was easy, remarriage was common, and polyandry almost certainly occurred. Women and their children were the responsibility of the maternal family, whose surname they retained. Free from tyrannical husbands, child marriage, sati, and purdah, women were autonomous, self-reliant, independent, and able to manage men and affairs far better than other women in similar situations elsewhere in India. They never, however, had full equality with men.

Nayar men were soldiers and supervisors for the highest level Hindu Brahmin Nambudiri caste. Its men — like those of the second-level Kshatriya caste — had access to Nayar women through Sambandam marriage. Nayar women were responsible for family domestic affairs and child-rearing. Nayar social organization allowed the women considerable sexual freedom and material and social security.

With British colonization, however, persistent pressure, including government legislation, changed much of the matrilineal system. Consequently, although Nayar women have enjoyed higher levels of autonomy and quality of life than other women in equivalent positions elsewhere in India, they have relatively less personal freedom and social security, today, than their female ancestors.

Source: Thomas (1964), Kannabiran (1992), and Jeffrey (1993)

Case Study 3

The tiwi women of north australia.

In a case study of the contemporary social life of the Tiwi of Melville Island, north Australia, M. Kay Martin and Barbara Voorhies suggested that the social organization of these hunters and gatherers has a dual structure: whereas inheritance and clan membership are patrilineal, families frequently reside in their maternal camps, with a man often marrying several daughters of one mother, thus making matrilineal affiliation important to both men and women (Martin and Voorhies 1975).

To compare male and female anthropological perspectives on Aboriginal women, Ruby Rohrlich-Leavitt, Barbara Sykes, and Elizabeth Weatherford surveyed various studies, including some on the Tiwi of Australia, and concluded that Tiwi women enjoy partnership with men and the same rights, self-respect, and dignity (Rohrlich-Leavitt et al. 1975). Although men are the social and political leaders in Tiwi society, women play a crucial role in their community's economic survival. They forage and hunt small game to provide most, sometimes all, of the family food supply, and they carry much of the load when their nomadic bands travel. The community fully recognizes the importance of women's contribution and their commensurate participation in other institutions.

Tiwi society requires that all women past the age of puberty marry and that husband and wife enter into real economic cooperation. Both sexes go on joint hunting and fishing excursions. The tools the women make and use satisfy most of the essential needs of the group. Because of their economic contribution, women are respected and assured of just and good treatment. There is no simple division of labour by sex. Both men and women practice hunting and gathering. Land resources, both plant and animal, are associated with women, whereas air and sea resources are associated with men. However, men hunt larger animals, such as the wallaby, which requires particular strength, speed, and close-range dexterity with spears.

Women have the right to own property and to trade some of their handiwork. Among themselves, they also hold corroborrees— secret ritual festivals and symbolic dances — that help unify them and give them, as the men's rituals give them, opportunities for drama, recreation, and emotional security. Like the men, the women practice sorcery against undependable partners.

Young people of both sexes have casual premarital affairs, but full sexual intercourse is not sanctioned before puberty. When a girl gets pregnant, her betrothed becomes the child's social father. Usually, a betrothed begins to stay at the girl's parents' camp before puberty so that they will get to know each other by the time she goes to live in his territory.

The men (fathers, brothers, and prospective husband) make the marriage arrangements, but the girl's mother plays a part in the negotiations. A man remains indebted all his life to his mother-in-law, who alone may void the contract if she is dissatisfied with the gifts he provides her.

Polygamy is practiced, and men try to acquire as many wives as they can. Girls are usually much younger than their first husbands, but older widows often choose younger men. Some-times they agree to exchange sons. Both men and women often have several spouses over a lifetime. Wives are economic assets to a man, as they can free him from subsistence activity, enabling him to pursue the public and ceremonial affairs that bring him power and prestige in the community.

Strong bonds of special affection and respect are recognized between women and their biological children, who have close ties with their mother's group. Women share in the gifts given when their sons are initiated. They visit and exchange gifts with their married daughters, and both sons and daughters care for their mother when she is old.

Both women and men have a deeply rooted belief in the totemic ancestors, and the egalitarian relationships between the sexes are reflected in the myths that depict both sexes as existing together from the first. In their creation myth, the creator deity is female, as are the deities of the sun and the Milky Way.

With increasing age, women become more assertive and wield more power and authority. They have tremendous influence through their mature sons. Older women teach the younger ones economic skills, preside over women's rites and secret corroborrees, and settle disputes. Like their male counterparts, they are the guardians of myths and are responsible for passing on tribal law and custom. As such, they support the stability and continuity of tribal life.

Source: Hart and Pilling (1960), Martin and Voorhies (1975), and

Rohrlich-Leavitt et al. (1975)

Case Study 4

The nile valley civilization.

The Civilization of Ancient Egypt, Paul Johnson's (1978) study of Nile Valley civilization from neolithic times, cites the fundamental characteristics of the world's first highly stratified nation-state as stability, permanence, and isolation; and the essence of its culture as majesty and self-confidence. State, religion, culture, and land formed a creative unity lasting three millennia, until the Christian era; it was a civilization circumscribed by the desert and dominated by the great river Nile.

As Egypt's only (and very dependable) source of water, the Nile provided the valley with reliable alluvial deposits, fertility, and a transportation route. It enabled the very early hunter nomads of the valley to transform themselves into farmers and herders, and their exploitation of the Nile allowed them to develop a sound agricultural economy.

Ancient Egypt's social organization was patriarchal and included a system of social stratification. Although inheritance came through the maternal line, men managed their families and occupied all positions of leadership. The sexual division of labour did not allow women to take part in trade or expeditions or become secular officials. Nevertheless, women were afforded high status in ancient Egyptian society, and a child's status was determined by that of its mother.

Outside the domestic sphere, women could become temple dancers, singers, attendants, or high-ranking priestesses. Peasant women worked in the fields, drew water, and sometimes herded livestock. Pictorial evidence also shows that women occupied positions of authority — responsible positions, such manageress of a dining hall, superintendent of a workshop of weavers, head of a wig workshop, or conductor of the singers of the royal harem.

Health care for women was important. Gynaecology was very advanced. Women from wealthy families enjoyed wide property rights and could own slaves, servants, houses, and land; they retained these rights when they married. Women could inherit their father's and husband's estates and could adopt children. Egyptians were particularly fond of children and displayed their affection quite openly. In this polygamous society, men were encouraged to be considerate and faithful to their wives. Unfaithful wives, however, were put to death with their lovers. Auspicious days for lovemaking between husband and wife were determined by the astrologer.

Among the royalty, rulership was a male prerogative but gained through a female line. Kingship passed to the husband of the former king's eldest daughter or to the husband of the former king's first daughter with his favourite senior wife. Although women were forbidden by law from becoming a ruling queen, some women, like Queen Hatshepsut, did in fact rule, and these women intrigued to have their daughters succeed them. The power of Egypt1 s theocratic monarchy was thus not entirely absolute, but there was little freedom to act against the law. Yet, the state's remarkable stability and order encouraged tremendous development in agriculture, the arts, and science. Eventually, when Egypt's retreat into the regulated collectivism of its past proved ineffective against persistent external invasion, the country was overtaken, and new people with new religions and languages replaced its ancient civilization.

Source: Johnson (1978) and Mokhtar (1990)

This chapter suggests that the sexual division of labour in our society, today, may not be as fixed as we think. It suggests that the subordination of women and and the dominance of men are neither natural nor eternal. A change toward a more egalitarian society is possible, a change that could fulfill the potentials of all human beings — women and men.

This chapter also recommends that to change these difficult relations between women and men, we have to examine and challenge the systems of inegalitarianism and subordination in our own countries and throughout the world: these could be based on race or ethnicity , colour, class , age, sexual orientation, or nationality. In addition, we need to consider the organization of work and the effects of modern life and work on the environment.

The chapters that follow explore some of these issues in depth and introduce you to some of the theories and approaches developed to more fully understand the issues of gender and development.

Bhasin, K. [1993]. Some thoughts on development and sustainable development. Women in Action, 1, 10-18.

Blackden, M. 1993. Paradigm postponed: gender and economic adjustment in sub-Saharan Africa. Human Resources and Poverty Division, World Bank, Washington, DC, USA. AFTHR Technical Note 13.

Boserup, E. 1970. Women's role in economic development. Allen & Unwin, London, UK.

Bosman, W. 1967. A new and accurate description of the coast of Guinea. Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, London, UK.

Brandt, W. 1980. North-South. A program for survival. Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues. MTT Press, Boston, MA, USA.

Brooks, D. 1990. Beyond catch phrases: what does sustainable development really mean. International Development Research Centre, Ottawa ON, Canada.

Buenaventura-Posso, E.; Brown, S.E. 1980. Forced transition from egalitarianism to male dominance: the Bari of Columbia. In Etienne M.; Leacock, E., ed., Women and colonization. Praeger Publishers, New York, NY, USA.

Dube, S.C. 1988. Modernization and development: the search for alternative paradigms. Zed Books, London, UK.

Etienne, M.; Leacock, E. 1990. Women and colonization: anthropological perspectives. Praeger Publishers, New York, NY, USA.

Fontana. 1988. Fontana dictionary of modern thought. HarperCollins Publishers, London, UK.

Friedan, B. 1963. The feminine mystique. Norton, New York, NY, USA.

Hart, C.W.M.; Pilling, A.R. 1960. The Tiwi of north Australia. Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, USA.

Hulme, D.; Turner, M. 1990. Sociology and development: theories, policies and practices. Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hertfordshire, UK.

Jeffrey, R. 1993. Politics, women and well-being. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, India.

Johnson, P. 1978. The civilization of ancient Egypt. Book Club Associates, London, UK.

Kannabiran, K. 1992. Temple women in south India: a study in political economy and social history. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. PhD dissertation.

Martin, M.K.; Voorhies, B. 1975. Female of the species. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

Mernissi, F. 1987. Beyond the veil: male-female dynamics hi Islamic society. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA,

Mokhtar, G., ed. 1990. General history of Africa D.: ancient civilizations of Africa (abridged ed.). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, France.

Pantin, D. 1989. Into the valley of debt. University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

Penguin. 1977. English dictionary (2nd ed.). London, UK.

Rohrlich-Leavitt, R.; Sykes, B.; Weatherford, E. 1975. Aboriginal women: male and female anthropological perspectives. In Reiter, R., ed., Toward an anthropology of women. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 110-126.

Scott, J.W. 1989. Gender: a useful category of historical analysis. In Rao, A., ed., Women's Studies International: Nairobi and beyond. The Feminist Press at City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.

Shiva, V. 1988. Staying alive: women ecology and development. Kali for Women, New Delhi, India; Zed Books, London, UK.

Snyder, M.; Tadesse, M. 1995. African women and development: a history. Zed Books, London, UK.

Thomas, P. 1964. Indian women through the ages. Asia Publishing House, Bombay, India.

WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our common future. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Brandtland Commission report. Worsley, P. 1970. The Third World (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Young, K. 1988. The social relations of gender. In Mohammed P.; Shepherd C., ed., Gender in Caribbean development. Women and Development Studies Group, Mona, Jamaica.

Brettel, C.; Sargeant, C. 1993. Gender in cross-cultural perspective. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.

Dickenson, J.P.; Clarke, C.G.; Gould, W.T.S.; Prothero, R.M.; Siddle, D.J.; Smith, C.T.; Thomas-Hope, E.M.; Hodgkiss, A.G. 1983. A geography of the Third World. Methuen, London, UK.

Duley, M.; Edwards, M. 1986. The cross-cultural study of women. The Feminist Press at City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.

Edholm, F.; Harris, O.; Young, K. 1977. Conceptualizing women. Critique of Anthropology, 3(9-10), 101-130.

Gatens, M. 1983. A critique of sex/gender distinctions. In Allen, J.; Patton, P., ed., Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia.

Harding, S. 1989. The instability of the analytical categories of feminism theory. In Maison, M.; et al., ed., Feminist theory in practice and process. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Hill, P. 1988. Development economics on trial: the anthropological case for the prosecution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Jay K.S., ed. 1988. Retrieving women's history: changing perspectives of the role of women in politics and society. Berg, Oxford, UK; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, France.

Joekes, S. 1987. Women in the world economy. International Training and Research Centre for Women; Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Kessler, S.; McKenna, W. 1978. Gender: an ethnomethodological approach. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Leacock, E. 1981. Myths of male dominance: collected articles on women cross-culturally. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

Malson, M.; O'Barr, J.; Westphal-Wihl, S.; Wyer, M. 1989. Feminist theory in practice and process. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Mies, M. 1982. The lace makers of Narsapur: Indian housewives produce for the world market. Zed Books, London, UK.

Nielsen, J.M. 1990. Sex and gender in society: perspectives on stratification. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL, USA.

Pietila, H.; Vickers, J. 1990. Making women matter: the role of the United Nations. Zed Books, London, UK.

Rubin, G. 1975. The traffic hi women: notes on the political economy of sex. In Reiter, R., ed., Toward an anthropology of women, Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 157-210.

Said, E. 1985. Orientalism. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, UK.

Sanday, P. 1981. Female power and male dominance: on the origins of sexual inequality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Steady, F., ed. 1981. The black woman cross-culturally. Schenkman Publishing House, Rochester, VT, USA.

United Nations. 1991. The world's women 1970-1990: trends and statistics. United Nations, New York, NY, USA.

C HAPTER 3 F EMINISM AND D EVELOPMENT : T HEORETICAL P ERSPECTIVES

M. Patricia Connelly, Tania Murray Li, Martha MacDonald, and Jane L. Parpart

This chapter explores the evolution of theorizing on gender and development. It introduces a number of feminist theoretical frameworks and development frame-works and explains how these perspectives intersected to become two main competing feminist development frameworks: women in development (WID); and gender and development (GAD). This chapter also examines how new and exciting debates and critiques of globalization , development, and feminist theorizing are changing the existing frameworks and creating new ones. These discussions highlight the importance of theory in how we understand and act within our social world. They explain how these theoretical perspectives define problems differently and how they suggest different solutions.

Here are the objectives of this chapter:

NB: The authors would like to especially thank Eudine Barriteau for her major contribution to the sections on black feminism and postmodernist feminism as well as the discussion in this chapter. We also want to thank other members of the editorial team: Elizabeth Morris-Hughes, Rhoda Reddock, and Ann Walker. The team met twice in New York and provided insightful comments on the entire chapter.

To accomplish these objectives, this chapter has the following components:

What is a theoretical framework?

Feminist theoretical frameworks and development frameworks have influenced thinking and policy. An historical context is important to understanding development and feminist thinking and to explaining when and why these frameworks emerge, how they influence one another, and how they change.

1 These outlines are not meant to be objective or even critical observations; each frame-work is presented as if it were written by someone who subscribes to its major tenets.

A framework is a system of ideas or conceptual structures that help us "see" the social world, understand it, explain it, and change it. A framework guides our thinking, research, and action. It provides us with a systematic way of examining social issues and providing recommendations for change.

A framework consists of basic assumptions about the nature of the social world and how it works and about the nature of people and how they act. For example, some people assume that society is basically harmonious and that harmony results from a set of shared values. Others assume that society is in conflict and that conflict is rooted in class, race , and gender struggles over power and access to and control over resources.

A framework also indicates how problems are defined and the kinds of questions to be asked. For example, according to one definition, inequality results from the need to establish unequal incentives to motivate the most talented people to do the most important jobs efficiently in society. According to another definition, it results from the practice of providing differential rewards to keep a less powerful working class fragmented by gender and race.

Different frameworks also suggest different solutions to problems. For example, inefficiencies in society can be taken care of through reforming or adjusting the status quo in a gradual and rational manner. Or inequalities can be abolished through transforming society to redistribute power and resources fairly.

Each framework provides a set of categories or concepts to be used in clarifying a problem or issue. Concepts specify important aspects of the social world; they direct our attention. For example, attention is directed to a key issue by the concept of efficiency in the modernization framework, class in a Marxist frame-work, sexuality in a radical-feminist framework, and reproduction in a socialist-feminist framework.

Why are there so many frameworks? Each framework represents an alternative way of looking at the social world. It is possible to hold different sets of assumptions about the same aspects of social reality. Different assumptions lead people to view issues and problems differently. For example, each development framework relies on its own assumptions about the nature of development and how and why it does or does not occur; each raises its own questions and provides its own concepts for examining the process of development; and each suggests its own strategies for change.

The feminist frameworks each rely on a unique assumption about the basis for women's subordination; each raises unique questions and provides unique concepts for examining women's inequality; and each suggests quite unique strategies for change. Frameworks do compete with each other, and some become dominant over time.

Theoretical frameworks are dynamic and continually evolve and change, and this happens for a variety of reasons:

In general, it is difficult to convince the adherents of a framework of the validity of another, competing framework. This is somewhat less true of feminist theorists because they generally feel that frameworks are designed to aid their understanding of women's subordination and thereby end it. So they may be more open to views put forward in many other theoretical frameworks.

In this chapter, we examine two competing development frameworks: modernization and dependency. We also look at seven feminist frameworks: liberal, Marxist, radical, black, socialist, postmodernist, and Third World. We discuss how development and feminist frameworks intersected to become the two main competing feminist development frameworks, WID and GAD.

We also explore the exciting debates and critiques that currently influence these frameworks and could result in the emergence of new frameworks. The important point to remember is that frameworks should be measured by their usefulness in building a better society. We can all contribute to ensuring that theoretical frameworks reflect our interests and concerns.

Historical context of theorizing about women or gender and development

Research on women-or gender-and-development issues requires a thorough understanding of both development and feminist theoretical frameworks. Theoretical frameworks fundamentally shape research approaches and are therefore an essential underpinning for feminist research. Theory is not wisdom; it is a set of tools. Theory should be criticized and redefined in specific social contexts. Most feminist and development theories have their roots in the West and need to be tested and redefined in other contexts. However, one needs a basic theoretical knowledge before undertaking the important process of critique and debate.

Chapter 2 noted that the history of women-or gender-and-development theory is interwoven with the history of policy interventions in developing countries and with the history of the women's movement around the globe. Some of these activities were explicitly informed by theoretical frameworks, whereas others were more implicitly grounded in a worldview. The experiences of policy-makers and activists gave rise to revised theoretical formulations of development and feminist concerns. The thinking on these issues and the operationalization of policies over time have drawn on feminist and development theories and have contributed to the further development and, sometimes, the integration of these theories.

Many individuals and organizations have worked for a very long time to improve conditions for women. Local and international women's organizations, such as the YWCA, have had a lengthy presence in developing countries, as well as in the North. Their presence predates both the concern with development per se, which characterized the postwar period, and the wave of international feminism of the past quarter century.

These groups have been concerned at various times with meeting women's practical gender needs and their strategic gender interests (Molyneux 1985; Moser 1989). Practical gender needs relate to women's daily needs in caring for them-selves and their children, whereas strategic gender interests relate to the task of changing gender relations and challenging women's subordinate position.

Women's organizations have worked for social-welfare causes, reform, and empowerment over the last century in the South, just as they have in the North. At times, they have espoused feminist causes but clothed them in welfare language. In the last 25 years, the intertwining of feminist and development concerns has given rise to a specific planning field (Moser 1993). As we shall see, alternatives have emerged in the conceptualization and operationalization of development approaches to women.

An historical approach to development is important to understanding the evolution of development thinking and policies. Early development initiatives, which had begun to preoccupy economists and colonial officials in the 1930s, largely ignored women. These approaches identified development with modernization and assumed the wholesale adoption of Western technology, institutions, and beliefs. Buttressed by their technical superiority, Western development specialists defined Westernization and modernization as the same thing. In this modernization paradigm, they posited development as a linear process whereby "backward," tradition-bound peoples would slough off their historic impediments and embrace modern (that is, Western) institutions, technologies, and values (see "Framework A: modernization theory," under 'Theoretical frameworks," later in this chapter). The issue was not whether to follow this route but how to achieve this transition as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

The 1940s and 1950s

During the 1940s and 1950s, development planners designed projects aimed to modernize colonies all over the globe. Many of these projects failed, but this did little to undermine most development experts' faith in modernization. When colonial rule was swept away by decolonization, beginning with India in the late 1940s, the newly independent governments hired many of these former colonial development experts to help them fulfill electoral promises, particularly the promise that independence would bring economic development and prosperity for all. The formulation of the modernization paradigm coincided with the emergence of the United States as the hegemonic power of the postwar era. The United States became the model for countries pursuing modernization. US dominance included intellectual hegemony, which was played out in scholarship, policy-making, and research on developing countries.

Both Third World leaders and Western development specialists assumed that Western development policies would position fragile Third World economies for a "take-off." Few questioned whether this prosperity would extend equally to all classes, races, and gender groups. As noted in Chapter 2 , Ester Boserup's (1970) Women's Role in Economic Development investigated the impact of development projects on Third World women. Boserap discovered that most of these projects ignored women and that many technologically sophisticated projects undermined women's economic opportunities and autonomy. Training in new technologies was usually offered to men, which meant that most "modern" projects improved male opportunities and technological knowledge but reduced women's access to both technology and employment. Boserup's study seriously challenged the argument that benefits from development projects would automatically "trickle down" to women and other disadvantaged groups in Third World nations.

Women involved with development issues in the United States lobbied to bring this evidence to the attention of US policymakers. These women challenged the assumption that modernization would automatically increase gender equality. They began to use the term women in development (see "Feminist development theories: applying WTD and GAD" later in this chapter) in their efforts to influence the policies of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Their efforts resulted in the Percy Amendment in 1973, which required gender-sensitive social-impact studies for all development projects, with the aim of helping to integrate women into the national economies of their countries. The emphasis on equal opportunity for women came out of liberal feminism (see "Framework C: liberal feminism"). WED represents a merging of modernization and liberal-feminist theories.

Key players in some donor agencies tried to initiate changes to encourage development planners to rethink development policy and planning with women in mind. The Canadian, Dutch, and Nordic donor agencies made early advances in this field. For the first time, feminist staff were able to organize to identify issues and agendas. Some agencies created WID offices, where WED staff worked to develop policies and training for agency staff. Gains were made, but resistance was widespread. This limited the impact of the new agency policies on project design and implementation.

WTD staff, along with the donor agencies in general, continued to work within the modernization paradigm. That is, they assumed that development was measured by the adoption of Western technologies, institutions, and values. Their innovation was to begin to ask how to include women in the development process. To enhance women's access to development, these planners called for more accurate measurements of women's lived experiences (that is, women-oriented statistics) and for improvements in women's access to education, training, property, and credit and for more and better employment. To achieve these goals, they maintained that women must be integrated into development projects and plans and have a say in policy design and implementation. They argued further that until this happened, development policies would continue to undermine women's status in the Third World. To induce modernization technocrats to pursue these goals, these experts promised that women-oriented policies would enhance women's efficiency and consequently enhance economic development.

The WED approach, with its determination to integrate women into development, slowly became a concern of many governments and donor agencies. The United Nations Decade for Women was launched in 1975 with the Mexico City conference on the theme "Equality, Development and Peace." The World Plan of Action that emerged from the conference and set the agenda for the Decade for Women established the goal of integrating women into the development process (Moser 1993). In consequence, many governments set up offices for women's affairs. As well, international aid agencies, to prove their commitment to women's advancement, increasingly hired WED experts. These were significant first steps.

It is important to acknowledge that the WID perspective has enhanced our understanding of women's development needs, particularly the need to improve statistical measures of women's work and to provide women with more opportunities for education and employment (Overholt et al. 1984). The WID perspective has provided a checklist for ensuring women's status in societies, a checklist that is both helpful and accessible to development technocrats.

However, the WED approach has important limitations that have tended to restrict its transformative capacity on many levels. Because this approach relies heavily on modernization theory, it generally assumes that Western institutions hold most of the answers and it often ignores the possible contribution of indigenous knowledge. It also tends to see development as an activity of a government-to-government nature and consequently generally refrains from criticizing Third World governments. It sees the state as a solution, rather than a potential problem for the advancement of women,

During the course of the decade, disappointments arose when national women's offices (initiated with much enthusiasm and often quite radical agendas) were co-opted or found their roles and capacities diminished through inadequate funding and limited political leverage. Throughout this period, Third World feminists tended to work independently of government-sanctioned WID efforts, organizing at the grass-roots level on many issues of concern to women and improving communication among women. Their issues and tactics varied, but the goal was always to support and strengthen women, sometimes focusing on practical needs but often mindful of strategic interests to alter the mechanisms of women's subordination.

The types of activity among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) increased during this period, including outside-initiated, small grass-roots, worker-based, service-oriented, research-based, and specific-issue coalitions. Much of the work was either consciously shaped by a critique of the h'beral-feminist and WID frameworks or generated by increasing dissatisfaction with mainstream analyses. The feminist debate on these issues became intense among activists, policymakers, and academics.

Wedded to notions of modernization and efficiency, the WID approach tended to preoccupy itself with women's roles as producers and to ignore their domestic labour. It rarely addressed fundamental questions about women's subordination. The WE) approach generally ignored the impact of global inequities on women in the Third World and the importance of race and class in women's lives. Other theoretical perspectives were required to address some of these fundamental issues.

Some scholars sought answers for women's development issues in Marxism, which had developed the most thorough critique of liberal modernization theory (see "Framework B: Marxist-dependency theory"). However, this approach has little to say about women and fails to question the importance of modernization. Marxist scholars have generally accepted Friedrich Engels' argument that women's subordination is a consequence of the development of private property and capitalism and that a successful class struggle and the demise of the capitalist system are therefore required before gender inequities can be changed. Marxist thinkers have put their energies into the struggle against capitalism, rather than trying to attack patriarchy , which they argue is merely an outgrowth of the capitalist system.

Although most Marxists were thus happy to ignore gender, a number of influential feminists working within a Marxist paradigm expanded the debate concerning women and work to include a more nuanced appreciation of reproductive labour and the role of class in women's lives (Sargent 1981) (see "Framework D: Marxist feminism"). This provided important analytical tools for the development of a socialist-feminist perspective (see "Framework F: socialist feminism").

A related strand of development thinking drew on the Marxist critique of Western capitalism for its explanations of Third World poverty. Based largely in Latin America and the Caribbean, but influencing thinkers in other regions, the dependency theorists turned modernization upside down, arguing that it was the cause of Third World underdevelopment, rather than the solution to Third World problems. Dependency theorists, most notably Andre Gunder Frank (1969, 1979) and Sarnir Amin (1974), argued that the capitalist " metropole " benefited from a dependent, peripheral Third World and that the capitalist system was designed to perpetuate this dependency. They called for separation from the metropole, a critical attitude toward Western technology, and a commitment to Third World self-reliance.

Developments in dependency theory have in some ways paralleled those in radical-feminist thinking in the West: both emerged during a period of serious challenge to existing power structures, and both advocated a degree of separation from the sources of power and domination. The radical-feminist critique of liberal and Marxist feminism argued that patriarchy exists in all societies and is the fundamental source of inequality. Politically, this suggests the need to create alternative social institutions, separate from men, within which women can fulfill their needs (see "Framework E: radical feminism"). During the 1970s, this approach influenced the thinking and practice of some academics and activists (primarily in NGOs), who called for women's projects that were completely separate from men's. They argued for a development approach to women that recognized the dangers of integrating women into a patriarchal world, and they sought instead to create "women-only" projects, carefully constructed to protect women's interests from patriarchal domination. This approach has sometimes been referred to as women and development (WAD) (Parpart 1989; Rathgeber 1990).

The WAD paradigm stresses the distinctiveness of women's knowledge, women's work, and women's goals and responsibilities. It argues for recognition of this distinctiveness and for acknowledgment of the special roles that women have always played in the development process. For example, the WAD perspective gave rise to a persistent call to recognize that women are the mainstay of agricultural production in many areas of Africa, although their contribution has been systematically overlooked and marginalized in national and donor development plans. This concern was captured in the slogan "Give credit where credit is due." Campaigns designed to change policies and place women's issues and concerns on national and international agendas have been a key area of activity for people working within this paradigm, and disseminating information has been an important strategy. Efforts to organize have been oriented both to making mainstream bureaucracies more responsive to women's needs and to strengthening bonds among women through active, autonomous local groups and networks.

Theorists and activists working within this paradigm have debated the issue of integration (in mainstream agencies and programs) versus separate woman-focused organizing. They recognize that mainstream agencies carry the risk of domination by patriarchal interests, whereas autonomy carries the risk of further marginalization and inadequate funding imposed by the small scale of many women-only projects and initiatives. Much of the theorizing of people working within the WAD perspective is undocumented because active engagement at the policy and community levels has been the major, always pressing, priority.

Although the WAD perspective has offered an important corrective to WID's too-ready assumption that male-dominated states can be used to alter gender inequities, it also has its weaknesses. As noted above, marginalization and smallness of scale have limited the transformative potential of women-only organizations, although gains have been made in raising consciousness, publicizing women's concerns, and bringing them into the policy arena. The WAD approach is also inclined to see women as a class, downplaying differences among women, particularly along racial and ethnic lines, and at times assuming that solutions to problems affecting the world's women can be found in the experiences and agendas of one particular group.

During the 1970s, in the context of ongoing social movements challenging authority, the arguments of the dependency school and the growing concern with Third World poverty influenced liberal development thinking. Officials at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank committed their institutions to waging a war on poverty and providing basic human needs for all. WID specialists also adopted this approach, targeting poor women and their basic human needs as the primary goals of WID policies. As Moser (1989) pointed out, this antipoverty approach recognized, and tried to serve, women's practical gender needs by focusing on improving women's access to income through such efforts as small-scale, income-generating projects. Thus, in the 1970s, radical and orthodox development thinkers and planners agreed on the centrality of poverty alleviation, although they differed on how to bring it about (Jaquette 1982).

In the mid-1980s, political conservatism predominated in Western governments and donor agencies. A growing preoccupation with economic mismanagement and underdevelopment in Third World economies began to replace the concern with basic human needs. Compounded by two oil crises and huge international debts, the global recession hit many Third World countries hard, revealing structural flaws and weak economies.

Where dependency theorists saw debt as a component of the long-term capital flows draining wealth from poorer to richer countries, the international development agencies, particularly the IMF and World Bank, drew a conclusion consistent with the modernization approach: Third World economies required structural adjustment to revive themselves and flourish.

Structural-adjustment programs (SAPs) were designed to reduce government expenditure and increase the power of market forces in Third World economies, thereby increasing their productivity and efficiency. Once again, the assumptions of liberal development thinking dominated the SAPs, including the assumption that economic prosperity (which is an assumed outcome of SAPs) would benefit women as well as men. In this context, the emphasis has been on increasing women's economic contribution to increase overall economic efficiency and bring about equity for women (Moser 1989; Elson 1992). A few development specialists working on women's issues in the official agencies have begun to question the underlying assumption that structural adjustment would, in the long run, benefit everyone. Some have recognized that women and children have suffered from the short-run dislocations caused by the SAPs, a recognition that has resulted in the implementation of special programs to alleviate the short-term effects of the SAPs on vulnerable groups (women, children, the aged, and the disabled).

Some feminists and development theorists have remained unconvinced by both the WID and the WAD approaches, arguing that neither addresses the fundamental factors that structure and maintain gender inequalities. These scholars and activists have turned to the GAD perspective (see the "GAD perspective," under "Feminist development theories: applying WED and GAD," in this chapter), which emerged in the 1980s as an alternative to WID and WAD. This framework is also referred to as the "empowerment approach" or "gender-aware planning."

This approach emerged from the grass-roots organizational experiences and writings of Third World feminists and has been most clearly articulated by a group called Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). The process of developing this new paradigm began in the early 1980s. DAWN was launched publicly at the 1985 Nairobi international NGO forum (an event attended by 15 000 women activists and held parallel to the official World Conference on Women). DAWN called for an approach to women's development that recognizes the importance of global and gender inequities (Sen and Grown 1987).

The GAD approach also emerged from the experiences and analysis of Western socialist feminists (see "Framework F: socialist feminism") interested in development issues (Young et al. 1981; Moser 1989; Elson 1992). The GAD perspective calls for a synthesis of the issues of materialist political economy and the radical-feminist issues of patriarchy and ideology (patriarchal ideology) . Drawing on the socialist-feminist perspective, the GAD approach argues that women's status in society is deeply affected by their material conditions of life and by their position in the national, regional, and global economies. GAD also recognizes that women are deeply affected by the nature of patriarchal power in their societies at the national, community, and household levels. Moreover, women's material conditions and patriarchal authority are both defined and maintained by the accepted norms and values that define women's and men's roles and duties in a particular society (Sen and Grown 1987).

GAD adopts a two-pronged approach to the study of women and development, investigating women's material conditions and class position, as well as the patriarchal structures and ideas that define and maintain women's subordination. The focus is on relationships between women and men, not on women alone. Gender relations are seen as the key determinant of women's position in society, not as immutable reflections of the natural order but as socially constructed patterns of behaviour — the social construction of gender — which can be changed if this is desired. The GAD approach focuses on the interconnection of gender, class, and race and the social construction of their defining characteristics. Women experience oppression differently, according to their race, class, colonial history, culture, and position in the international economic order (Moser 1993). These points are key in the approaches of black and Third World feminism (see "Framework G: black feminism" and "Current debates and critiques" in this chapter). GAD recognizes the differential impacts of development policies and practices on women and men and sees women as agents , not simply as recipients, of development. This perspective thus calls into question both gender relations and the development process.

Within the GAD perspective, a distinction is drawn between women's interests (a biological category that assumes homogeneity) and gender interests (a socially constructed set of relations and material practices). As suggested above, gender interests can be either practical or strategic (Molyneux 1985). Practical gender needs arise out of concrete conditions; these are immediate perceived needs, such as the need to provide food, shelter, education, and health care. Strategic gender interests arise out of an analysis of women's subordination and require changes in the structures of gender, class, and race that define women's position in any given culture. Strategic interests include the goal of gender equality.

The politicization of practical needs and their transformation into strategic interests constitute central aspects of the GAD approach, as does the empowerment of women (and sympathetic men) to achieve this goal (see "Feminist development theories: applying WID and GAD"). The GAD approach provides a way to analyze policies and organizational efforts to determine which ones will both meet short-term practical needs and help to change the structures of subordination. In the 1980s, donor agencies and state machineries consolidated their WID activities, but the GAD perspective increasingly shaped the interests and activities of feminist NGOs and was in turn shaped by those experiences.

Within the NGO sector, a rich diversity of paradigms continued to influence development practice. The WAD approach remained particularly strong, as women continued to organize at the grass-roots level and through broader networks to increase recognition and support for women's special contributions to national development. The continuous pressure applied by organized women's groups remained significant, forcing governments and other agencies to take women seriously and address their concerns. Activists also challenged feminist scholars and academics to strengthen the links between theory and practice and to revise theories to accommodate new forms, of analysis arising from experience. Although some shifts occurred in rhetoric and practice, WE) remained the dominant approach of governments, relief and development agencies (both United Nations agencies and NGOs), and bilateral donor agencies.

In some cases, policies and programs that clearly continued to work within the WID paradigm (as defined in this chapter) adopted GAD as their newer, perhaps more fashionable, label. Ironically, although the GAD framework actually goes farther than WID in challenging patriarchal structures, some agencies adopted the term gender or GAD to reassure men that their interests and concerns were not being overlooked or undermined by an excessive focus on women. Some agencies that still use the language of WID have moved (usually in response to the pressure of feminist staff members) toward making more far-reaching critiques of the structure of gender relations and toward promoting policies and programs that challenge fundamental inequalities. Labels therefore no longer provide a clear guide to identifying the theoretical paradigm underlying policies and programs; one also needs to examine their content more closely.

This chapter outlines a number of theoretical paradigms and key concepts for the analysis and criticism (if appropriate) of the complex and often contradictory assumptions behind policies and programs. The section entitled "Feminist development theories: applying WID and GAD" provides a practical introduction to the task of applying WED and GAD frameworks. Chapter 4 analyzes in more detail the implications of these various theoretical frameworks for policy, research, and action.

The 1990s brought a new round of critique and debate to challenge how we think about both development and feminism. The next section explores the cutting edge of thinking on globalization, development, and feminism.

Current debates and critiques

Globalization

The changing world economic reality

The 1990s were considerably different from the postwar era, which spawned modernization and dependency theories, policy, and practice. Modernization and dependency theories were grounded in the economic realities of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Tremendous worldwide economic restructuring occurred after the early 1970s. The symptoms of change included the rise of the newly industrializing countries (NICs) in Asia, the debt crisis in other parts of the South, and the end of the postwar boom in much of the industrialized North.

Restructuring became a buzzword for the changing world economy; this new reality was often characterized by the term globalization . Although the idea of a world economy is not new, this use of globalization highlights the more intense integration of the global economy in the 1990s. Companies and states increasingly thought in terms of global markets and competition. Attention was drawn to global capital and the tremendous power of transnational corporations (TNCs). Capital mobility reached new heights, and TNCs began to plan worldwide production, investment, and distribution strategies across continents and nation-states. The North witnessed a loss of jobs as multinationals from the North moved production to the South, creating a "global assembly line." Technological change was rapid; improvements in communications and transportation eliminated economic barriers of distance and facilitated this globalization process. Computerization also altered production processes and enabled firms to move around the world in search of cheaper labour.

In the context of heightened international competition and rapid technological change, capital strove for more "flexibility," another buzzword of the 1990s. The increase in the mobility of capital was most dramatic, but some changes also occurred in the international mobility of labour. Migration from the South to the North — both permanent (legal and illegal) and temporary (guest workers) — increased. Household economic strategies now spanned North and South in many cases, as families depended on the remittances of migrant workers. With the influx of immigrants from the South, racial tensions escalated in the North, and much of this tension was over competition for a perceived declining number of jobs.

Although some countries have benefited from this restructuring, many others in the North and South have seen their economies falter. Countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States lost much of their manufacturing employment, although employment improved in the 1990s with the growth of services. In the South, the debt crisis has affected many countries, and reversals have occurred in many economic indicators. Africa and Latin America have been particularly hard hit. The old world order has been altered as Japan, Germany, and Southeast Asia challenge economic leadership, American and many European economies falter, and the Communist bloc disintegrates.

Changing world economic realities have put pressure on policy. Liberal "free-market" economic policies have been the order of the day in many struggling countries, including reduced trade barriers (through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT] and bilateral agreements), deregulation of markets, SAPs, and privatization of government enterprises. Generally, these policies have supported the unfettered mobility of transnational capital. However, state capitalism has characterized the successful economies of Germany, Japan, and Southeast Asia, although the Asian crisis in the 1990s has thrown some doubt on this model. One area in which increased regulation and intervention in the market have had some worldwide currency is the environment. It has also become "global."

Implications for women

These new economic realities and the political reactions to them (that is, policies of structural adjustment, free trade, export-led industrialization, etc.) have had different implications for women and for men. For example, Guy Standing (1989) argued that there was a feminization of the labour force throughout the 1980s in industrializing countries. With the SAPs comes pressure on governments to deregulate. With employers seeking to improve their competitive position through flexible labour practices, more jobs have become "feminized": they have taken on the characteristics of insecure, low-paying jobs with few prospects for advancement. This accounts, in part, for the increase in female labour-force participation, as men are less willing to take these jobs. In many countries, female unemployment rates in the 1980s declined relative to male unemployment rates. Standing blamed this trend on the feminization of labour1 and the employers' desire to have a cheaper, more disposable or flexible labour supply.

Export-led industrialization has also contributed to the growth of low-wage female employment in developing countries, particularly in the export-processing zones (EPZs). During the 1960s and 1970s, corporations developed EPZs as part of a strategy to lower costs by reorganizing production on a global scale. TNCs decrease their production costs by transferring low-skill jobs to EPZs to take advantage of low-cost labour. Export processing is particularly suitable for highly competitive industries in which labour costs constitute a large share of the operating budget, such as in the textile and garment and electronics industries. Women make up the majority of workers in these industries (Tiano 1990), as they are considered more patient and more prepared to do the tedious and monotonous jobs (Gladwin 1993). Women are perceived as being cheaper to employ, more passive, and less likely to unionize.

As the developing world adjusts to the economic crisis, few jobs are being created in the formal sector, with the exception of the EPZs. With fewer formal-sector jobs available, unemployed workers and new entrants in the labour force are compelled to enter the informal sector to survive. In addition, many formal-sector jobs are "informalized" as employers use subcontracting to increase flexibility and decentralize the production process. For example, recent research has shown that much of the work in EPZs is not direct wage work but indirect and unrecorded work subcontracted to women in their homes (Beneria and Feldman 1992). This labour-intensive, low-paying work involves no overhead or other labour costs to employers and appears to be on the rise as structural adjustment increases the pressure to become more competitive.

As more people enter the informal sector, average wages fall. Women form the largest part of the work force in the informal sector and are concentrated in the more precarious and lowest paying jobs, such as household help. Women also engage in small-scale manufacturing and transport, retail trade, "self-production" (gardens, cooperative child care, labour exchange for house construction), and illegal or quasi-legal activities (beer-brewing, smuggling, begging, drug cultivation) (Cornia et al. 1987; Vickers 1991). They generally earn less than the minimum wage and less than men, even when they have similar occupations. Income differences between women and men are larger in the informal sector than in the formal one (Tokman 1989).

As real wages fall, prices rise, and social services and social-security systems contract, the number of women seeking an income has been increasing. Women's domestic activities have increased, that is, gathering fuel and water, caring for children and the elderly, buying and processing food, preparing and serving meals, doing the laundry, keeping the house clean, nursing the sick, and generally managing the household. On average, women in developing countries are working longer days and putting in longer hours than men.

In most countries, the number of female-headed households has been growing in both rural and urban areas (Brydon and Chant 1989; United Nations 1991). This increase has been a result of many factors, including, significantly, male migration to seek employment. Migration of men leaves female-headed households relying on insufficient and unstable remittances. Surveys on poverty always show that female-headed households are disproportionately represented (CSEGWSA 1989). This is not surprising, as women earn, on average, less than men and have fewer assets and less access to employment and production resources, such as land, capital, and technology. Women also retain responsibility for domestic activities and child care. All of these factors contribute to the feminization of poverty.

These new economic realities are also having negative effects on women in the North. The feminization of the labour force is happening in industrialized countries as well as the NICs (Armstrong 1993). With the advent of free trade, the introduction of new technologies, and increased use of flexible management strategies, employment has shifted from the goods-producing sector to the service sector and from full-time to nonstandard jobs (part time, part year, temporary, casual). More jobs have the characteristics of female jobs: short term with low pay, no possibility of advancement, and few if any benefits. Although men continue to get more than their fair share of the better jobs, more men are having to move into this "feminized" work.

Some jobs are moving from the North to the South. For example, as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect, manufacturing jobs (especially labour-intensive ones such as in textiles and electronics) are moving from Canada and the United States to Mexico, where labour, especially female labour, is cheaper. As unemployment increases and full-time unionized jobs disappear, the power of trade unions to bargain collectively for benefits and wages declines. As jobs become more difficult to find, firms find it easier to gain wage and other concessions from workers. As a result, the conditions of work are eroding and the standard of living is dropping. Families find they need to have more than one income earner, and married women with young children have been entering the labour force in greater numbers. Although working conditions are bad for many workers, they are particularly bad for women. Most women not only are ghettoized into low-paying, low-skill, part-time jobs but also have a second, unpaid job, caring for a family household. Although this describes the impact of restructuring on the majority of women, some women in the South and in the North are doing quite well. Two of the results of restructuring observed in many countries are polarization of incomes and a decline in the number of people in middle-income groups. In other words, a few people become better off and many become worse off.

The majority of women in the industrialized world are working or looking for work outside the home, and most have a second job of caring for children and a household. The division of labour within the household has not changed significantly in most countries, and women continue to do most of the work. Women are concerned about child care, household management, and care of the sick, elderly, or disabled. The burden of these tasks on women is increasing as restructuring of the welfare state occurs. As the state restructures, it cuts back on health care and education costs. It deinstitutionalizes people through early hospital discharges and closures of nursing homes and facilities for the disabled. It also saves money by closing hospitals and cutting school programs. Emphasis is increasingly placed on volunteerism, self-help, and community care, all of which have strong implications for women and their workload, because women provide much of this work on an unpaid basis.

Women not only increasingly provide unpaid services as the state cuts back, they also fill the majority of state-financed jobs in health, social services, and education. These state jobs provide women with wages and employment conditions better on average then those in the private sector; however, with state restructuring, wages are frozen and jobs disappear. Women and men are becoming unemployed or forced into lower paying jobs in the private sector or the fast-growing informal economy.

Social needs must be met. With the increase in women's participation in the labour force, the need for child care is enormous. As the population ages, care is also increasingly needed for the elderly. Female-headed single-parent families are on the increase, and so are their needs, as their real incomes are decreasing. If people cannot afford to meet their needs through the market and if the state or employer does not meet them either, then the household (and that usually means women) must meet them. As the state cuts back social services it implicitly assumes a gender division of labour in which women in the household or in the community are expected to carry out these activities and meet these needs without pay. The government's divesting itself of many of the welfare state's responsibilities implicitly assumes the availability of women in the home to provide these services. Restructuring and adjustment increase women's workload, perpetuate the traditional gender division of labour, reinforce gender relations, and maintain the notion that women are naturally suited for caring work.

Although women's "position" and "condition" in the South differ from those in the North, adjustment to the new economic realities in both regions appears to depend on the assumption of gender differences. 2 People take it for granted that women's wages will be low if they work for pay and that their house-hold work is elastic and can be stretched to cover costs no longer covered by employers or the state (Moser 1989). With the implementation of adjustment, the working day has become longer for women. Some women can handle their increased workload by hiring help, but the vast majority of women cannot do this. A single income is not enough to support a family, and more women and youths

2 Women's condition refers to the material conditions of their everyday lives as women experience them, whereas their position refers to their social status relative to that of men (Moffat et al. 1991). See "Tools of GAD analysis," under "Feminist development theories: applying WID and GAD," later in this chapter.

have had to find employment. This is particularly the case in single-parent families headed by women, and the number of these families is increasing all over the world. Women in almost every society are paid less than men in both the formal and informal economies. As wages decline, women are under pressure to increase their hours of work. With prices rising and food subsidies being eliminated in the South and with household incomes declining in the North, women's unpaid work in the home is increasing as women try to stretch their resources to meet their families' needs.

Theoretical debates

Although globalization and restructuring are widely used to describe the current economic context, they connote no particular theory of economic development. They are labels used by all sides in the current debate. Globalization has motivated the analyses of countless national and international reports on economic policy from all points of view on the political spectrum.

Globalization is used to justify a hands-off policy approach in many countries — the theoretical assumption is that the market itself is now breaking down distinctions between the North and South and will lead to economic growth in the South, if this is profitable. This can be interpreted as consistent with neoclassical economics and the modernization approach to development, in which developing countries are expected to follow the path of those in the industrialized world. The example of the Southeast Asian NICs has been used to inspire confidence in this interpretation (or misinterpretation), as they are thought to demonstrate that developing countries can achieve self-sustaining growth. The Asian crisis in the late 1990s undermined this argument, but the return of prosperity to much of the region has reinforced neoclassical economic policies, albeit with a greater concern for social capital . The barriers to development most focused on by neoclassical economics continue to be those created by well-intentioned government interference: market-price supports, trade restrictions, and so on. The SAPs are designed to remove those barriers.

Although the expression modernization theory may no longer be in vogue, the spirit of the analysis, drawing on neoclassical free-market economics, is alive and well. The economic analysis of development that focuses on an unfettered, free global market now dominates economic policy in much of the North and South. The Japanese model, in contrast, involves an active role for the state in industrial policy, which in fact differs from the welfare-state model that many Western countries are trying to escape. Debates continue to rage on how to synthesize these two models.

Globalization also dominates discussion on the left. Theorists from the traditions of Marxism, dependency theory, and political economy are grappling with how to understand the changed economic realities. Their debate is about how fundamental the transformation is and whether they need new tools of analysis. At one extreme are those who see a dramatic reconfiguration of world capitalism. Piore and Sabel (1984) called this reconfiguration a "second industrial divide," similar in significance to the industrial revolution. Piore and Sabel's approach to the analysis has been labeled "flexible specialization," as they have argued that changes in technology and markets have brought an end to the dominance of "mass production" and have increased the possibility of much more decentralized, craft-based production. In terms of development, this would mean new opportunities for previously developing regions and countries to compete globally.

Writing from a more explicitly Marxist perspective, analysts of the French regulationist school have argued that Fordism , the dominant mode of production and regulation in the postwar era, has undergone a crisis and that we are now in an era of post-Fordism , with a realignment of capital-labour relations, nationally and internationally; changes in capital accumulation, requiring corporations to adopt new, more flexible strategies (in both the labour process and the product market); and the requisite changes in the institutional-regulatory environment to meet the new requirements of capital. Both the flexible specialization and regulationist analyses of restructuring originated in the experience and perspectives of the North. Considerable debate focuses on how to apply this approach in understanding developments in the South. Many political economists are grappling with the dynamics of the new world economic order and its implications for development in the South. Some political economists reject the notion that the new world economy is a new system, arguing that the underlying dynamics of capitalism are unchanged and that the existing analytical tools can, with modification, be used to understand the new conjuncture (Bienefeld 1993).

All writers in the political-economy and Marxist traditions are critical of hands-off policies, arguing that such policies favour capital and do not necessarily lead to any sustainable development for the bulk of the population. Such writers see an important role for the state in both the South and the North (Bienefeld 1993).

Both free-market and political-economy interpretations of globalization recognize the increasing complexity of the relationships between North and South, in contrast to the ways their relationship is depicted in the original modernization and dependency theories. The modernization framework sees the basic relationship as one of the North "helping" the traditional South to climb the ladder of development and become like the modern North. Dependency theory sees the North as having created a situation of dependency in the South that the North uses to enrich itself. On this view, the North increases its own development by maintaining and exploiting the dependency of the South. However, current economic realities call both of these interpretations into question. What we now see is a more complex series of relationships, a more complex world.

TNCs are more wealthy and more powerful than many individual nations in either the North or the South. Their control and allegiance know no national boundaries. Although North-based TNCs may continue to enrich themselves, this no longer necessarily translates into investment or job growth in Northern countries. Some nations in the South, such as the emerging NICs, are experiencing rapid economic growth, and some nations in the North are experiencing negative or static growth.

Although it is important to understand the complexity of the changes occurring at the global level, it is also important to understand how these changes are affecting people's lives. Rather than seeing these changes in terms of an evolutionary process — that is, in terms of how societies move (or are kept from moving) from an underdeveloped to a developed state — we must ask what people do to construct their political, social, and economic lives and how they adapt to or resist changes in the conditions confronting them. We must consider not simply the larger structures and institutions but also the local culture and knowledge, as well as the importance of language, in our analysis.

These aspects are emphasized in recent postmodernist and poststructuralist critiques of socioeconomic theory. Their critiques have led to new thinking about development (as discussed in the next section, "Rethinking historical change, deconstructing developmentalism") and feminism (see "Framework H: postmodern feminism").

Both the modernization and Marxist approaches to development grew out of European enlightenment thought, which emphasized universal "truth," rational scientific thought, and the belief in progress. The development enterprise, whether drawing on modernization or Marxist perspectives, is largely rooted in this idea of progress toward a "modem" ideal, progress conceived as a linear process informed by scientific economic theory. Some scholars on the left are adopting a "post-Marxist" approach to development. Acknowledging the limitations of classical Marxist analysis, particularly its economistic, linear character, these scholars have emphasized, instead, the fluid, contingent nature of capitalist development, the importance of human agency, and the complexity of social transformation (Corbridge 1990; Schuurman 1993; Slater 1993). Scholars who draw more on the postmodernist perspective have challenged the very essence of mainstream and leftist development discourse, questioning the universal pretensions of modernity and calling for a new approach to development that acknowledges differences and searches out previously silenced voices and knowledge.

Questions raised for research

1. What impact has restructuring had on women's paid and unpaid work?

2. What are the conditions of work and incomes in the informal economy?

3. How does migration affect the household?

4. To what extent has restructuring created polarization and increased inequality of earnings and incomes? For men? For women? For households?

5. What strategies are TNCs using to increase competitiveness? How have flexible management strategies affected female and male workers?

Implications for policy and action

1. Globalization brings an emphasis on freer trade, which is resulting in multilateral changes in trade policy (through GATT) and the formation of regional trading blocs, such as the European Community and NAFTA.

2. Social policies are subordinate to economic policies, and the former, it is often argued, hinder competition and are unaffordable.

3. EPZs and export-oriented policies are aimed at facilitating global capitalism and increasing a nation's exposure to the world market.

4. Groups such as trade unions and women's organizations are trying to resist deteriorating working conditions and levels of social services.

5. The ability of nation-states to form policy is severely restricted by international institutions such as the IMF and by the power of TNCs.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 1 )

1. What does Standing mean by a "supply-side agenda"?

2. How have workers been hurt by this supply-side agenda?

General discussion questions

1. How has your country been affected by economic restructuring?

2. How do people experience restructuring on a daily basis in your country?

3. Have jobs become feminized in your country?

4. Are there EPZs in your country? If so, what are their hiring practices and conditions of work?

5. How can wages and working conditions be maintained or improved while capital is so mobile and countries are so concerned with competitiveness?

Rethinking historical change, deconstructing developmentalism

The dictionary definition of development, discussed in Chapter 2 , referred to a process of unfolding, maturing, and evolving. When applied to plants and other organisms, the evolutionary implications of the term are unproblematic: a fully developed plant, an adult animal, or even a human animal has certain well-defined and fully predictable characteristics. If it lacks these characteristics, we are justified in saying that the organism is underdeveloped or undeveloped.

Using development in reference to human societies is much more problematic. As noted in the previous section, societies do not actually follow a linear path of progress, contrary to the assumptions of both modernization and Marxist theorists. Societies can be restructured, deindustrialized, and all too easily dislocated, culturally and materially, from the course they have set for themselves. Nor does global capitalism produce global uniformity within or among nations. Globalization produces, instead, a characteristic unevenness as advances take place in some nations, regions, genders, ethnic groups, and classes while others encounter new forms of subordination and generate new forms of resistance .

This chapter outlines some of the theoretical issues and debates arising from critiques of the concept of development. These include the recognition of developmentalism as being an ideology generated in the context of the persistent inequalities of the postcolonial world. Exciting new areas for research arising from these critiques include reexamining local histories and diversity as products of our common global history and scrutinizing the language and practice of development as modes of domination.

In Chapter 2 and earlier in this chapter (and also see "Framework A: modernization theory"), we reviewed the stages-of-development model espoused by modernization theorists. This model is based on the dichotomies underdeveloped-developed and traditional-modern. The Marxist framework, likewise, depends on the evolutionary assumption that all societies will progress from precapitalism to capitalism and finally to socialism, the inevitable endpoint. As we saw, both frameworks explain a failure to evolve in the expected ways as being caused by obstacles to growth or barriers that distort the normal process.

In the past two decades, a number of writers have questioned the evolutionary assumption underlying modernization theory and much of Marxist analysis. They have challenged the idea that human history is a movement toward a predefined "higher" state. The alternative theories that have emerged focus on people as the agents or creators of their own histories, rather than on "development" as a natural unfolding of events that no one controls. The idea that people are the agents of history applies not only to people's explicit plans and programs but also to the ordinary activities of everyday life that sustain or reshape the cultural ideas, economic practices, and institutions making up the status quo (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1979).

Within anthropology, the challenge to the evolutionary, or stages, model of historical change has led to a reexamination of the world system and a critique of earlier studies portraying certain societies as "primitive," as if they had somehow remained whole, pristine, static, and isolated while the rest of the world made drastic changes. For example, for a long time anthropological studies portrayed the bushpeople of the Kalahari as exemplary primitives: egalitarian, self-sufficient, "traditional" hunters-gatherers. More recent studies that take history and political economy into account have shown that these people were actually pushed by colonial authorities into remote areas of the desert and marginalized from the trading, wage labour, and other more varied economic activities in which they had previously engaged. Both their primitivism and their "traditional" practices were, in fact, creative adaptations to the constraints and pressures of colonialism and the global economy (Pratt 1986; Wilmsen 1989).

Thus, central to the current rethinking of historical change is the recognition that all currently existing societies are contemporaneous: they have all existed for the same duration of time, and they have all changed and adapted (Wolf 1982). Contrary to modernization models, no society has been left behind or stuck in the past, and there are no pure, traditional societies just waiting to evolve into modern ones. Nor are any societies "precapitalist," as Marxist evolutionary theories would suggest: all societies have been deeply and fundamentally affected by global capitalism, and for several centuries none have operated independently of the global economy. Quite evidently, globalization has not meant that all societies have become the same, economically or culturally. Diverse local histories have emerged from particular interactions of the local and the global as people have accommodated, and resisted, the conditions they encountered and have pursued their daily activities in culturally meaningful ways.

Recognizing that a capitalist mode of production in one sector and region and a noncapitalist mode of production in another sector and region were both created by the same historical movement (Roseberry 1989) is a major challenge to the modernization framework. This challenge draws on dependency theory but goes beyond it in its emphasis on culture and people as the agents of their own histories. Dependency theorists often portray local communities as passive victims, with their development progressively undermined by rich countries, and thus these theorists have failed to recognize the diverse ways that global capitalism has intruded on the local scene and the particular ways local practices and resistance have shaped and reshaped capitalism.

Rethinking historical change therefore implies that people commonly described as "primitive," "traditional," "backward," or "underdeveloped" are not frozen in a static past (as in modernization models) but represent particular local, creative adaptations to economic and cultural conditions. Local histories are unique and often "convoluted" (Wilber and Jameson 1984). They do not represent the steady march of progress. They are neither passive reflections of unitary world-capitalist forces (as in dependency models) nor yet autonomous from them, as whole and unchanging "cultures" outside of history (as in some modernization models).

The reexamination of local histories has become an important focus of current research. Researchers who reject evolutionary models no longer rely on generalizations to explain development or its failure but try to understand the more specific, local reasons leading to the ways people construct their social and economic life and their adaptations to, and struggles over, the material and cultural conditions of their existence (Hill 1986; Pred and Watts 1992).

A further line of research emerging from the critique of modernization and other evolutionary theories has been a closer scrutiny of the origins and effects of developmentalism, the ideology or worldview underlying modernization (Long and Long 1992; Sachs 1992; Schuurman 1993). This ideology legitimizes the persistent inequalities of the postcolonial era. As an ideology, developmentalism had its roots in European ethnocentrism. It incorporated, almost unchanged, the static representations of the past and of the traditional (and inferior), unchanging "other" that had characterized and justified the "civilizing" mission of centuries of colonialism (Asad 1973; Said 1985).

Modernization in the postcolonial period has been perhaps more insidious than colonialism, as it seems to imply that if people in poor countries worked harder and followed appropriate policies their countries would eventually "catch up" and become like the dominant nations. It thus places the blame more squarely on their failures and shortcomings, whereas colonial regimes had been more prepared to admit that their own presence in the colonies made it impossible, not to say inappropriate, for any such emulation to occur. The attempt to understand the historical creation of the ideologies supporting colonialism, modernization, and "development" has involved turning the mirror back on Western culture and knowledge and examining its own assumptions and biases (Said 1985; Bernal 1987; Roseberry and O'Brien 1991; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992).

In addition to examining the ideology underlying the modernization frame-work, critics have reexamined the practices through which Western nations have imposed modernization on, and exerted control over, the South in the postcolonial era. These practices include labeling , that is, using terms such as backward and underdeveloped; and deploying experts, projects, and programs that assert that modernization is possible if certain prescriptions are followed.

Sometimes described as "postmodern," one strand in the critique of the practices of modernization-style development takes its principal theoretical orientation from the work of Michel Foucault. He examined the workings of state power through the process of "normalization." This is the process through which a citizenry is reorganized and labeled according to bureaucratically imposed categories that privilege or punish according to certain standards and rationales. The arbitrary nature of these standards is disguised, so they come to appear normal and selfevident. For example, once a community is labeled "traditional," everything about it comes to appear less rational and less relevant than the attributes of a "modern" community, as if the label itself provided the diagnosis of a problem and proposed a solution: no further investigation needed. The label "female-headed household" is similarly problematic: it appears to name a category of households with a similar "problem" — no man present — when actually the experiences, resources, and cultural contexts of these households imply diverse predicaments, and lack of a male may not be the key characteristic.

Through the process of labeling and normalization, individuals, classes, genders, ethnic groups, and even nations are redefined according to one-dimensional labels that simplify and therefore belie their complex histories and motivations. They are portrayed as passive "clients," "victims," "participants," "target-group members," or "cases" in programs apparently intended for their benefit (Escobar 1984; Wood 1985; Ferguson 1990; DuBois 1991).

A related strand of critique has focused on development agencies and the experts who impose Western categories and technical knowledge that displace local knowledge and expertise. Some national elites in the South, city bred and trained in Western educational systems, are equally guilty of such impositions. They may even have more difficulty recognizing the value of indigenous knowledge, as their class status and privilege, unlike those of the foreign expert, are based on sustaining the distinctions they can draw between themselves and the poorer masses (Chambers 1983). The move to recognize and value indigenous knowledge is growing among development practitioners (Chambers 1983, 1997; Edwards 1989; Nindi 1990; Moore 1992).

Feminist theorizing about the operation of power in the production (and silencing) of knowledge and the significance of starting from the experiences and standpoints of women (and other oppressed groups) has provided a major contribution to the critiques and rethinking of standard research methodologies based on a hierarchy between the researcher and the researched (Harding 1987; Maguire 1987; Kirby and McKenna 1989). Feminists and others concerned with liberation, such as the educator Paolo Freire, have developed and shared techniques such as popular theatre, participatory action research, and other participatory strategies to address the problems of hierarchy, to facilitate the sharing of knowledge rather than imposing it, and to link research directly to movements for social change. In this area, effective practices are harder to achieve than is suggested in theories of popular education, conscientization, and participation (Rahnema 1990). At times, these participatory methodologies have been co-opted to serve the interests of the people in power. Co-optation can be very subtle, as power and hierarchy so easily reassert themselves. Sometimes, inadvertently, the self-appointed liberators end up imposing their own agendas:

But the enthusiasm for liberating others has only infrequently been matched by any respect for the categories, particularly the native "half baked" theories of oppression used by others. For, to accept such home-brewed theories is in effect to cut out the role of the experts on revolution and de-expertise dissent.... Ideologues are always embarrassed by their targeted beneficiaries, allegedly stuck in an earlier stage of history and disinclined to show much interest in the good turn going to be done to them. ... Human nature being what it is, while everyone likes to be a social engineer, few like to be the objects of social engineering. ... To survive beyond the tenure of the modem knowledge systems, the language of liberation will have to take into account, respectfully, the quests for freedom which are articulated in other languages and other forms, sometimes even through the language of silence.

— Nandy (1989, p. 271)

Stimulated by such critiques, feminists and others have tried to identify the modes of resistance that oppressed people use to counter the process of normalization and contest the imposition of labels, programs, and practices that disadvantage them.

Earlier generations of Marxist scholars looked forward to a revolution as the principal mode of resistance against class oppression. Many feminists have pinned their hopes on collective action and the mass organization of women to counter gender oppression. But the recent work of Marxists and feminists recognizes resistance in its more subtle forms. Those oppressed because of their class, race, or gender — often multiple jeopardies — may be unable to take the risk of overt and collective action (Scott 1985). This does not necessarily mean they are passive or ignorant of the forces that oppress them. They do not suffer from false consciousness, and many have no need for "consciousness-raising." It is simply that outsiders concerned about liberation, looking for more dramatic rebellions, have often failed to notice covert and indirect strategies of resistance. Although these strategies are perhaps low key, they are nevertheless effective in registering dissent and whittling away at conditions of oppression to the extent that circumstances allow.

Feminists have documented many strategies of women's resistance, some of which have existed for centuries and others of which have been generated more recently to meet new conditions (Risseeuw 1988; Abu-Lughod 1990). In the development field, examples of resistance might include sabotage and general non-compliance, poor participation in "participatory" schemes imposed from above, refusal of technical advice and input judged by poor farmers as being inappropriate to their needs, and preservation of shamanism and other spiritual practices that put the hegemony of scientific logic into question (Bernstein 1979; Nandy 1989; Ferguson 1990; Scott 1990). Dominant groups attribute many forms of women's and men's resistance to ignorance, backwardness, laziness, and irrelevant traditionalism.

What are farmers really saying when they state that they are "too busy" to attend extension meetings? Or when, apparently daydreaming, they are a few seconds late doffing their hats to the landlord? Or just a trifle slow to obey an order? What are women saying when they state that forms of birth control imposed on them by well-meaning population planners "don't agree" with their systems or are contrary to their traditions? Or when they keep their savings hidden from their husbands but don't directly challenge the husband's authority to determine household spending? Or when they insist to their male kin that it is the spirits who forbid the sale of land to outsiders? Or when they state to urban or Western feminists that feminism is not for them?

In situations in which direct challenges to systems of power would be punished, perhaps severely, indirect forms of resistance keep the oppressor guessing. What do they really mean? "One can never be sure and the strength of resistance lies in the fact that one can never be sure" (Nandy 1989, pp. 268-269). If neither oppressors nor self-appointed liberators can ever be sure, this poses problems that new theories and practices must address.

Postmodern approaches to development studies focus on unpacking the power relations and hidden agendas implicit in language and discourse . This type of analysis — also known as deconstruction — provides powerful analytical tools equally applicable to the discourse of official agencies and institutions, the discourse of those seeking to promote radical change, and the discourse of everyday life, which is used to articulate both power and resistance. One can see this entire chapter, even this whole manual, as an exercise in deconstruction, because we are examining hidden assumptions behind particular bodies of theory and practice. A clear way to demonstrate the uses of deconstruction is to examine key words and the ways their meaning shifts as they are deployed in varying contexts in the service of specific agendas.

We have seen how the term development is deployed by theorists and practitioners who draw on quite different conceptual frameworks, with different processes and goals. Other key terms meriting closer scrutiny include equity, participation, and sustainable development . These words, separately and in combination, are used to refer to vastly different scenarios. As critics (Chambers 1997; Lele 1991; Moore 1992) have pointed out, the diversity of meanings attributed to these key terms is not simply a matter of confusion. Ambiguity is actually a key aspect of the effective deployment of these words to meet specific agendas. Everyone, whatever their political persuasion, can agree that equity, participation, and sustainability are desirable. People may think that policies and programs couched in these terms reflect a broad consensus on the goals and processes of development, but this practice masks major differences and reduces the scope of critical debate to the issue of selecting the most efficient delivery mechanisms. Labels, language, and discourse in general have political effects in the world and have strategic potential to benefit or harm certain groups when deployed in particular ways.

Within a modernization framework, equity refers to equal legal rights to participate in an ever-expanding global capitalist system (sustained growth). Equity does not, in this framework, imply equal effective opportunity to participate. The modernization framework does not recognize the systemic class, race, or gender barriers that negate the idea of an open society in which every individual makes progress according to his or her merits. Participation, here, does not imply making any choices about goals or lifestyles — it assumes that one can be modern in only one way. No ecological or temporal limits and no recognition of the uneven costs and benefits of the global economy accompany the idea of sustained growth.

Within the institutional framework of development agencies, these same terms have a different set of meanings and carry different assumptions. Equity becomes the equal right and obligation to participate in development programs and projects determined by outside agencies (government, nongovernmental, national, international). Nonparticipation is taken as evidence of backwardness, as these programs and projects are designed by "experts" to "develop" local economic and political systems. Sustainability in this context is often associated with the ideas of efficiency and low cost. If the programs have been well designed and participation is high, they are supposed to continue indefinitely, with minimal resources from government. Examples include centrally designed community health-care systems that are intended to reduce the need and demand for high-quality medical services or road improvements to be undertaken and maintained by villagers.

A third set of meanings for these same terms can be drawn from a more radical framework, with empowerment as its central objective. Equity, in this case, means equal effective power (overcoming race, class, and gender barriers) to participate in defining the goals and agenda of development processes that meet every human's need for a secure and decent livelihood, both for present and for future generations (sustainable development). The starting point for achieving these goals has to be the recognition of differences (along gender, race, and other dimensions). Sensitivity to difference (race, class, gender, region, history, etc.) is an essential component of attempts to develop new visions and plan for change: one group's liberation or "development" may otherwise cause another group to be neglected or, worse still, further oppressed. Third World feminists and those identifying with postmodernism have made major contributions to critique and new theorizing on questions of power and difference. Their work is examined in the next section ("Rethinking gender, race, and identity in a global context").

1. What can be learned about conditions of integration into the world economic system from examining regional precolonial and colonial history?

2. What material and cultural struggles are reflected in daily life as it can be observed today?

3. What are the principal terms and labels used to describe the process of development and to represent the ways of life of those apparently in need of development?

4. Through what forms of practice (beliefs, speech, actions, modes of organization, etc.) is resistance expressed by subordinated groups, and why does it take these forms?

5. What is the vision of "development" or progress held by a particular social group; what are the members of this group trying to improve about their lives and conditions; and what start can be made on the local and global changes needed to achieve their goals?

1. Liberated from the idea that development involves pushing or pulling people down a preestablished path, development practitioners can focus on understanding the variety of goals that people in particular places and times are trying to achieve and can work with them to explore and over-come the constraints that frustrate them.

2. Sensitivity to differences (race, class, gender, region, history, etc.) is an essential component of attempts to develop new visions and to plan for change: one group's liberation or "development" may cause another group to be neglected or further oppressed.

3. However severely a social group may be oppressed, it is not without its own analysis of the causes and nature of the oppression and its own strategies of resistance. Changes promoted by outsiders without a full understanding of these strategies and conditions can undermine the well-being of the people they are intended to help. Caution, consultation, creativity, and a willingness to learn and adapt, rather than impose, are key characteristics of effective development partnerships.

4. Labels, language, and discourse in general have political effects and strategic potential to benefit or harm certain groups. This aspect needs careful attention in policy and action agendas.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 2 )

1. What is the problem with using a traditional-modem dichotomy in talking about development?

2. Why is it necessary to deconstruct the West and reexamine its history and cultural ethos?

Questions on excerpt ( Box 3 )

1. If labels are only words, why do they matter?

2. What connections are being drawn here between power, knowledge, and domination?

1. Are the terms traditional and modern used in development discourse in your country? What political messages do they carry? Which groups, regions, or activities are labeled "traditional" or "modern"?

2. What attempts have been made in your country to articulate alternative visions of development? Whose interests do these visions serve?

3. To what extent are indigenous forms of knowledge, which are based in experience rather than in formal education, valued in your country? What are the forums in which it is expressed?

4. What forms of resistance to imposed categories and agendas are found among oppressed groups in your country?

5. How have activists, including feminists, worked to overcome the barriers to sharing that are created by unequal power between themselves and those they seek to understand and assist?

6. What meanings do the terms equity, participation, and sustainability currently have in your country's or organization's policies and programs?

Rethinking gender, race, and identity in a global context

Responding to considerable pressure from women around the world, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women's Year. That year, the first United Nations-sponsored intergovernmental conference on women opened, with much fanfare and optimism, in Mexico City. The participants came together to celebrate and strengthen global sisterhood. Although the conference organizers acknowledged differences among the world's women, they confidently expected that the common bonds between women, particularly their oppression by men, would provide the glue needed to foster global sisterhood (Pietila and Vickers 1990; Tinker 1990).

However, this conference, along with an international conference on women and development held at Wellesley College in the United States in 1976, revealed some important divisions among women in the South and North. The vision of an easy global sisterhood fell to pieces as women from the South voiced their concerns about the domination of research agendas and publications by women from the North. They questioned the relevance for women in the South of much North-based feminist research. They pointed to the specific problems of the South — particularly their disadvantaged position in the world economy and the destructive legacy of colonialism, racism, and imperial capitalism — and called for feminist research on women's lives in the specific context of Southern problems and possibilities (Wong 1981).

Scholars and activists in the South increasingly turned their attention to the specific problems and preoccupations of their regions, particularly the impacts of race, colonialism, and global inequalities on women. Drawing on their own experiences and those of feminist activists and theorists in the South, along with the writings of black and minority scholars in the North, of dependency theorists, and of some Marxist feminists, a Third World, or indigenous, feminism began to emerge, distinguishing itself from much feminist research in the North. Although scholars working within this emerging perspective recognized the complexity of Third World "realities" and the gender inequalities of the South, they initially emphasized the "commonality and power of the global economic and political processes that set the context for diverse national and regional experiences, and often constrain the possibilities for alternative strategies and actions" (Sen and Grown 1987, p. 9). Considerable debate occurred about which approach to take. Some scholars remained committed to the liberal perspective and thus focused on family, kinship relations, and women's place in the home and in the workplace (Sudarkasa 1973; Mukherjee 1978; Oppong 1983). Others stood more squarely in the radical tradition and consequently emphasized the role of class and international capitalism in women's subordination and political action (Jelin 1980; Arizpe and Aranda 1981; Kishwar and Vanita 1984; Mbilinyi 1984; Ng 1985). However, Third World scholars generally agreed on the need to focus on the poor, especially poor women; on the importance of global economic inequalities; and on the need to ground solutions to women's problems in the realities and experiences of women in the South. Nevertheless, most scholars and activists in the South, like their counterparts in the North, "did not entirely relinquish the fascination of finding global explanations to the subordination of women" (Vargas 1992, p. 200; see also Sen and Grown 1987; Borque and Warren 1990; Mazumdar and Sharma 1990).

Institutions for research and activism blossomed in the South and played a key role in these debates. The Association of African Women for Research and Development, launched in 1977, sponsored networking among African researchers and publication of articles on methodology and development for women in Africa (AAWORD 1983). The research carried out by the Institute of Social and Economic Research and by the Women and Development Unit of the University of the West Indies has provided both theoretical and methodological insights into Caribbean women's lives (Barriteau 1992). The Center for the Development of Brazilian Women, founded in 1975, has provided an umbrella for Brazilian feminists largely concerned with the economic dimensions of women's subordination (Alvarez 1989). A series of meetings called Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounters has been held since 1981, giving feminists from the region an opportunity to discuss both substantive and organizational concerns (Vargas 1992). The Gender and Development Unit of the Asian and Pacific Development Center, the Pacific and Asian Women's Forum, and the Asian Women's Research and Action Network have stimulated important research on women in the region. Manushi, in India, which started in 1979, has provided a vehicle for Indian feminists to develop their own brand of feminist theorizing and action (Kishwar and Vanita 1984). Indian feminism flowered in the 1980s, inspiring the creation of organizations such as the Economists Interested in Women's Issues Group and the Centre for Women's Development Studies, in New Delhi. DAWN, a Third World women's organization, grew from a small seed planted in Bangladore, India, into an international forum for women in the South concerned with development strategies, policies, theories, and research. It has been concerned particularly with the impact of development on poor people, especially women (Sen and Grown 1987).

The flowering of research institutions and research in the South provided a platform from which feminists in the South and the North could begin to share concerns and ideas on a more equal footing. The focus on global political economy and the interaction between gender and class resonated with, and influenced, feminists in the North working within the socialist-feminist perspective. In the 1980s, forums such as the mid-decade United Nations meeting in Copenhagen and the 1985 NGO forum, held alongside the final meeting of the United Nations Decade for Women, in Nairobi, provided a meeting ground for feminists working within this perspective in the South and the North. Both agreed on the centrality of economic and political factors and the importance of class, gender relations, and the sexual division of labour, particularly women's productive and reproductive labour (Young et al. 1981; Mies 1989). However, Third World and black feminists focused more specifically on issues of race, ethnicity, and culture and called for a socialist feminism with these elements at the centre of its analysis (Sen and Grown 1987).

In recent years, some scholars in the South have become sceptical about Western-based "solutions" and theories, whether based on liberal-feminist or Marxist-socialist-feminist perspectives. This scepticism has no doubt been reinforced by global restructuring (with its blurring of the North-South divide), the limits imposed on economic growth by growing environmental degradation, and the demise of socialism as a feasible alternative to liberal, neoclassical, economic-market-oriented "solutions" to the world's development problems. This scholarship has contributed to, and drawn on, postmodernist thought, with its emphasis on knowledge, language, and power and its scepticism about the grand theory , particularly Western hegemony over the definition of modernity (Said 1985; Foucault 1980). It has also drawn on standpoint feminism, with its focus on women's lived experiences (Harding 1991), and postmodernist feminism, which adopts a postmodernist stance toward difference, discourse, and grand theory, without abandoning feminism's commitment to gender equality (Flax 1990; Nicholson 1990; Hennessy 1993; Parpart 1993).

One strand in this critique has focused on Northern scholars and development experts' representation of Third World peoples. Drawing on the literature on deconstruction and the postcolonial critiques of Said (1985), Spivak (1990), and others, scholars such as Lazreg (1988), Ong (1988), Minh-ha (1989), and Sangari and Vaid (1989) have shown how Northern representations of Third World women as the vulnerable, helpless, backward "other" have reflected and perpetuated deeply held Western biases. Indeed, Aihwa Ong (1988, p. 80) insisted that "for feminists looking overseas, the non-feminist Other is not so much patriarchy as the non-Western women."

This critique of colonial-postcolonial representation has aroused considerable interest in the relationship between power, knowledge, and language and discourse. Feminist scholars in the South have become increasingly vocal about the need for studies to give voice to the complex, diverse, and multilayered realities of Third World women. The importance of recovering women's previously silenced voices and knowledges has inspired studies such as the diary of Rigoberta Menchu (Burgos-Debray 1984), the life stories of Bengali women (Kalekar 1991), and the story of a rural Tanzanian woman (Mbilinyi 1989). Environmentalists such as Vandana Shiva (1988) and Bina Agarwal (1991) have emphasized the complex, sophisticated environmental knowledge of poor women in the South and the potential it holds for sustainable development. Scholars have also begun making more liberal use of direct quotes in their writings to let informants speak for themselves (Ong 1987; Bozzoli and Nkotsoe 1991; Okeke 1994). The focus on indigenous knowledge and recovery of previously subjugated knowledges continues to be an important theme among Southern researchers.

The growing scepticism about the universal claims of Western theories, especially their control over the definition of modernity, has undermined the search for universals and shifted the focus of many Southern scholars to spatially and culturally specific local studies. Community studies have provided in-depth analyses of women's daily lives in the South. Latin American scholars have emphasized the urban poor (Jelin 1990; Findji 1992), and African scholars have more often focused on rural communities (see the articles in Momsen and Kinnaird 1993). Environment, gender, and community have been of major interest to scholars and activists in all parts of the South. Vandana Shiva (1988) in India and Wangari Mathaii in Kenya, for example, have focused on Third World women's special relationship to and knowledge of the environment. Although this literature is not always sensitive to difference, especially along class lines, it does emphasize the material and spatial contexts of the lives of women in the South, especially poor women (Agarwal 1991).

This focus on context and knowledge has spawned an increasing recognition of the importance of identity and difference. Increasingly, scholars in the South have abandoned the search for the 'Third World woman" and turned their attention to the many differences among women in the South. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, recent Feminist Encounters have had to acknowledge women's diversity in the region and the need to adopt a more democratic and pluralistic approach to women's issues (Vargas 1992). Studies of religious, cultural, ethnic, national, and other identities have blossomed as scholars recognize the strength of these constructs on both women's (and men's) self-perceptions and actions. Religious fundamentalism, with its patriarchal tendencies, has been a persistent theme in Southern feminist scholarship (Meraissi 1987; Imam 1994; Kumar 1994; Mumtaz 1994). The role of race in women's lives, particularly in post-colonial societies, has become a major scholarly preoccupation (Barriteau 1992).

Ethnicity, once associated with premodern "tradition" and thus relegated to the purview of historians and anthropologists, has resurfaced and been acknowledged as a crucial element in present-day societies in the South (and North). The recovery and strengthening of local traditions have been seen as a way to challenge destructive Western representations of Third World women and to create institutions and value systems rooted in one's own history.

However, this process is a two-edged sword, as many local traditions are sexist and seek to maintain women's subordination. Hindu culture, for example, has "a powerful traditional discourse that values woman's place as long as she keeps to the place prescribed" (Narayan 1989, p. 259). Yet, these same traditions have provided a basis for critiquing destructive colonial discourses. To undermine such traditions is no easy task. Nevertheless, young scholars in the South are increasingly willing to challenge cultural traditions that perpetuate women's subordination (Amadiume 1987; Vargas 1992; Mukabi-Kabiria et al. 1993; Okeke 1994). This scholarship is an important reminder that positivism and modernity are not the only forces working against women's interests.

The focus on identity, difference, and culture has undermined the notion that a few universal divisions (such as class or race) can identify and determine people's lives. Scholars from the South (and North) are increasingly aware of the complexity of people's daily existence. Women's lives in the South are built around multiple axes — such as race, class, gender, culture, age, and ethnicity — which interact in complex and often unexpected ways, over both time and place. In Latin America, the search to understand this process has led to a recognition of the plurality of women's experiences and

the possibility of multiple representations and identities. ... The acknowledgment of these multiple and diverse rationalities refutes the idea of an emancipatory process that articulates aspirations within one dynamic only and through an exclusive and privileged axis.

— Vega (1988, p. 28)

African and Asian scholars have also begun to focus on the multiple identities and oppressions of women in their regions and on the need to undertake a more nuanced, complex, and contextual analysis of women's daily lives (Ong 1987; Rajan 1993; Okeke 1994).

Scholars in the South engaged in the current debates on difference, culture, and identity are calling for fundamental rethinking of women's position in regard to economic and political issues. Economic development, especially the economic problems facing women, continues to be a central preoccupation for feminist scholars and activists in the South. Much of their writing is still deeply influenced by either liberal modernization perspectives (Thomson and Sarikahputi 1989; Viswanath 1991) or socialist-femimst analysis (Heyser 1987; Meena 1991; Eviota 1992; Perez-Aleman 1992). However, scholars from the South are increasingly arguing for a new approach to development, one that takes women's multiple, fluid identities and their local knowledge into account. Providing the answers to development problems is less and less seen as the prerogative of the North. Scholars in the South are increasingly demanding that development policies and plans be embedded in the specific, complex, and diverse realities of their own societies, rather than being "cooked up" by mainstream development "experts" in the North (Ong 1987; Bunch and Carillo 1990; Barriteau 1992; Tadria 1993). As Bina Agarwal pointed out, the South needs

an alternative transformational, approach to development [that] would ... concern both how gender relations and relations between people and the non-human world are conceptualised, and how they are concretised in terms of the distribution of property, power and knowledge.

— Agarwal (1991, p. 58)

The focus on difference, multiple identities, and discourse has also affected the study of women's political action, both at the level of the state and in social movements.

Feminist scholars in the South, although concerned that the focus on difference and multiple identities could undermine feminist politics and rarely sympathetic to the extreme relativism of "high postmodernism," are also increasingly aware of the need to acknowledge the implications of difference and discourse for women's resistance and collective action. As Vargas pointed out,

The Latin American women's movement shows that it is no longer possible to speak of women's identity, anchored and built on their experiences as a subordinate gender. ... We are living in a time, not only in Latin America, characterized by the simultaneous emergence of new social subjects, multiple rationalities and identities, expressed in the social movements.

— Vargas (1992, p. 196)

As Vargas also pointed out, Latin American feminists have realized that the feminist movement

cannot be based only on a single dynamic or on an exclusive, privileged axis, but must be grounded in the articulation of differences, of the multiple and diverse rationalities already present within it.

— Vargas (1992, p. 212)

For this to happen, women must recognize and welcome competing identities and discourses and discover ways to turn them into a basis for political action. In Kenya, for example, feminists have placed the gendered character of culture and language at the centre of their struggle for women's democratic rights (Mukabi-Kabira et al. 1993; Nzomo 1993).

Identity has become a political battleground. Religious, ethnic, and cultural identities compete for women's political allegiance, sometimes to reduce their participation and sometimes to mobilize it. Both the new discourse of identity and "traditional" claims to knowledge and authority influence women's political activities. In Pakistan, for example, fundamentalist Muslim groups are pushing women out of politics (Mumtaz 1994), and in northern Nigeria a Muslim women's organization is attempting to redefine women's political rights within Islam. Other women are caught between their Muslim heritage and a desire to mobilize women against patriarchal traditions (Imam 1994). Culture, language, and identity have thus become central issues in the study of women's political action in the South, both for mobilization and for resistance. And they promise to remain so (Radcliffe and Westwood 1993).

The writings of scholars and activists in the South have influenced, and been influenced by, scholarship in the North. Minority scholars in the North, especially black women, have found the focus on difference and multiple representation particularly important. Their devastating critiques of Western scholarship, with its claims to "know" women in the South and minority women in the North, have reinforced Southern scholarship. Both minority scholarship in the North and scholarly writing in the South have undermined Northern-feminist hegemony and set the stage for a more considered approach to difference (hooks 1991; Mohanty et al. 1992). Scholarship on the multiple oppressions of black and minority women in the North (King 1988; James and Busia 1993) has reinforced studies from the South (and North) that point to the crucial roles played by race, class, ethnicity, and gender in women's lives. The issue of multiple identities and differences, the importance of language and discourse and their connection to power, and the need to recover women's voices and knowledge have become core elements in current feminist thinking.

The focus on difference, identity, and discourse has played itself out in diverse ways within feminist scholarship in the North. Many feminists have incorporated elements of this thinking into their analysis but remain basically tied to established feminist perspectives. Sandra Harding (1992), for example, has accepted the implications of multiple identities and the constructed subject without abandoning her commitment to standpoint feminism. Many socialist feminists continue to write on issues of political economy but often with a new emphasis on culture, language, and difference (Beneria and Feldman 1992; Mies and Shiva 1993). Some feminists in the North have been drawn to postmodern thinking, which spawned many of the current debates. A few feminist postmodernists, such as Luce Irigaray (1985), place postmodern ideas at the centre of their analysis. Others adopt a more synthetic approach. Some of these postmodernist feminists — most notably Jane Rax (1990) and Judith Butler and Joan Scott (1992) — have believed that postmodernist thinking can be readily incorporated into feminist theory and politics. Others — such as Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson (1990), Rosemary Hennessy (1993), and Kathleen Canning (1994) — have called for a strategic engagement of feminist and postmodernist thought, but one that transforms both perspectives, rather than simply creating an alliance between the two. Fraser and Nicholson believed that the two approaches complemented each other:

Post-modernists offer sophisticated and persuasive criticisms of foundationalism and essentialism , but their conceptions of social criticism tend to be anemic. Feminists offer robust conceptions of social criticism, but they tend at times to lapse into foundationalism and essentialism.

— Fraser and Nicholson (1990, p. 20)

They called for a critical engagement between the two, one that combines "a postmodernist incredulity toward metanarratives with the social-critical power of feminism" (Fraser and Nicholson 1990, p. 34).

Clearly, the encounter between feminists in the North and South, as well as among feminists with diverse approaches and perspectives, is ongoing, indeterminate, and fluid. This contested terrain will no doubt continue to foster debate and negotiation. It is becoming global, drawing on the thinking and writing of scholars all over the world. Feminism, one hopes, has arrived at a point at which differences and ambiguities can be celebrated, without sacrificing the search for

broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered feminist solidarity; the sort of solidarity which is essential for overcoming the oppression of women in its "endless variety and monotonous similarity."

— Fraser and Nicholson (1990, p. 35)

1. Do the specific realities of women in the South (and of many women in the North) — particularly colonialism, poverty, and culture — raise issues that are not adequately addressed in existing feminist theory?

2. How do race, class, and gender intersect to influence women's lives?

3. How do the construction and representation of women by those who control the dominant discourse affect women's lives?

4. Why is it important to search for women's voices and knowledge, particularly those that have been hidden from history or silenced altogether? What can these voices add to feminist theorizing?

5. What is the connection between language and power? What do we learn by analyzing the words people use in describing one another and them-selves? How do words and discourse affect action?

implications for policy and action

1. Feminist writers in the South argue that policies should be grounded in the material, spatial, ideological and discursive contexts of women's lives.

2. It is important to create and strengthen institutes and organizations in the South that can build the capacity of Southern researchers and activists and to foster a research and action agenda that is based on the priorities and concerns of women in the South.

3. Policymakers must recognize that knowledge is found on many levels and that the voices and opinions of the less powerful and less educated may offer more relevant solutions to development problems than all the "experts" in the North.

4. Hidden assumptions embedded in policies and programs are a vehicle for the exertion of power over others and should be exposed.

5. Policies should emerge from a participatory process that includes the voices of all women concerned.

Questions on the excerpts (Boxes 4 and 5)

1. How is the oppression of women linked to problems of nationality, class, and race?

2. Should feminism be defined to include the struggles against all forms of oppression? How can that be achieved, particularly for women in the South?

3. Are research methods created in the North appropriate for studying the lives of women in the South?

1. How has feminist theorizing been influenced by the focus on identity, specificity, and experiences of women around the world?

2. Many feminists believe poverty is a crucial issue for women and, indeed, that it is the prism through which women's oppression should be analyzed. Has feminist theory adequately addressed this issue?

3. Should research on women in the South be carried out only by women from the South? What about men? What about sympathetic female (or male) researchers from the North?

4. Discuss the way women in the South have been represented by Northern scholars and activists, as well as by their own elites. Note the use of terms such as vulnerable groups . How does such language and discourse affect policies concerning women in both the South and the North?

5. Why do postmodernist feminists believe that existing social-science theories exclude the experience of women? Are there other feminist approaches that argue along similar lines?

6. Can a postmodernist-feminist approach foster feminist theorizing that is inclusive, celebrates diversity and difference, and yet maintains a commitment to gender equality? Can this approach offer new insights or tools for feminist scholars and activists around the world?

Grounded in an increased sensitivity to the diverse material and cultural realities of everyday life, current debates in feminist theory and development theory reflect common concerns with the politics of identity. Both recognize the need to engage in fundamental "revisioning," although the mechanisms to undertake such a project on neutral or global grounds remain elusive. Power relations pervade the contexts in which visions of a better world are generated. They also pervade the contexts in which theoretical frameworks are routinely produced and in which research and practice are undertaken. This does not mean, however, that we should give up the attempt to communicate with each other and cooperate in building a better world. Increasing global links among feminist theorists, activists, and practitioners indicate that dialogue is possible and productive. In the long run, it may not be the racial, national, or North-South differences, but the class differences between educated urban women and poorer rural or urban women facing a daily struggle for survival, that prove to be more difficult to overcome. This means that each of us needs to approach the tasks of theorizing, researching, developing policies, and working for change with greater humility than has often been the case.

In an increasingly global but unequal and uncertain world, it is more crucial than ever to make the effort to understand where an individual or group is "coming from"; how they are situated in relation to a specific historical, cultural, and economic context; their existing patterns of life and resistance; and the priorities that stem from them. This certainly implies a major step away from the grand schemes and blueprints of modernization policies and from the revolutionary, reformatory, or even educational zeal characteristic of movements for radical change, whether socialist or feminist in orientation.

Strategy is becoming increasingly important to action agendas: engaging in patient, consultative work to determine when and how to intervene to support and strengthen, rather than critiquing or undermining, the efforts of women striving to improve their situation. Research, if it is to support action agendas, needs to be more integrated than it has often been in the past; less focused on one issue or sector; and more adept at identifying the relations between power, meaning, practices, resources, and constraints in the configurations that present themselves at particular places and times. This also implies that research and action should be more closely linked and that more research should be carried out by, and for, those whose situation it is intended to improve. Such work, along with that of feminist activists in general, has provided crucial sources of insight that influence the development of theory and practice on a broader scale.

This chapter reviews feminist and development theories and those that combine concerns with women or gender and development. Each of the frame-works and approaches presented here continues to evolve, developing new lines of questioning as horizons shift and new issues emerge. Each has been open to the insights offered by other frameworks while maintaining a unique focus. Each has made, and continues to make, a contribution to knowledge and understanding, policy, and action. For example, black-feminist and Third World-feminist critiques have offered insights to those working within the socialist-feminist and GAD frameworks and have required them to pay more serious attention to race and other differences among women. At the same time, the socialist-feminist insistence on the centrality of gender and class has been an important counterbalance to some postmodern approaches that highlight issues of difference but do not always give sustained attention to the political and economic questions of who benefits and who loses from the ways that differences are linked to power and resources. The postmodern attention to language has, nevertheless, been very productive in highlighting some of the ways power actually pervades our everyday lives and the institutions surrounding us. Each framework has its strengths and weaknesses, its areas of insight, and its areas of blindness.

Theoretical frameworks have a positive role to play in all research and action agendas, suggesting a particular line of questioning and helping the analyst identify where to start, what to focus on, and how to relate one issue to another in the attempt to generate a full understanding of a problem. As we have seen, frameworks are not static but shift and evolve over time, although their underlying assumptions usually endure, and these enable us to distinguish one framework from another, even when some elements are common to more than one frame-work. It is the collective work of activists, scholars, researchers, and writers that leads to the emergence of new theoretical approaches over time.

Much of the empirical research and development policy and programing undertaken by government and nongovernmental agencies takes place without any explicit reference to theory. Nevertheless, certain assumptions about the nature of social problems and their solutions underlie their work. It is important to be able to identify such assumptions so that one can examine and, if necessary, critique them. One would then be in a position to propose alternative approaches based on different assumptions and engage in new theorizing that makes explicit the assumptions, concerns, and social visions on which alternatives could be based.

Both recognizing the assumptions underlying theory and engaging in our own theorizing are important to the process of bringing about social change. Unacknowledged or hidden assumptions embedded in research, policy, and programs constitute a vehicle for exerting power over others. Making the assumptions under-lying our own goals and visions explicit is a means to empowerment, inviting others to engage in critical debate, opening up to many voices, and strengthening the potential for collective revisioning on an open and equal basis.

The application of theoretical frameworks in policy and programing is further examined in the next section.

Theoretical frameworks

Framework a: modernization theory.

Modernization theory emerged in the 1930s, with the early development initiatives of colonial rulers and economists, and gained momentum in the postwar and post-colonial periods. Western economists and sociologists began to theorize in the 1950s about how to promote "development" in the newly independent countries, and development planners designed projects to modernize "less-developed" countries all over the globe. Modernization aimed to turn these economies and societies into images of the industrialized, high mass-consumption, democratic societies of the Western world. Obstacles to growth were identified in traditional cultural practices and values, as well as in social and economic infrastructures. Observable, cultural, economic, and political divergence from the model provided by the West was enough to identify a country and its institutions and practices as "premodern" and in need of immediate change (see Chapter 2 ).

Leading modernization writers in sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Talcott Parsons and Daniel Lemer in the United States (see for example, Parsons 1951; Lerner 1958), drew on the early analyses of social change conducted by Emile Durkheim and Max Weber at the turn of the century. In economics, the modernization approach has been closely tied to mainstream neoclassical economics, which dominates economic policy in the United Kingdom and the United States and emphasizes the benefits of the free market, using a model of "rational" choice. Prominent early writers of this school included Walter Rostow and Arthur Lewis. Modernization was the dominant approach underlying development research and policy in the postwar period and continues to guide development efforts today.

The basic idea of modernization is that development is a natural, linear process away from traditional social and economic practices toward a Western-style economy:

It is possible to identify all societies, in their economic dimensions, as lying within one of the five categories: the traditional society, the preconditions for take-off, take-off, the drive to maturity/and the age of high mass consumption.

— Rostow (1960, p. 4)

The measures of success include gross national product (GNP), income levels, employment rates, education levels, and industrial structure, and all of which emphasize the adoption of Western economic institutions, technologies, and values. The challenge is to identify barriers to self-sustaining growth. These barriers may be technological, educational, or cultural. Intervention, according to the proponents of this approach, is needed to overcome obstacles that tend to be in the country itself, rather than in the functioning of the international economy. Ways are sought to integrate developing economies into the international market. Some writers emphasize a dual economy, with coexisting traditional and modern sectors.

A number of assumptions operate in modernization theory:

Modernization theory has been the dominant guide to the policies of the main international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the main aid organizations, such as USAJDD. Modernization theory can be used to justify either a laissez-faire approach to development policy (emphasis on the market) or an economic-planning approach in which intervention is thought to be needed to remove obstacles and create industrialization.

1. What are the obstacles to Western-style growth?

2. What macroeconomic policies and sectoral policies would foster growth? What are the impacts of various policies, in terms of growth, incomes, and employment levels?

3. How can the diffusion of Western education and technology be facilitated?

1. Policies may be needed to facilitate the development of modern economic institutions and the extension of the cash economy (for example, policies to provide credit and financing for income-generating projects). Policies are needed to improve basic human and physical capital (literacy, education, health, roads, etc.).

2. Policies should be tailored to promote the development of leading sectors, which would then create spread effects. The emphasis will change over time as various approaches are tried and found to fail. The approaches include industrialization via import substitution, emphasis on capital-goods production, emphasis on building infrastructure, emphasis on external trade (exports), and emphasis on basic needs.

3. Policies in current modernization thinking emphasize structural adjustment: the market, debt reduction, export-led growth, and the elimination of price subsidies.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 6 )

1. What social and political changes would Rostow say are essential to economic progress?

2. What is the implicit attitude toward traditional society and its values?

1. Using the modernization approach, what policies would you urge on your government for reducing rural poverty?

2. What does your country hope to achieve by education? Is this aim consistent with a modernization approach?

3. What kind of data would a modernization economist use in evaluating the impact of the SAPs? What information do you think would be needed?

4. Can you think of policies used in your country that fit the modernization approach? What was their impact on the well-being of women?

5. Do you think development is possible without imitating Western cultures?

Framework B: Marxist-dependency theory

Karl Marx provided many of the concepts and analytical tools commonly used to discuss inequitable social relations. He believed that differing material interests, based on one's economic position and the way one earned a living, resulted in differing perceptions of social reality and relegated individuals and families to social classes. Conflict between these classes was seen as the driving force underlying political and social strife. Marx believed that the contradictions within capitalism would eventually lead to overproduction, underconsumption, depression, and the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. Yet, capitalism continued to flourish, albeit with periodic depressions, and, indeed, it gradually established a hegemony across the globe.

Vladimir Lenin, in an effort to explain this, concluded that imperial expansion enabled capitalism to temporarily circumvent the problem of overproduction. The colonies served as captive markets to absorb both surplus production and capital. He predicted that finance capital would become increasingly crucial to this process and would eventually control the global economy.

In the 1960s, continuing underdevelopment in Latin America inspired some social scientists, who drew on Lenin's explanation of imperialism, to explore the impact of this unequal relationship on the economies and peoples of the South. They rejected the liberal assumption, central to the modernization approach, that underdevelopment was due to inadequate national policies and insufficient understanding of Western technology in the South, arguing instead that underdevelopment was largely a result of unequal and exploitative economic relations between the dominant powers in the North (the metropole) and their client states in the South (the periphery) . They examined patterns of trade or exchange between developing and industrialized countries and concluded that

This view, called dependency theory, dominated leftist development scholarship in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The perpetuation of these unequal relations, it was argued, is managed by a clientele class in the South (Comprador class) that collaborates with the dominant capitalist class in the North. Market and technology transfers are thus structured to perpetuate underdevelopment in the South and domination by the North. To overcome this, dependency theorists called for the overthrow of this clientele class, an end to links with the North, and a focus on self-reliant development. This perspective and its prescriptions attracted many intellectuals (and some policymakers) in the South, who saw in it both an explanation for their legacy of underdevelopment and a means to overcome that legacy.

Most liberals and neoclassical economists, working within a modernization paradigm, rejected the dependency approach outright. Some — such as proponents of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean model, led by Raul Prebisch — recognized that deteriorating terms of trade in the periphery affected accumulations of capital and consequently the rate of economic growth (Blomstrom and Hettne 1984).

Some Marxists raised questions as well. Dependency theorists, according to their critics, had simply turned modernization on its head, arguing against capitalism and technology transfers. Scholars such as Colin Leys pointed out that the roles of classes and interest groups in the South had been ignored. Marxists such as Bill Warren (1980) found the prospects for capitalist development relatively good in many underdeveloped countries. Capitalism, he argued, did not cause underdevelopment. Classes and contradictions within Third World nations and their impact on relations with the North must be understood if one is to properly evaluate Third World development. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the focus of the Marxist literature on development was on how the capitalist mode of production articulated with other modes of production, particularly social formations. This mode of analysis supplanted dependency theory in the 1980s.

Although dependency theory no longer dominates political economy or Marxist analysis of development, remnants are still found in the emerging political-economy interpretations of recent global economic changes (see "Globalization," under "Current debates and critiques," earlier in this chapter).

1. What are the capital flows, technology transfers, and economic relations between the South and the North?

2. What role do Third World elites play in development (or underdevelopment) in the South?

3. How have classes and contradictions within Third World countries affected their relations with the North? What have been the consequences of those relations for development?

4. How does the capitalist mode of production interact with other modes of production, such as independent commodity production (for example, on small family farms)?

1. Policymakers should consider cutting links with the North and fostering self-reliant development.

2. Policies should be designed to encourage people in the South to build internal development; and policies should permit local elites to challenge the domination of capital from the North.

3. Action should be directed to developing alternatives to capitalism.

4. Modes-of-production theorists focus on the growth potential of the indigenous business class and see the members of this class as better leaders of development than the foreign business owners.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 7 )

1. Why does Frank believe development and underdevelopment are two sides of the same coin?

2. How does the metropolis exploit the satellite, or Third World, countries?

3. Do you have to understand the global capitalist system to understand the causes of underdevelopment in the Third World?

1. Has the dependency approach been used in your country? What have been its strengths and weaknesses when applied in your country?

2. How is your country linked to international capitalism (trade, exchange rate, industry ownership, foreign investment)?

3. What has your country gained and lost from these linkages?

4. Why did Southern intellectuals find the dependency school so attractive?

Framework C: liberal feminism

Liberal feminism is rooted in the tradition of 16th-and 17th-century liberal philosophy, which focused on the ideals of equality and liberty. The liberal conception of equality was based on the belief that all men had the potential to be rational and that any inequality had to be justified in rational terms. The liberal conception of liberty meant that people were governed only with their consent and only within certain limits, generally defined in terms of the public and private spheres (the former the government can regulate; the latter it cannot). Liberals continue to debate just where the line should be drawn between the two spheres, but they agree that it must be drawn to preserve liberty. These ideas are important under-pinnings of liberal-feminist thought.

The first Western feminist theorist, Mary Wollstonecraft, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, argued that women's capacity to reason was equal to that of men and that biological sex differences were irrelevant to the granting of political rights (Wollstonecraft 1792). She argued that the reason women appeared to be intellectually inferior was due to their inferior education and, therefore, was a result of inequality, rather than a justification for it. Twentieth-century liberal feminists have also used this distinction between biological facts and social norms when they draw the distinction between sex (biological) and gender (historical, social, and cultural) differences between women and men. Liberal feminists see women's subordination as resulting from gendered norms, rather than from biological sex, and aim to change these norms. Liberal feminists argue that the inequality of women and men cannot be justified on rational terms and trust that rational men can be convinced of the folly of perpetuating that inequality.

Liberal feminists focus on equal opportunities for women and men. Their concern that women should receive equal opportunities in education and before the law has motivated worldwide campaigns for women's voting and property rights. These feminists are also concerned that job opportunities be equally open to women so that women can achieve positions of power in government and business. Liberal-feminist activists are concerned with ensuring that laws and policies do not discriminate against women and that women have equal opportunities in all aspects of life.

Contemporary liberal feminists, like other liberals, draw a distinction between the public and private spheres of life. They argue that women should have the right to choose on issues such as abortion, pornography, and prostitution. This commitment to the existence of public and private spheres distinguishes liberal-feminist theory from other feminist theories. However, it should be noted that liberal-feminist theorists draw the line between public and private differently than other liberal theorists. Because they concentrate on such issues as domestic violence and the economic vulnerability of homemakers, they argue that some regulation of domestic life is needed to protect women's safety and well-being.

1. What are the barriers to women's equal participation in the economic, social, and cultural life of their communities and countries?

2. How can these obstacles be removed? How can attitudes, laws, and practices be changed?

3. How are women affected by various policies? Do policies hinder or facilitate women's well-being and opportunities?

1. Liberal-feminist theory has been the dominant guide for setting up special women's departments and machinery in government. These departments promote the interests of women within the existing socioeconomic system.

2. Policies are proposed to remove discriminatory practices in institutions, or actions are taken to create alternative institutions that support women. For example, if women have unequal access to credit, then bank policy can be changed or special programs can be set up for women's credit.

3. Liberal feminists are interested in increasing the proportion of women in elected and appointed government positions.

4. Liberal feminists are interested in reforms that will improve the condition of women and are less concerned with issues of empowerment and changing the position of women.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 8 )

1. How is liberal feminists' commitment to equality as a human-rights issue reflected in their political strategies?

2. Explain why liberal feminists have been accused of focusing on "getting ahead" rather than ending the oppression of all women?

1. Does your government have a women's bureau? What kinds of issues does it address?

2. What obstacles and barriers to participation in various spheres of economic, political, and social life do women in your country experience? What would it take to remove these obstacles and barriers?

3. Have changes in legislation that were intended to promote equality achieved their goal? Why not?

Framework D: Marxist feminism

Classical Marxism argues that throughout history people have found many different means of feeding, sheltering, clothing, and reproducing themselves, that is, of producing their material life. In producing their material life, people work together and enter into social relations with one another. The means and social relations of production constitute the modes of production. Marxists argue that human nature is the result of specific modes of production. People are shaped by the general form of society (the mode of production) and by each person's specific place or class in that society (the relations of production). People, however, are capable of radically transforming their society and thus ultimately changing their own natures.

The subordination of women came into existence with the mode of production that introduced private property. In Engels' 1884 classic, The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State, he argued that when hunting-gathering was replaced by agriculture, a more efficient and productive mode of production, a few men got control of the productive resources and transformed them into private property. The social relations of production were that some men owned property and others did not. This was the first society with a class structure. Engels then speculated that women were subordinated to guarantee that men who owned property would be able to pass it on to their own biological offspring, thereby maintaining the class structure (Engels 1970).

Contemporary Marxist feminists continue this line of argument by asserting that capitalism, the current form of class society, perpetuates the subordination of women by enforcing their economic dependence on men. They argue that keeping women subordinate is functional to the capitalist system in a number of ways. Women give birth to the new labour force and continue to do unpaid domestic labour. Women also form a reserve army of labour , that is, they provide a cheap and available labour force to compete for existing jobs, thereby creating downward pressure on wages. As homemakers and mothers, women support the process of profit-making, both as consumers of goods and services for the household and as unpaid caregivers who subsidize and disguise the real costs of reproducing and maintaining the work force.

1. What is the relationship of the family household to the economy?

2. Does domestic labour create value?

3. Do women form a reserve army of labour?

4. How do class and gender interact to create women's subordination?

1. To the extent that Marxist feminists concern themselves with policies, they argue in favour of policies that deal with issues such as occupational segregation, low pay, poverty, and discrimination. They feel that fighting for such policies will expose the fact that it is not possible to remedy these problems under capitalism. Capitalism may extend privileges to a few token women, but it cannot afford to permit most women to be the economic and social equals of men.

2. Marxist feminists argue that because the subordination of women is maintained by the capitalist system, then that system should be the primary target of women's political activism. Women must organize, but not with other women from the capitalist class who, with their husbands, have an interest in maintaining the status quo. Rather, they must organize with the male working class to abolish the capitalist system and establish a new mode of production — a socialist system. Only with socialism will classes disappear and the true basis of gender equality be established.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 9 )

1. What does it mean to say that women form a reserve army of labour?

2. How are women "super-exploited" by the capitalist system?

1. Are women economically dependent on men in your country, and if so, in what way?

2. Does the family household function to support the capitalist system in your country?

3. Do women form a reserve army of labour for the capitalist system in your country? Explain?

4. Do rich women experience gender inequality in the same way as poor women do?

5. Do women always belong to the same class as their husbands or fathers?

Framework E: radical feminism

Radical feminism emerged in the 1960s in the United States in response to the sexism experienced by women working within the civil-rights and antiwar movements. Many of the activists in those movements were inspired by Marxist theory, which was also felt to be sexist. Traditional Marxism stated that class was the prime factor in the oppression of working people and that gender equality would follow upon the abolition of class society. Radical feminists argued that making gender equality secondary to class equality diminished the importance of, and deferred action on, women's concerns.

Radical feminists insist that women's subordination does not depend on other forms of domination, such as class. They argue that patriarchy, or the domination of women by men, is primary: it existed in virtually every known society, even those without classes. Women's subordination, as it is deeply embedded in individual psyches and social practices, is more difficult to change than class.

Although radical feminists all agree on the primacy of women's subordination, they have a variety of views on the origins and nature of this subordination. Shulamith Firestone (1970), in The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, argued that women's subordination is rooted in their biology, that is, their reproductive physiology. She argued that only with advanced technology, such as "test-tube babies," would women achieve equality and no longer be dependent on men. Other radical feminists argue that women are biologically superior to men because of their capacity to give birth. Still others argue that it is not the nature of sex differences that should concern feminists but the social norms that devalue female biology. Many radical feminists argue that women's subordination is rooted in male control over women's fertility and sexuality, that is, over women's bodies.

Radical feminists are concerned with sexuality. They start from the view that humans are sexual beings and that sex makes a difference from the very beginning. They are also concerned about the relationship between human biology and human social arrangements. Radical feminists argue that procreation and sexuality, which have been seen as private issues, are in fact political issues inasmuch as they are fundamentally organized by male power. Relegating these practices to the private realm delegitimizes women's struggle to change them. Radical feminists have declared that "the personal is political."

1. How are women made to feel that they must become mothers?

2. How can women achieve control over conception and abortion?

3. What are the institutions through which men control women's sexuality?

1. In their daily lives, radical feminists attempt to create alternative social institutions within which women can fulfill their needs. Some of these alternatives are women's health centres, women's educational projects, women's businesses, and services for women in crisis.

2. Radical feminists pursue policies that focus on women's right to make choices about motherhood, conception, abortion, and sexual orientation.

3. Radical feminists argue that social activists should be concerned with challenging women's subordination and should work toward transforming society to abolish patriarchy and achieve equality for women.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 10 )

1. What is the male argument about women's place in the social relations of reproduction?

2. Why do women and men often misunderstand each other?

3. What is the radical-feminist version of this argument?

1. Do men dominate women in your country? If so, what form does this domination take? Is "tradition" used to legitimate male authority over women?

2. Do women have reproductive freedom in your country? If not, why not?

3. Are women subjected to male violence in your country? If so, what form does this violence take?

4. What are the formal and informal mechanisms through which women assert power in your society?

5. How have these changed over time?

6. Does the radical-feminist concept "the personal is political" have relevance for women of all backgrounds?

Framework F: socialist feminism

The activities of socialist feminists emerged in the second half of the 1970s. Many feminists were dissatisfied with traditional Marxism, which saw women's subordination as secondary to class subordination. They also felt discomfort with the new radical feminism, which ignored class and saw patriarchy, or women's subordination, as the primary form of subordination. Socialist feminists argued that class and women's subordination were of equal importance and had to be challenged simultaneously.

In attempts to develop a theory and practice to achieve this end, socialist feminists drew on the Marxist historical-materialist method. Their aim was to revise Marxism by incorporating radical-feminist insights. In so doing, they felt they would provide a new basis for analysis and a new strategy for political action that would challenge both male dominance and capitalism.

Socialist feminists redefined the radical-feminist conception of patriarchy so that it meant a set of hierarchical relations with a material base in men's control over women's sexuality, procreation, and labour power. They added an historical dimension to the concept of patriarchy, arguing that it takes different forms in different historical periods and in different racial, cultural, political, economic, and religious contexts. They also argued that the Marxist definition of economic activity had to be expanded to include both productive and reproductive work. Socialist feminists insisted on the equal importance of the reproduction of children and the production of commodities. Socialist feminists were concerned with the relationship between reproduction and production and the capitalist male-dominated structure of both.

Juliet Mitchell, in her very early classic collection of essays, Women: The Longest Revolution, argued that there were four interlocking structures to be considered in women's subordination (Mitchell 1984). These were production, reproduction, sexuality, and child-rearing. To understand women's subordination, she said, it was necessary to understand not only how the needs for food, clothing, and shelter are met but also how the need for sexuality, children, and emotional nurturance are met. Socialist feminists continue to be concerned about these issues.

By the mid-1980s, many socialist feminists were arguing that we should begin the analysis of subordination with the experience of women. They also incorporated the social construction of gender into their analysis. They argued that if we are to understand and abolish women's subordination, it is essential that we examine the processes by which gender characteristics are defined and gender relations are constructed. Socialist feminists also expanded their analysis to incorporate issues of difference and include consideration of race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference, as well as colonialism and imperialism.

By the late 1980s, Kate Young and others were advocating a holistic approach to the analysis of women's situation. In making this recommendation, Young examined three overlapping areas of concern:

1. What is the relationship between production and reproduction?

2. Have economic restructuring and structural adjustment affected women and men differently?

3. What effects have changes in class relations had on women and men of different races and ethnic groups?

4. How have sexuality, procreation, and motherhood been constructed at various times and in various cultures?

1. Socialist feminists are concerned with promoting policies to eliminate gender segregation in domestic and wage labour, eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace, achieve equal pay for work of equal value, increase women's control over their conditions of work, transform the conditions in which women can make reproductive choices, and increase public responsibility for child care,

2. Socialist feminists consciously attempt to incorporate socialist-feminist values of equality, cooperation, sharing, and political commitment into their living arrangements. They also believe that community-based political activities are a necessary part of the socialist-feminist transformation of society.

3. Socialist-feminist activists have a vision of a society that excludes gender, class, and race structures and the ideologies that underlie them. They are interested in transforming current societies into societies consistent with this vision.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 11 )

1. What is the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, and why must both be opposed?

2. Why must women develop their own power base to accomplish change?

1. What are the women's organizations in your country? What vision of society do these women's organizations have? What kinds of change are they advocating? Are these changes consistent with a socialist-feminist analysis?

2. Have economic restructuring and structural adjustment taken place in your country? If so, have women and men been affected differently?

3. Do any policies exist in your country that support more equal distribution of household work between women and men? If yes, what are they, and how do they work? If no, why not?

4. What problems do you see in applying a socialist-feminist analysis to the experience or condition of women in the South?

Framework G: black feminism

Historians of the African diaspora have long recognized that black people, including women, have had their own particular experiences of the New World and Europe. Black women in the diaspora have suffered a double jeopardy — being women and being black. Most have had to endure economic hardships as well. The history of black women's struggles against the multiple oppressions of race, sex, and class has been an inspiration to black women, and these struggles have inspired a growing body of literature and scholarship. For example, the life of Sojourner Truth, the mid-19th century antislavery activist and women's-rights advocate, highlights black women's long involvement in the fight for equality and justice and their historic challenge to white feminists to see the debate for women's rights as one that requires the inclusion of all women, whatever their race or class.

And yet feminist scholars from North America and Europe have often ignored the specificities of black women's experiences. They have focused, for the most part, on the experiences of white women, particularly white, middle-class women. Black feminists have criticized white-feminist scholars for confining their theories largely to their own history and culture and for ignoring the impact of asymmetrical race relations on gender experiences and relations, our understanding of the self, and theory. As Audre Lorde warned radical feminist Mary Daly in 1979, women's oppression knows no ethnic or racial boundaries, and feminist theorizing that ignores the experiences of black women encourages its own demise (Lorde 1984). Faced with a white feminism that (until challenged) insisted on defining a feminism largely hostile to the realities of black women, 20th century black feminists recognized the need to collect the earlier works of black women and to undertake black-feminist theorizing.

Feminists from the black community have sought alternative explanations for the condition of black women's lives in the history of their own people, and they have discovered important differences. During the Middle Ages, for example, Western women had almost no civil rights, whereas African women had important civil rights and considerable status. In the United Kingdom and the United States, black women have generally experienced the family as a site of resistance against racism more than as a site of gender oppression. Colonial and racist structures also affected black patriarchal structures and authority. Black-feminist theorizing has emerged from this analysis of the concrete experiences and cultures of black people. Scholars working within this perspective do not reject the theorizing of white feminists; rather, they call for feminisms that acknowledge the importance of race for women's lives, particularly the way race compounds the experience of class and gender relations. The writings of black-feminist scholars have contributed important insights to feminist theorizing. The experience of the multiple jeopardies of race, class, and gender has led black feminists such as Deborah King (1988) and Fiona Williams (1989) to argue for a feminism that recognizes the need to analyze the simultaneous impacts of these factors on the lives of women of colour. As Williams (1989, p. 69) pointed out, "the simultaneous experience of racism and sexism [and classism] not only compounds those oppressions, but reconstitutes them in specific ways." The multiple oppressions facing black women are not simply additive: they interact in complex ways, leading to multiple consciousness and action. This interactive, multilayered approach to the study of women's lives has influenced feminist theorizing and put the analysis of multiple jeopardies and consciousness on the feminist agenda.

Black-feminist scholarship has also contributed to feminist epistemology. Black feminists have emphasized the importance of concrete experience as a criterion of meaning, the need to use dialogue in assessing knowledge claims, and the importance of developing an ethic of caring and personal accountability in one's research (Collins 1989). They have also stressed the historical, specific nature of black women's experience and the need to develop an approach to the study of women embedded in the concrete specificities of women's lives, rather than generalizing from the experiences of a small group of often privileged women. Although feminists of various persuasions have also raised these themes, black-feminist scholarship has underscored the crucial nature of these considerations and added a powerful voice to those advocating a more experientially grounded approach to the study of women.

Black-feminist scholarship has developed a political agenda, a black-feminist manifesto (CRC 1982), which calls for the development of a feminist politics that is both antiracist and antisexist. The manifesto argues for the need to struggle with white women against sexism, whether by white men or by black men. At the same time, black feminists call for solidarity with black men around the issue of race. This approach has found considerable support in developing countries, where women have often joined men in their struggles against global inequalities while challenging sexist behaviour at home. The black-feminist manifesto thus offers a potential solution to the long-standing reluctance of many black women to engage in white-dominated feminist politics, as well as providing a theoretical critique of the radical-and socialist-feminist political agendas.

Black feminism thus asserts the primacy of race for women's lives and experiences, particularly the struggles of black women against slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Black feminism, with its sister perspective, Third World, or indigenous, feminism, holds out the hope that different feminisms, grounded in the specificities of women's multifarious experiences, may provide the basis for a comparative global feminism that celebrates difference without abandoning the search for common political and intellectual agendas. As Audre Lorde argued in 1979, "Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic (Lorde 1984)."

1. What are the specific historical conditions under which black women have experienced their lives in Africa and in the diaspora?

2. How do sexism and racism intersect? Discuss the consequences of this intersection for black women (and black men) and for white women (and white men).

3. How have global economic inequalities, including colonialism and imperialism, affected black women's experience of the multiple jeopardies of sex, race, and class?

4. How do black women's experiences and knowledges challenge the assumptions of other feminist theories?

5. How has African culture affected the lives and experiences of black women in the diaspora?

6. Are there divisions and hierarchies (particularly along class lines) within the black community in the diaspora? If so, have they influenced black women's lives? What are the theoretical implications of these divisions?

1. Policies and programs for women should acknowledge and take into account the impact of race on gender experiences and relations.

2. Policymakers should investigate the needs and socioeconomic conditions of black women so that they can design policies relevant to those needs.

3. Programs for women should address the impacts of the multiple jeopardies of race, sex, and class for many women, and program design should reflect the complexities of this multilevel reality for many women.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 12 )

1. Why is it important to recover the history of black women's resistance to racism?

2. How do black women's acts of resistance challenge the two prevailing approaches to the consciousness of oppressed groups?

3. Do black women have a self-defined standpoint on their own oppression? Should they work with white feminists on political action?

4. Has feminism failed to develop a politics to address the concerns of black women? If so, how can we change that?

5. How does sexism affect black women (and white women)? How can resisting sexism empower black women (and white women)?

1. Why do so many black women feel they have little to gain from the feminist movement in North America and the United Kingdom?

2. Have you experienced sexisrn from men of your own race or ethnic group?

3. Do you think it is possible to be feminist without being racist? Can feminist thought and practice incorporate the experience and standpoint of black women?

4. What has black-feminist theorizing contributed to feminist theories?

5. Is there a black women's reality? Is it affected by factors such as class, regional ties, culture, and ethnicity?

6. Does the radical-feminist concept "the personal is political" have relevance for black women?

Framework H: postmodernist feminism

In the last few decades, postmodernist critiques have increasingly dominated scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Postmodernism is not easily encapsulated in one phrase or idea, as it is actually an amalgam of often purposely ambiguous and fluid ideas. But above all, postmodernists question the metatheories that "explain" the modern age, particularly the belief that rational thought and technological innovation can guarantee progress and enlightenment. These theories, whether in the Marxist or the liberal tradition, are no longer seen as "the truth" but simply as privileged discourses that deny and silence competing, dissident voices.

The struggle for a universalist knowledge has been abandoned. A search has begun for previously silenced voices, for the specificity and power of language and its relation to knowledge, context, and locality. The concern with discourse and language has spawned an interest in the construction of identity and the concept of difference, particularly the tendency for people to define those they see as different ("other") in opposition to their own perceived strengths or sense of identity. European and North American scholarship, benefiting from its hegemonic position in world discourse, has dominated the construction of such definitions.

Feminists have reacted to postmodernism in various ways. Some reject it because it undermines feminism's political goals (Brodribb 1992). Others believe that standpoint-feminist theory offers similar critiques of male-establishment knowledge, but from a female, rather than a largely white-male, perspective (Harding 1992). They point out that most postmodernist writers have been white males. However, a number of feminists have sought a middle ground. They emphasize the similarities and compatibilities of feminism and postmodernism — both, after all, call for the development of new paradigms of social criticism that do not rely on traditional philosophical underpinnings. They believe feminist theorizing and action can be strengthened by postmodernism's sophisticated and persuasive criticisms of foundationalism and essentialism, its focus on difference, and its analysis of the relationship between language, power, and knowledge. At the same time, they believe postmodernism has much to learn from the sociocritical power of feminism, particularly its attention to gender. Some feminists believe this "marriage" can be achieved with little difficulty (Butler and Scott 1992), whereas others expect it to alter both perspectives (Flax 1990; Nicholson 1990; Canning 1994).

Postmodernist-feminist thought has attracted considerable attention among Third World and minority feminists, who have found it useful in their critiques of Western feminism, particularly its tendency to conflate the experiences of Western women with those of women everywhere, thus ignoring important differences and undermining the possibility of global feminist cooperation based on the multiple realities of the world's women. Indeed, postcolonial critiques from the South, along with writings on identity, difference, and indigenous knowledge (Ong 1988; Agarwal 1991; Barriteau 1992), have contributed much to postmodernist-feminist theorizing. The encounter between feminism and postmodernism is clearly ongoing, indeterminate, and fluid. It has drawn on feminist scholarship in the North and the South and holds the possibility of a feminism that recognizes the importance of difference and local complexities, without abandoning attention to political and economic structures. A postmodern feminism that adopts feminism's political agenda while recognizing the relationship between language and subjectivity and their connection to other aspects of material life can provide a perspective in which we can celebrate differences and ambiguities without sacrificing the search for a "broader, richer, more complex and multilayered feminist solidarity" (Fraser and Nicholson 1990, p. 35; see also Hennessy 1993; Sylvester 1994).

1. How can women's voices and knowledge, particularly those that have been hidden from history or silenced altogether, be heard and revealed?

2. How do the words that people use to describe one another and themselves influence action?

3. How do some groups represent and categorize others, and what impacts do these constructions and representations have on action?

1. The postmodernist-feminist approach reminds policymakers that knowledge is found on many levels and that the voices and opinions of the less powerful may offer more solutions to development problems than all the "experts" in the North.

2. This approach reminds policymakers that language is important and that phrases and labels influence the ways policies are perceived and acted on.

3. This approach calls for policies that acknowledge difference and try to understand the needs of diverse groups, particularly needs based on racial and cultural identities, and reminds policymakers of the importance of formulating policies to address these needs.

Questions on excerpt ( Box 13 )

1. How can postmodernist-feminist theory assist in the development of a theory grounded in the realities of Caribbean women's lives?

2. How does enlightenment thinking undermine local knowledge and marginalize certain social groups?

3. How has social-science research on Caribbean women contributed to feminist theory-building?

1. How do postmodernist feminists view the claims of Enlightenment theorists, particularly liberal and Marxist theorists?

2. Do the founding fathers of postmodernist thinking pay attention to women or gender? Has this been a problem for feminists interested in postmodern perspectives?

3. Does postmodernism undermine feminist politics? If so, how? Can this be overcome?

4. What can the study of binary opposites and representation tell us about the impact of colonialism and developmentalism on women in the South?

Feminist development theories: applying WID and GAD

This section provides tools and exercises to help you become familiar with, and operationalize, the two major feminist development theories. The tools are drawn from Two Halves Make a Whole: Balancing Gender Relations in Development (Moffat et al. 1991) but are somewhat revised. This section also provides three case studies that highlight the significance of the WID and GAD frameworks. These case studies show that when you approach a problem from a particular framework, you identify a certain set of problems and arrive at certain types of strategies and solutions. WID tends to focus on practical needs, whereas GAD focuses on both practical needs and strategic interests (Tables 1 and 2). In addition to focusing on everyday problems, GAD is concerned with addressing the root inequalities (of both gender and class) that create many of the practical problems women experience in their daily lives.

Table 1 . Comparison of WID and GAD.

Source: Based on Moffat et al. (1991).

Note: GAD, gender and development; WID, women in development.

Tools of GAD analysis

TOOL 1: GENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR — Most societies allocate different roles, responsibilities, and activities to women and men, according to what is considered appropriate in a particular culture. This is called the gender division of labour. An examination of the gender division of labour usually shows that although both women and men work to maintain themselves and their households, there tends to be differences in the nature of their work and in the ways it is valued. These differences are a central aspect of gender relations.

Table 2 . Practical needs and strategic interests.

TOOL 2: TYPES OF WORK — Women and men, and to some extent boys and girls, are likely to be involved in three main areas of work: productive, reproductive, and community work. In many societies, however, women do almost all of the reproductive and much of the productive work. Any intervention in one area will affect the others.

TOOL 3: ACCESS TO AND CONTROL OVER RESOURCES AND BENEFITS — Women's subordinate position can limit their access to, and control over, resources and benefits. In some cases, women may have access (the opportunity to make use of some-thing) to resources and benefits, but no control (the ability to define its use and impose that definition on others). For example, women may have access to land but no control over its long-term use or ownership.

TOOL 4: INFLUENCING FACTORS — Gender relations (including the division of labour, the type of work women and men do, and their respective levels of access and control) change to some degree over time in any society. Many factors influence, shape, and change these relations. For example, gender relations are affected by such factors as changes in the economy, environment, religion, culture, and political situation.

TOOL 5: CONDITION AND POSITION — A distinction can be drawn between the day-to-day condition of women and their position in society. As noted in footnote 2, women's "condition" refers to their material state — their immediate sphere of experience. A woman would describe her condition in terms of the work she does, where she lives, what she needs for herself and her children (clean water, food, education), etc. "Position" refers to women's social and economic standing relative to that of men . It is measured, by male-female disparities in wages and employment opportunities, participation in legislative bodies, vulnerability to poverty and violence, etc. Development activities tend to focus on women's condition, aiming to improve their ability to carry out traditional roles and responsibilities. Little attention has been paid to enhancing women's position or promoting their ability to participate fully with men as agents of development and change.

TOOL 6: PRACTICAL NEEDS AND STRATEGIC INTERESTS — Practical needs are linked to women's condition. They can be readily identified and usually relate to unsatisfactory living conditions and lack of resources. For example, practical needs are usually related to immediate needs, such as those for food and water, the health and education of children, and increased income. Practical needs and family survival are always priorities. The satisfaction of these needs is a prerequisite for women's ability to promote their strategic interests. Strategic interests for women arise from their position in society (disadvantaged) relative to that of men. Strategic interests are long-term, related to improving women's position. For example, empowering women to have more opportunities, greater access to resources, and more equal participation with men in decision-making would be in the long-term strategic interest of the majority of the world's men and women alike.

TOOL 7: LEVELS OF PARTICIPATION — The formulation of more gender-aware policies requires women's (and men's) involvement as participants, beneficiaries, and agents. Women benefit significantly if their decision-making capacity and status are increased through a process of consultation. Passive recipients of assistance they become agents of change when they organize themselves to address their own needs and plan solutions and when their voices are heard and taken into account.

TOOL 8: POTENTIAL FOR TRANSFORMATION — Women's subordinate position is not a static state, nor is it experienced the same way by all women. Throughout history and around the world, women have challenged gender inequality and the limitations it imposes on their potential as human beings. Significant gains have been and will continue to be made everywhere through the straggle of women, some-times with men's support. In all societies, transformatory processes are creating a better life, addressing inequalities, and improving the position of women. Women's movements have a long history in most countries, and an awareness of these movements should be part of our gender analysis.

Violence against women

Violence against women is an increasingly serious problem in country X . Domestic violence is a major component. Sexual jealousies and suspicions caused by women leaving the home to work are a factor. So, too, is the management of domestic finances. Men expect women to be able to stretch the household's income to cover all necessities and leave some over for entertainment. Women are also routinely harassed by strangers on the street and by their super-visors at their places of work.

Small-scale trading

Small-scale trading is a significant source of income for women in country X, but their earnings remain low, and opportunities for occupational mobility are limited. The government provides little support for this sector. Poverty among women is widespread.

Women and forest resources

Women in country X are the major users of forest resources to provide, for example, fuelwood, fodder, and raw materials for the manufacture of baskets for home use and sale. Women's productive activities are not recognized by the forestry service, and their use of the forest tends to be viewed as harmful to the environment.

Sample exercise answer: Case Study 1

Wid perspective.

Women may need to modify their behaviour to reduce their exposure to violence. This might involve the development of more home-based work opportunities to avoid going to an outside workplace; improved financial-management skills to make cash stretch farther and reduce tensions over money; and training in avoiding violence on the streets (through such tactics as walking in groups, refusing night shifts, not wearing sexually provocative clothing, and asking men from their household to accompany them at all times). Shelters should also be provided to assist women in urgent need. While they are in the shelter they should have access to the above types of training and counseling. A governmental or nongovernmental agency should be provide this training, along with other services for women. Laws should be passed to strengthen penalties for violence against women.

GAD perspective

Women may need to modify their behaviour in the short term to avoid further injury, but in the long term the major modification required is in men, as they are the perpetrators of this violence. The cultural values and social institutions that give men power over women in their households, on the streets, and in the work-place need to be changed. This will require massive and long-term public education. It will probably involve new legislation or the enforcement of existing legislation to ensure zero tolerance of domestic violence so that assaults in the home are prosecuted in the same way as assaults between strangers would be; sexual-harassment regulations are actively implemented through workplace committees; and women and men each regard the effective maintenance of safe streets as a public priority. Occupational segregation should also be eliminated so that women can have economic power and can, if necessary, be financially independent and women are no longer viewed as inferior workers doing inferior jobs.

T OOL 1: G ENDER DIVISION OF LABOUR — Definitely part of the problem in Case Study 1 is that women's and men's work in different spheres allocates them differential financial and social power.

T OOL 2: T YPES OF WORK — Women's involvement in productive work seems to be little recognized, as they are punished by their husbands for leaving the home; and they shoulder the burden of domestic budgeting (as part of their reproductive work), leaving them vulnerable to accusations of mismanaging income. To make up the shortfall of cash from an inadequate income, they seek paid productive work outside. The demands placed on women in these two spheres are contradictory. This probably lowers their self-esteem, as they feel they are failing to meet expectations. All this contributes, directly and indirectly, to the cycle of violence in which they are trapped.

T OOL 3: A CCESS TO AND CONTROL OVER RESOURCES AND BENEFITS — Men have access to better jobs than women do, although some men may be unemployed or paid low wages, which possibly increases domestic stress. Women have access to household income but do not really control it in the sense of being free to decide on spending priorities. It seems they must meet their husbands' expectations and requirements above all else.

T OOL 4: I NFLUENCING FACTORS — Violence in this case is increasing, not static, so something must be changing in the environment to explain it. Research should focus on factors such as changing patterns of work, prices, and ideas about appropriate behaviour for women and men.

T OOL 5: C ONDITION AND POSITION — Women's condition is a problem: they experience violence in their daily lives. Their position relative to that of men seems to be the cause of the problem.

T OOL 6: P RACTICAL NEEDS AND STRATEGIC INTERESTS — Immediate practical needs include those for shelters, jobs, housing, medical care, and counselling. Strategic interests include measures to improve women's position relative to that of men; these measures should focus on both empowering women and bringing about long-term societal change in men's attitudes and behaviour.

T OOL 7: L EVELS OF PARTICIPATION — Women need to organize to empower themselves and to bring about long-term change. They should participate in efforts to provide many of the practical services needed by women experiencing violence, but they should not take sole responsibility for providing these: getting male-dominated governmental and nongovernmental agencies to acknowledge these problems and take some responsibility for solving them would be an essential part of long-term change. Women who have been the victims of violence should be involved in solving the short-and long-term problems, thereby moving from the status of passive victim to that of active decision-maker.

T OOL 8: P OTENTIAL FOR TRANSFORMATION — A mixed strategy of meeting practical needs while bringing about long-term changes has good potential to transform society. As the problem in this case study has ramifications in the areas of law, policing, economics, welfare, health, education, and media, its solution might involve a great number of agencies and individuals and thereby transform institutions and personal styles of life.

Additional questions

1. Is the violence concentrated in certain social classes or ethnic groups?

2. What economic, cultural, historical, or political factors may account for its concentration in certain classes or groups?

3. How do approaches need to be modified when issues of violence are compounded by questions of race or class oppression?

4. Are there diverse opinions on the nature and causes of violence, or is there a broad consensus?

5. How might a greater diversity of voices be better heard?

6. What kind of strategies do women already use to avoid, resist, or survive violence?

7. Can these strategies be shared and built up into a larger force for change, based on women's knowledge and experience?

(AAWORD) Association of African Women for Research on Development, ed. 1983. Seminar on research on African women: what type of methodology? AAWORD, Dakar, Senegal.

Abu-Lughod, L. 1990. The romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women. In Sanday, P.R.; Goodenough, R.G., ed., Beyond the second sex: new directions in the anthropology of gender. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, USA. pp. 311-338.

Agarwal, B. 1991. Engendering the environment debate: lessons from the Indian subcontinent. Center for Advanced Study of International Development, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. CASE) Distinguished Speaker Series, No. 8.

Alvarez, S. 1989. Women's movements and gender politics in the Brazilian transition. In Jacquette, J., ed., The women's movement in Latin America. Unwin Hyman, Boston, MA, USA. pp. 13-64.

Amadiume, I. 1987. Male daughters, female husbands: gender and class hi an African society. Zed Books, London, UK.

Amin, S. 1974. Accumulation on a world scale. Harvester Press, Brighton, Sussex, UK.

Arizpe, L.; Aranda, J. 1981. The comparative advantages of women's disadvantages: women workers in the strawberry export agribusiness in Mexico. SIGNS, 7(2), 453-473.

Armstrong, P. 1993. The feminization of the labour force: harmonizing down in a global economy. Paper presented at the North-South Institute Conference on Structural Change and Gender Relations in the Era of Globalization, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

Asad, T., ed. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. Athlone Press, London, UK.

Barriteau, V.E. 1992. The construct of a post-modernist feminist theory for Caribbean social science research. Social and Economic Studies, 41(2), 143.

Beneria, L.; Feldman, S., ed. 1992. Unequal burden: economic crisis, persistent poverty and women's work. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.

Bernal, M. 1987. Black Athena: Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization. Vol. 1: The fabrication of ancient Greece. Free Association Press, London, UK.

Bernstein, H. 1979. African peasantries: a theoretical framework. Journal of Peasant Studies, 6(4), 77-106.

Bienefeld, M. 1993. Structural adjustment: debt collection device or development policy? Institute of Comparative Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Advanced Development Management Program Series, No. 5.

Blomstrom, M.; Hettne, B. 1984. Development theory in transition. Zed Books, London, UK.

Borque, S.; Warren, K. 1990. Access is not enough: gender perspectives on technology and education. In Tinker, L, ed., Persistent inequalities. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 83-100.

Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Bozzoli, B.; Nkotsoe, M. 1991. Women of Phokeng. Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, USA.

Brodribb, S. 1992. Nothing mat(t)ers: a feminist critique of postmodernism. James Lorimer and Co., Toronto, ON, Canada.

Brydon, L.; Chant, S. 1989. Women in the Third World: gender issues in rural and urban areas. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Bunch, C; Carrillo, R. 1990. Feminist perspectives on women in development. In Tinker, I, ed., Persistent inequalities. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 70-82.

Burgos-Debray, E., ed. 1984. I, Rigoberta Menchu: an Indian woman in Guatemala (transl. by A. Wright). Verso, New York, NY, USA.

Butler, J.; Scott, J., ed. 1992. Feminists theorize the political. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

Canning, K. 1994. Feminist history after the linguistic turn: historicizing discourse and experience. SIGNS, 19(2), 368-404.

Chambers, R. 1983. Rural development: putting the last first. Longman, Harlow, UK.

_____ 1997. Whose reality counts?: putting the last first. Intermediate Technology Publications, London, UK.

Collins, P. 1989. The social construction of black feminist thought. SIGNS, 14(4), 745-773.

Comaroff, J.; Comaroff, J. 1992. Ethnography and the historical imagination. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.

Corbridge, S. 1990. Post-Marxism and development studies: beyond the impasse. World Development, 8(5), 623-640.

Comia, G.A.; Jolly, R.; Stewart, F. 1987. Adjustment with a human face: protecting the vulnerable and promoting growth. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.

CRC (Combahee River Collective). 1982. A black feminist statement. In Hull, G.T.; Scott, P.B.; Smith, B., ed., All the women are white, all the blacks are men. The Feminist Press at City University of New York, New York, NY, USA. pp. 13-22.

CSEGWSA (Commonwealth Secretariat Expert Group on Women and Structural Adjustment). 1989. Engendering adjustment for the 1990s. Commonwealth Secretariat, London, UK.

Dixon, M. 1980. Women in class struggle. Synthesis Publications, San Francisco, CA, USA.

DuBois, M. 1991. The governance of the Third World: a Foucauldian perspective on power relations in development. Alternatives, 16(1), 1-30.

Edwards, M. 1989. The irrelevance of development studies. Third World Quarterly, 11(1), 116-135.

Elson, D. 1992. From survival strategies to transformation strategies: women's needs and structural adjustment. In Beneria, L.; Feldman, S., ed., Unequal burden: economic crises, persistent poverty, and women's work. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 26-48.

Engels, F. 1970. Origin of the family, private property, and the state. International Publishers, New York, NY, USA.

Escobar, A. 1984. Discourse and power in development: Michel Foucault and the relevance of his work to the Third World. Alternatives, 10(3), 377-400.

Eviota, E. 1992. The political economy of gender: women and the sexual division of labour in the Philippines. Zed Books, London, UK.

Ferguson, J. 1990. The antipolitics machine. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Findji, M. 1992. From resistance to social movement: the indigenous authorities movement in Columbia. In Escobar, A.; Alvarez, S., ed. 9 The making of social movements in Latin America. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.

Firestone, S. 1970. The dialectic of sex: the case for feminist revolution. William Morrow, New York, NY, USA.

Flax, J. 1990. Thinking fragments: psychoanalysis, feminism and post-modernism in the contemporary West. University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Foucault, M. 1980. Power/knowledge. Harvester, Brighton, Sussex, UK.

Frank, A.G. 1967. Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

_____ 1969. Latin America: underdevelopment or revolution? Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

_____ 1979. Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

Fraser, N.; Nicholson, L. 1990. Social criticism without philosophy: an encounter between feminism and post-modernism. In Nicholson, L., ed., Feminism/post-modernism. Routledge, New York, NY, USA. pp. 19-38.

Giddens, A. 1979. Central problems hi social theory. Macmillan, London, UK.

Gilligan, C. 1982. In a different voice: psychological theory and women's development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Gladwin, C.H. 1993. Women and structural adjustment in a global economy. In Gallin, R.S.; Ferguson, A.; Harper, J., ed., The women and international development annual. Vol. 3. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 87-114.

Harding, S., ed. 1987. Feminism and methodology. Open University; Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA.

_____ 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women's lives. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, USA.

_____ 1992. Subjectivity, experience and knowledge. Development and Change, 23(3), 175-194.

Hartmann, H. 1981. The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism: towards a more progressive union. In Sargent, L., ed., Women and revolution: a discussion of the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism. South End Press, Boston, MA, USA. pp. 1-42.

Hennessy, R. 1993. Materialist feminism and the politics of discourse. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

Heyser, N., ed. 1987. Women farmers and rural change in Asia. Asian and Pacific Development Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Hill, P. 1986. Development economics on trial: the anthropological case for the prosecution. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

hooks, b. 1988. Talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black. Between the Lines, Toronto, ON, Canada.

_____ 1991. Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press, Boston, MA, USA.

Imam, A. 1994. Politics, Islam, and women in Kano, northern Nigeria. In Moghadam, V.M., ed., Identity politics and women: cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 123-144.

Irigaray, L. 1985. Speculum of the other woman. Cornell, Ithaca, NY, USA.

Jaggar, A. 1983. Feminist politics and human nature. Rowman and Allanheld, Totowa, NJ, USA.

James, S.; Busia, A. 1993. Theorizing black feminisms. Routledge, London, UK.

Jaquette, J. 1982. Women and modernization theory: a decade of feminist criticism. World Politics, 34(2), 267-284.

Jelin, E. 1980. The Bahiana in the labor force in Salvador, Brazil. In Nash, J.; Safa, H., ed., Sex and class in Latin America. Bergin Publishers, South Hadley, MA, USA. pp. 129-146.

_____ ed. 1990. Women and social change in Latin America. Zed Books, London, UK.

Kalekar, M. 1991. Voices from within: early personal narratives of Bengali women. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, India.

King, D.K. 1988. Multiple jeopardy, multiple consciousness: the context of a black feminist ideology. SIGNS, 14(1), 42-72.

Kirby, S.; McKenna, K. 1989. Experience, research, social change: methods from the margins. Garamond Press, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Kishwar, M.; Vanita, R., ed. 1984. In search of answers: Indian women's voices from Manushi. Zed Books, London, UK.

Kumar, R. 1994. Identity politics and the contemporary Indian feminist movement. In Moghadam, V.M., ed., Identity politics and women: cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 274-292.

Lazreg, M. 1988. Feminism and difference: the perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria. Feminist Studies, 14(1), 81-107.

Lele, S.M. 1991. Sustainable development: a critical review. World Development, 19(6), 607-622.

Lerner, D. 1958. The passing of traditional society. The Free Press, New York, NY, USA.

Lewis, A. 1955. The theory of economic growth. Allen & Unwin, Ltd, London, UK.

Long, N.; Long, A., ed. 1992. Battlefields of knowledge. Routledge, London, UK.

Lorde, A. 1984. The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. In Lorde, A., ed., Sister outsider: essays and speeches. Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY, USA.

Maguire, P. 1987. Doing participatory research: a feminist approach. University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA.

Mazumdar, V.; Sharma, K. 1990. Sexual division of labor and the subordination of women: a reappraisal from India. In Tinker, I., ed, Persistent inequalities. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. pp. 185-197.

Mbilinyi, M. 1984. Cooperation or exploitation? Experiences of women's initiatives in Tanzania. International Labour Office, Geneva, Switzerland.

_____ 1989. "I'd have been a man": politics and the labor process hi producing personal narratives. In Personal Narrative Group, ed., Interpreting women's lives. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA. pp. 204-227.

Meena, R. 1991. The impact of structural adjustment programs on rural women in Tanzania. In Gladwin, C., ed., Structural adjustment and African women farmers. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL, USA. pp. 169-190.

Mernissi, F. 1987. Beyond the veil: male-female dynamics in modern Muslim society (rev. ed.). University of Indiana Press, Bloomington, IN, USA.

Mies, M. 1989. Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale. Zed Books, London, UK. Mies, M.; Shiva, V. 1993. Ecofeminism. Zed Books, London, UK.

Minh-ha, T. 1989. Woman, native, other. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, USA.

Mitchell, J. 1984. Women: the longest revolution: essays on feminism, literature and psychoanalysis. Virago, London, UK.

Moffat, L.; Geadah, Y.; Stuart, R. 1991. Two halves make a whole: balancing gender relations hi development. Canadian Council for International Co-operation, MATCH International Centre; Association quebecoise des organismes de co-operation Internationale, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

Mohanty, C.; Russo, A.; Torres, L., ed. 1992. Third World women and the politics of feminism. University of Indiana Press, Bloomington, IN, USA.

Molyneux, M. 1985. Mobilization without emancipation: women's interests, state and revolution in Nicaragua. Feminist Studies, 11(2), 227-254.

Momsen, J.; Kinnaird, V., ed. 1993. Different places, different voices. Routledge, London, UK.

Moore, D. 1992. The dynamics of development discourse: sustainability, equity, and participation hi Africa. Draft paper commissioned by the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, ON, Canada.

Moser, C. 1989. Gender planning hi the third world: meeting practical and strategic needs. World Development, 17(11), 1799-1825.

_____ 1993. Gender planning and development: theory, practice and training. Routledge, London, UK.

Mukabi-Kabira, J.; Wanjiku, A.-O.; Nzomo, M., ed. 1993. Democratic change hi Africa: women's perspective. Association of African Women for Research and Development; African Centre for Technology Studies, Nairobi, Kenya.

Mukherjee, P. 1978. Hindu women: normative models. Orient Longmans, New Delhi, India.

Mumtaz, K. 1994. Identity politics and women: "fundamentalism" and women in Pakistan. In Moghadam, V.M., ed., Identity politics and women: cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 228-242.

Nandy, A. 1889. Shamans, savages and the wilderness: on the audibility of dissent and the future of civilizations. Alternatives, 14(3), 263-277.

Narayan, U. 1989. The project of feminist epistemology: perspectives from a nonwestem feminist. In Jaggar, A.; Bordo, S., ed., Gender/body/knowledge. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, USA. pp. 256-272.

Ng, C. 1985. Gender and the division of labour: a case study. In Ai Yun, H.; Talib, R., ed., Women and employment in Malaysia. The Asia and Pacific Development Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, pp. 82-122.

Nicholson, L., ed. 1990. Feminism/postmodemism. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

Nindi, B. 1990. Experts, donors, ruling elites and the African poor: expert planning, policy formulation and implementation — a critique. Journal of Eastern African Research and Development, 20, 41-67.

Nzomo, M. 1993. Political and legal empowerment of women in post-election Kenya. In Nzomo, M., ed., Empowering Kenya women. National Commission on the Status of Women, Nairobi, Kenya, pp. 6-19.

Okeke, P. 1994. Patriarchal continuities and contradictions in African women's education and socio-economic status: ethnographic study of university educated Igbo women in Nigeria. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada. PhD thesis.

Ong, A. 1987. Spirits of resistance and capitalist discipline. New York University Press, Albany, NY, USA.

_____ 1988. Colonialism and modernity: feminist representations of women in non-Western societies. Inscriptions, 3-4(2), 79-93.

Oppong, C., ed. 1983. Female and male in West Africa. Allen & Unwin, London, UK.

Overholt, C.; Anderson, M.; Cloud, K.; Austin, J., ed. 1984. Gender roles in development. Kumarian Press, West Hartford, CT, USA.

Parpart, J., ed. 1989. Women and development in Africa: comparative perspectives. University Press of America, Lanham, MD, USA.

_____ 1993. Who is the "other"?: a post-modern feminist critique of women and development theory and practice. Development and Change, 24(3), 439-464.

Parsons, T. 1951. The social system. Routledge, London, UK.

Perez-Aleman, P. 1992. Economic crisis and women in Nicaragua. In Lourdes, B.; Feldman, S., ed., Unequal burden: economic crises, persistent poverty and women's work. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA. pp. 239-258.

Piore, M.; Sabel, C. 1984. The second industrial divide. Basic Books, Inc., New York, NY, USA.

Pratt, M.L. 1986. Fieldwork in common places. In Clifford, J.; Marcus, G., ed., Writing culture. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA. pp. 27-50.

Pred, A.; Watts, M. 1992. Reworking modernity: capitalism and symbolic discontent. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

Radcliffe, S.; Westwood, S., ed. 1993. Viva: women and popular protest in Latin America. Routledge, London, UK.

Rahnema, M. 1990. Participatory action research: the Last Temptation of Saint Development. Alternatives, 15, 199-226.

Rajan, R. 1993. Real and imagined women. Routledge, London, UK.

Rathgeber, E. 1990. WED, WAD, GAD: trends in research and practice. Journal of Developing Areas, 24(4), 489-502.

Risseeuw, C. 1988. The fish don't talk about the water: gender transformation, power and resistance among women in Sri Lanka. E.J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.

Roseberry, W. 1989. Anthropologies and histories. Rutgers University Press, New Bruns-wick, NJ, USA.

Roseberry, W.; O'Brien, J., ed. 1991. Golden ages, dark ages. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Rostow, W.W. 1960. The stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Sachs, W. 1992. The development dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power. Zed Books, London, UK.

Said, E.W. 1985. Orientalism. Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK.

Sangari, K.; Vaid, S. 1989. Recasting women: essays hi colonial history. Kali for Women, New Delhi, India.

Sargent, L. 1981. Women and revolution. South End Press, Boston, MA, USA.

Schuurman, F.J., ed. 1993. Beyond the impasse. Zed Press, London, UK.

Scott, J. 1985. Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, USA.

_____ 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance: hidden transcripts. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, USA.

Sen, G.; Grown, C. 1987. Development, crises and alternative visions. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

Shiva, V. 1988. Staying alive: women, ecology and survival. Kali for Women, Delhi, India.

Slater, D. 1993. The political meanings of development. In Schuurman, F.J., ed., Beyond the impasse. Zed Books, London, UK.

Spivak, G. 1990. The post-colonial critic. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

Standing, G. 1988. Sustainable livelihoods, environment and development: putting poor rural people first. Institute for Development Studies, Brighton, Sussex, UK. Discussion Paper 240.

_____ 1989. Global feminization through flexible labour. World Development, 17(7), 1077-1095.

Steady, F.C. 1983. Research methodology and investigative framework for social change: the case for African women. Association of African Women for Research on Development (AAWORD), ed., Seminar on research on African women: what type of methodology? AAWORD, Dakar, Senegal, pp. 12-21.

Sudarkasa, N. 1973. Where women work: a study of Yoruba women in the marketplace and the home. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Anthropological Papers, No. 53.

Sylvester, C. 1994. Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era. Ca bridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Tadria, H. 1993. Gender issues in management development: an African paradigm. In von Troil, M., ed., Changing paradigms in development — South, East and West. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, Sweden.

Thomson, S.; Sarikahputi, Y. 1989. Integration of rural women's concerns into mainstream agriculture and rural development activities. Quarterly Newsletter, 4(3).

Tiano, S. 1990. Maquiladora women: a category of workers? In Ward, K., ed., Women workers and global restructuring. ILR Press, New York, NY, USA. pp. 193-224.

Tinker, I. 1990. Persistent inequalities. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.

Tokman, V.E. 1989. Politics for a heterogeneous informal sector in Latin America. World Development, 17(7), 1067-1076.

United Nations. 1991. The world's women 1970-1990: trends and statistics. United Nations Publications, New York, NY, USA.

Vargas, V. 1992. The feminist movement in Latin America: between hope and disenchantment. Development and Change, 23(3), 195-214.

Vega, I.E. 1988. Signos y designios en la sociedad latino-americana.

Vickers, J. 1991. Women and the world economic crisis. Zed Books, London, UK.

Viswanath, V. 1991. NGOs and women's development in rural South India: a comparative analysis. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.

Warren, B. 1980. Imperialism. Pioneer of capitalism. New Left Review, London, UK.

Wilber, C.K.; Jameson, K.P. 1984. Paradigms of economic development and beyond. In Wilber, C.K., ed., The political economy of development and underdevelopment. Random House, New York, NY, USA.

Williams, F. 1989. Social policy: a critical introduction. Polity Press, London, UK.

Wilmsen, E. 1989. Land filled with flies: a political economy of the Kalahari. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, EL, USA.

Wolf, E.R. 1982. Europe and the people without history. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Wollstonecraft, M. 1792. A vindication of the rights of women with strictures on political and moral subjects. Peter Edes, Boston, MA, USA.

Wong, A. 1981. Comments on Mexico City. SIGNS, 6(4), 775-776.

Wood, G. 1985. The politics of development policy labelling. Development and Change, 16, 347-373.

Young, K.; Walkowitz, C.; McCullagh, R., ed. 1981. Of marriage and the market. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Aglietta, M. 1979. A theory of capitalist regulation. New Left Books, London, UK.

Amin, S. 1974. Accumulation and development: a theoretical model. Review of African Political Economy, 1(1), 1-8.

Barrett, M. 1980. Women's oppression today: problems in Marxist feminist analysis. Verso, London, UK.

Beneria, L.; Roldan, M. 1987. The crossroads of class and gender: industrial homework, subcontracting, and household dynamics in Mexico City. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.

Benston, M. 1969. The political economy of women's liberation. Monthly Review, 21(4), 13-27.

Bruegel, I. 1978. What keeps the family going? International Socialism, 2(1).

Bryan, B.; Dadzie, S.; Scafe, S. 1985. The heart of the race: black women's lives in Britain. Virago, London, UK.

Butler, I; Scott, J., ed. 1992. Feminists theorize the political. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

Cardoso, F. 1972. Dependency and development in Latin America. New Left Review, 74, 83-95.

Chambers, R. 1993. Rural development: putting the last first. Longman, Harlow, UK.

Collins, P. 1990. Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Unwin Hyman, Boston, MA, USA.

Connelly, M.P.; Armstrong, P. 1992. Feminism in action: studies in political economy. Canadian Scholars Press, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Davis, A. 1982. Women, race and class. The Women's Press, London, UK.

Delphy, C. 1977. The main enemy. Women's Research and Resources Centre, London, UK.

Friedan, B. 1963. The feminine mystique. W.W. Norton, New York, NY, USA.

Hagen, E. 1962. The theory of social change: how economic growth begins. Homewood, IL, USA.

Hamilton, R.; Barrett, M. 1987. The politics of diversity. Book Centre Inc., Montreal, PQ, Canada.

Harvey, D. 1989. The condition of postmodernity. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, ON, Canada.

Hirschman, A.O. 1958. Strategy for economic development. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, USA.

Jaggar, A.M.; Rothenberg, P.S. 1993. Feminist frameworks: alternate theoretical accounts of the relations between women and men (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, NY, USA.

Kindleberger, C. 1958. Economic development. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, USA.

Kuhn, A.; Wolpe, A., ed. 1978. Feminism and materialism: women and modes of production. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, UK.

Laclau, E. 1971. Feudalism and capitalism in Latin America. New Left Review, 67, 19-38.

Leys, C. 1980. Kenya: what does dependency explain? Review of African Political Economy, 17, 108-113.

Liebenstein, H. 1960. Economic backwardness and economic growth: studies in the theory of economic development. John Wiley, New York, NY, USA.

MacKinnon, C. 1989. Toward a feminist theory of the state. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Marglin, F.; Marglin, S., ed. 1990. Dominating knowledge: development, culture and resistance. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.

Michalopoulos, C. 1987. World Bank programs for adjustment and growth. In Corbo, V.; Goldstein, M.; Khan, M., ed., Growth-oriented adjustment programs. International Monetary Fund; World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.

Mohanty, C. 1988. Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61-88.

Nash, J.; Safa, H. 1980. Sex and class hi Latin America. Bergin Publishers, New York, NY, USA.

O'Brien, M. 1981. The politics of reproduction. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston, MA, USA.

Papanek, H. 1975. Women hi South and South East Asia: issues and research. SIGNS, 1(1), 193-214.

Pieterse, J.N. 1992. Dilemmas of development discourse: the crisis of developmentalism and the comparative method. Development and Change, 22, 5-29.

Pineda-Ofreneo, R. 1991-92. Women, debt and environment: a view from the South. Review of Women's Studies, 2(2), 27-40.

Reed, E. 1970. Problems of women's liberation. Pathfinder Press, New York, NY, USA.

Rubin, G. 1975. The traffic in women: notes on the "political economy" of sex. In Reiter, R.R., ed., Toward an anthropology of women. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

Said, E.W. 1993. Culture and imperialism. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

SIGNS. 1986. Reflections on Forum '85 in Nairobi, Kenya. SIGNS (Spring), 584-608.

Spelman, E. 1990. The inessential woman. The Women's Press, London, UK.

Ward, K., ed. 1990. Women workers and global restructuring. ILR Press, New York, NY, USA.

Warren, B. 1973. Imperialism and capitalist industrialization. New Left Review, 81, 3-53.

WEC (Wellesley Editorial Committee), ed. 1977. Women and national development: the complexities of change. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, EL, USA.

White, F. 1990. African on my mind. Journal of Women's History, 2(1), 73-97.

Williams, R. 1976. Keywords. Fontana/Croom Helm, Glasgow, UK.

Zaretsky, E. 1976. Capitalism, the family and personal life. Harper and Row, New York, NY, USA.

C HAPTER 4 F EMINIST T HEORY AND D EVELOPMENT : I MPLICATIONS FOR P OLICY , R ESEARCH, AND A CTION

V. Eudine Barriteau

This chapter integrates our understanding of feminist theories, gender issues, and development paradigms. It outlines the shift in the development discourse and documents and discusses alternative approaches to development. It attempts to reveal how these shape development policies, research agendas, and feminist activism.

The discussions of development, feminist theories, and feminist development frameworks in the preceding chapters are particularly useful for women in developing countries. This information serves many purposes:

Feminist theorizing, the experiences of women in developing countries, and feminist critiques of development policies have had various effects on the creation of new policies, the shape of research agendas, and the nature of ongoing activism. These principal areas diverge substantially, even though conceptually and practically they continue to interact and influence each other.

The development policies of international institutions and national governments continue to reflect the influence of the liberal-feminist framework. These policies maintain an incremental, reformist approach to working within the modernization paradigm. They still focus on bringing women "into" development, the women-in-development (WID) approach. As these policies are explored the assumptions of liberal feminism and the modernization paradigm become easy to detect.

The influence of feminist theorizing on current research on women and development (WAD) is far more wide-ranging (Moser n.d.). There have been substantive changes in the nature and scope of this research. Many more feminists in the South are undertaking research. They are attempting to redefine the WED and gender-and-development (GAD) discourse. They are also committed to ensuring that the historical perspective of women's movements and women's organizations in the South become an integral part of the discourse. Their work documents the lives and struggles of women in the South. They seek to challenge and correct the assumptions with which women's movements and organizations in the South began their work during the United Nations' First Development Decade.

At the international level, the work of such groups as Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) has now mushroomed into a global analysis of key development issues. DAWN is a network of feminists, researchers, activists, and policymakers that was formed in Bangalore, India, in 1984 and formalized in workshops at the NGO forum in Nairobi in 1985. DAWN has questioned the impact of development on poor peoples, especially women, in light of current global economic and political crises. The group's agenda focuses on the themes of environment, reproductive rights, population, and alternative economic frameworks.

On the issue of human development and economic growth, DAWN has inverted the traditional question, What kind of human development can best promote economic competitiveness and growth? Gita Sen, on behalf of DAWN, has asked instead, What kind of economic development can best promote human development? Sen, who is DAWN's Research Co-ordinator on Alternative Economic Frameworks, argued that if this became the central question of development, different answers would be sought and different policies would be designed and implemented (Sen and Grown 1987).

Concerning the issues of nationalistic or economic wars, the emergence of competitive trading blocs, and the changing role of multilateral institutions, DAWN put three central questions on the research agenda of Southern feminists:

Women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and feminist researchers and activists in the North are synthesizing their research concerns with those of feminists in the South. Alternative Women in Development (AltWTD), a network of Northern feminists, based in Washington, DC, published a study of the impacts of Reaganomics on women in the United States, Reagonomics and Women: Structural Adjustment U.S. Style — 1980-1992 (AltWID 1992). The study showed that Reaganomics had the same impacts on women in the United States as structural-adjustment policies have in the South. Establishing this link was an important analytical contribution. Both the structural-adjustment policies and Reaganomics are nurtured by, and have the same ideological roots in, neoclassical economics.

In another publication, Breaking Boundaries: Women, Free Trade and Economic Integration (AltWID n.d.), AltWID explained why free trade is a women's issue. It noted that market policies are not gender blind and pointed out that "the impact of supply side policies has altered family life; relations between women, men and children; women's and men's roles; and women's relative economic status." AltWID has also collaborated with feminist networks in the North and South on projects, conferences, and political strategies.

Other feminist researchers in the North recognized the need to contextualize the discourse on development to show its effect on women and development. This is an application of the analytical strategies they used in critiquing the metanarratives of social theory to show its gendered and exclusionary nature. This work complements the research and activism of indigenous feminisms. Current feminist research on development issues is now more engaged and covers all development issues. It also incorporates insights gained from gender analysis to investigate the environmental debate and sustainable-development issues.

The women's movement and women's activism have exploded with vibrant programs and scholarship in both the North and the South. In the last two decades, women's NGOs have grown and diversified, and the nature of their activism has changed in many cases. Many NGOs that were set up in the 19th century or early 20th century often attempted to supplement the welfare activities of the state, or they experimented with reformist policies. More recently, women-centred NGOs in the South have frequently been at the frontiers of the movement to promote alternative development practices. An example of this is a coalition of women's NGOs in the Philippines, which in 1986 formulated the National Women's Development Plan. This became a crucial part of the country's national lobby on the debt crisis in the same year (women's organizations and networks are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5 ).

Several countries have introduced new women-related research institutes and institutionalized women's-studies programs. China, India, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have all started women-centred research institutions. At the University of the West: Indies, the Women and Development Studies Program was institutionalized as the Centre for Gender and Development Studies. What distinguishes these networks, institutes, and centres from earlier women-related organizations is that they seek to give women, children, and men priority in discussions of development. They actively pursue alternative approaches to WAD, and their very existence serves as a reminder of the failures of earlier, modernization-oriented development policy for women.

The shift in the discourse on development

Feminist development critiques and feminist activism have radically altered the discourse on development. It is no longer possible to deal with development issues by focusing simply on ways to improve savings and investment functions or on the most efficient industrialization strategies to increase exports. Feminists have exposed the fallacy of using sterile measures of economic growth to assess the attainment of goals.

The initial WED policy statement (Percy Amendment to the US Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 [GOUS 1978]) assumed a consensus on the relationship between states (represented by national governments) and market economies. This consensus is ideological in origin. Its roots lie in neoclassical economics and liberal political ideology. Combined as the doctrine of liberalism or neoliberalism, they pose particular problems for women.

The main problem is the public-private dichotomy, which devalues women's reproductive work while maintaining that women can gain equality by participating more in the public sphere of the state and formal economic production (see "Framework C: liberal feminism" in Chapter 3 ). WID maintained a consensus on accepting the rationale of markets as expounded in the modernization paradigm. You will recall that this centres on the efficiency of resource allocation, the restructuring of production and distribution, and the liberalization of trade and investment but remains oblivious to the concerns of gender relations. WID's main thrust was to make the ideology of market economics more humane, that is, inclusive of the needs of women as defined by WID.

Several changes and crises in the political economy and culture of North-South relations contributed to reshaping development discourse. Most of the South experienced severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s, although a small group (notably the Asian newly industrialized countries) forged ahead. In the 1990s, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Southeast Asia experienced economic crises as the effects of globalization began to be felt around the world. Women, children, and men lived (and still live) the contradictions of development policies promoting mass consumption even as it leads to increased poverty and marginalization. In their daily lives, people in the South experience development policies as modernization, which can produce the following effects:

Gita Sen of DAWN observed that for the first time in two decades feminist development critiques brought together people and their needs in the dialogue on development. In the 1970s, the dialogue was dominated by the dependency critique. The debate was about the creation of dependency and the requirements of basic-needs programs. It involved neither gender analysis nor the WID framework (Sen and Grown 1987).

The 1980s introduced a reversal of trends in the South. As in other periods of crisis, it became an excellent time to consider previously ignored issues and put them on the agenda. The 1980s also marked the beginning of the GAD critique, which solidified in the 1990s. The activism and research of the international women's movement revealed the potential for "engendering" the concept of human development. It made unequal gender relations a central concern of development. Southern, and some Northern, feminists insist that development policies cannot succeed if they are not "engendered." In 1986, DAWN defined development as "socially responsible management and use of resources, the elimination of gender subordination and social inequality and the organizational restructuring that can bring these about" (Sen and Grown 1987, p. 2). The indigenous-feminist theorizing informing this definition stresses the need for economic and social change, empowerment of women, and progressive changes in public-private relations to benefit women.

This is conceptually quite opposite to the definition of development held by other development theorists: "Economic development consists of the introduction of new combinations of production factors which increase labour productivity" (Hunt 1989, p. 49). This definition locates development in the sphere of production and focuses only on changes in economic relations. To such theorists, economic development consists in introducing new combinations of factors of production to increase labour productivity. It is easy to recognize the bias against women in this definition. By emphasizing production factors, it focuses on formal economic activities, such as waged labour and large-scale production. In all these areas, women are underrepresented and their contributions are devalued. More significantly, this definition ignores the critical connection between the reproductive work women do and how this underpins the formal, productive economy. It is a good example of how women are marginalized at the core of development theory.

Whereas political economists and structuralists stress the impact of the international economic system as a constraint to economic growth in the South, the neoclassical school identifies the dominant constraint as internal, rather than external, factors. Walter Rostow and Arthur Lewis captured the range of arguments of neoclassical development theory (see "Framework A: modernization theory," in Chapter 3 ). They argued that constraints on development lie partly in indigenous institutions and attitudes and partly in the low rate of savings characteristic of poor countries. Built into the basic assumptions of this theorizing is the rejection of indigenous attitudes and institutions. Women in the South are largely responsible for maintaining cultural traditions. As theorizing by black, post-modernist, and indigenous, or Third World, feminists shows, women in the South also use indigenous institutions and practices as part of their survival strategies. By assuming that these indigenous attitudes and institutions represent barriers to development, neoclassical theorists place women's ways of knowing outside their concept of development.

Socialist-feminist theories have contributed to the extensive examination of the ways women's labour is exploited in factories and export-processing zones. They have also documented how women receive lower wages for comparable work. They revealed the feminization of certain occupations that occurred as women entered the labour force in increasing numbers. As the men moved out of certain occupations, these became "ghettoized" as women's work, with an accompanying decrease in status and wages. In the South, the occupation of teaching at primary or secondary schools is a good example.

Liberal-feminist analysis makes distinct the public-private dichotomy at the heart of modernization theorizing and policy development. It is easy to ignore women's contribution in the public domain because it is assumed that women work, and should work, within households.

Feminist development critiques insist that a gender perspective be built into all development issues. It is another way of posing the question raised by Gita Sen. Using a gender perspective we ask, What kinds of development policies can best promote the interests of women in the South? Implicit in that refraining of the question is the recognition that women straddle the crossroads of reproduction and production. They are the link between human and economic development, the primary workers in both the private and the public spheres.

Gender analysis must reorganize the private sphere if women are to be freed from having to carry all the responsibilities of sustaining households and family structures. Although many women and men still see these as women's responsibilities, this perspective is increasingly challenged. This continues to be an era of the most difficult and intractable aspects of gender relationships and change. Gender ideologies that sustain the exploitation of women in the private sphere of the household contribute to producing development policies that integrate women into economic production in specific, exploitative, or marginal ways. Women suffer most when policymakers fail to comprehend this pattern of exploitation. But children, men, households, and families also suffer because women in the South have to carry such multiple burdens and responsibilities.

Feminist theories and critiques of development are instrumental in revealing that the countries of the South are not culturally, politically, or economically homogeneous. Nor are gender relations experienced in the same manner by all Third World women. Black feminist Audre Lorde has warned of the danger of implying that all women suffer the same oppression because they are women. As explained in Chapter 3 , black feminists have argued that this ignores the varieties and degrees of women's subordination. It also ignores how these experiences change with a woman's race, class, and cultural setting. There is more variation among countries in the South than among industrialized societies of the North.

The tendency to homogenize the concept of the Third World woman and assume the universal applicability of these approaches to development creates specific problems for women in the South. Programs and policies that are designed to integrate women into development and those that are critical of the relations between women and development are a reaction to the modernization paradigm. Theorizing by black, socialist, postmodernist, and indigenous, or Third World, feminists isolates and exposes the intellectual and ideological climate that prevailed when the modernization paradigm emerged. The dominance of the United States in the postwar era included intellectual hegemony, which was played out in scholarship, research, and policy-making related to the South. Just as the United States devised the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the economic and military support and security of Western Europe, it began to devote attention to producing similar plans and institutions for the South. As mentioned in Chapter 2 , this set of assumptions about the world became core elements of the modernization paradigm.

It is not accidental that the United States was the first industrialized country to establish a policy initiative to reorganize women's roles in the development process. The Percy Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 required that US foreign assistance focus on programs, projects, and activities that tended to integrate women into the national economies of foreign countries. This helped integrate the WID policy approach into policy-making. It also meant that early WTD policy implicitly inherited the problems of giving priority to capitalist production and Western values and institutions.

Feminists analyzing the WED approach showed that WID specialists relied on neoclassical economic-growth models to achieve the goals of development. They assumed that development planning ignored women and argued that the allocation of financial and natural resources should be extended to benefit women. However, they failed to investigate whether the concept of economic efficiency may be premised on excluding the specific gendered constraints women face as producers. Nor did they consider how responsibilities that are generally regarded as being women's are viewed as creating conditions of economic inefficiency.

The WID policies of international development institutions

The world bank.

The WID approach has heavily influenced the policies of the World Bank, one of the major Bretton Woods financial institutions discussed in Chapter 2 . In a 1990 publication, Women in Development: A Progress Report on the World Bank Initiative, the institution set out its policy for women:

In general, the Bank is focusing on increasing women's economic productivity, investing in human capital and improving women's access to productive resources and the labor market.... Because social and cultural forces influence women's economic productivity, deliberate and thoughtful effort is required to involve women more effectively in the development process.

— World Bank (1990)

The World Bank then called for government policy that realized women's economic potential while being sensitive to the role of culture. It recommended that governments consult with women's groups and NGOs in setting priorities and designing programs. It identified four priority areas for helping women to realize their economic potential: education, health and family planning, agricultural extension, and credit. The publication noted that women in the South spend several hours each day in reproductive work. It therefore recommended measures to free more of women's time for other activities.

These recommendations called for alternative fuels and local woodlots, more efficient stoves, and child care. This policy did not include changing gender ideologies that construct all reproductive work as women's work. These measures were merely intended to help women complete reproductive work more efficiently so that they could increase their participation in labour-force activities. The World Bank concluded its policy review with a list of six areas of emphasis, under the heading "Future directions":

International Labour Office

The International Labour Office (ILO) has stated its commitment to equal opportunity and treatment of women and men in all its activities, as part of its mandate. It translated this commitment into policy in its ILO Plan of Action on Equality of Opportunity and Treatment of Men and Women in Employment:

In order to contribute to the improvement of the status of women and the achievement of overall development goals, the ILO technical co-operation programme will continue to be an important practical means of promoting equality of opportunity and treatment for men and women in employment. Particular attention will be paid not only to strengthening and further developing specific projects for women, but also to promoting the full integration of women hi projects of a general nature, hi accordance with recent recommendations made in the Governing Body when it discussed ILO operational activities concerning women. Consideration would be given to such requirements; as guidelines on identification, design, planning and implementation of projects for use by ILO staff, governments and employers' and workers' organizations; staff training programmes; and expansion of the network of officials dealing with technical cooperation at headquarters and in the field.

ILO (1994, p. 147)

In The Window of Opportunity: Strategies for Enhancing Women's Participation in Technical Cooperation Projects, the ILO (1991) provided ideas and guidelines for enhancing women's visibility and active role in planning and monitoring development projects and programs. This publication examined some of the factors to consider when planning, monitoring, and evaluating various types of projects. It presented advantages and possible disadvantages of launching so-called women-specific projects, as opposed to general projects that, in principle, are open to women and men on an equal basis. Finally, it recommended a change of attitudes and assumptions about women's participation in the labour force. Like the World Bank, the ILO has emphasized the concern for equality and full integration of women into development. There is no suggestion, however, that women are already too fully integrated into development in policies and experiences gendered or premised on their subordination and exploitation.

United Nations Development Fund for Women

UNIFEM has been a major advocate for women within the United Nations system and throughout the South. UNIFEM provides direct support for women's projects and promotes women in the decision-making processes of mainstream development programs. UNIFEM's mission is to support Southern women's efforts to achieve equality and their own economic-and social-development objectives, and it believes that by doing so, it improves the quality of life for all.

The activities UNIFEM supports fall into four key areas: agriculture and food security, trade and industry, human resource development, and emerging issues. In all aspects of its programing, UNIFEM's intention is to link grass-roots activities to national planning and policy decision-making.

"Women, environment, and development," the new addition to WAD discourse, hints at the kinds of development policy on women UNIFEM endorses. In Agenda 21: An Easy Reference to the Specific Recommendations of Women, UNIFEM (1993) stated that when interpreting the recommendations in the text of Agenda 21, the reader should note that all collective terminology was intended to apply equally to women and men, including references to communities, urban and rural dwellers, indigenous people, trade unions, professionals in business and industry, and NGOs. Indeed, in both rural and urban settings, women as heads of households, government officers, farmers, entrepreneurs, and professionals (including scientists and technicians) were thought to form a critical and substantial part of all major groups.

Like the ILO and the World Bank, UNIFEM has been firmly committed to the liberal-feminist WTD approach, emphasizing the integration of women into development. UNIFEM has, however, some unique characteristics. It was set up specifically to fund innovative and catalytic projects, and from its beginnings it has had a mandate to support the work of women's nongovernmental activities, in addition to the activities of government institutions and departments.

These international institutions and agencies are committed to assisting women in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and their programs and funding have helped women. However, they have operated squarely within the development-as-modernization paradigm and have been unwilling to pursue a critique of the contradictions in this model and their implications for women. Women-centred NGOs and other development organizations, in contrast, have operated on the fundamental principle that existing models of development are detrimental to women, and they have therefore explored and implemented alternative development strategies.

AltWID (Alternative Women in Development). 1992. Reagonomics and women: structural adjustment U.S. style—1980-1992: a case study of women and poverty in the U.S. AltWID, Washington, DC, USA.

_____ n.d. Breaking boundaries: women, free trade and economic integration. AltWID, Washington, DC, USA.

GOB (Government of Barbados). 1983a. Barbados development plan 1973-1977: planning of growth. Government Printing Office, Bridgetown, Barbados.

_____ 1983b. Barbados development plan 1979-1983: planning of growth. Government Printing Office, Bridgetown, Barbados.

_____ n.d. National Commission report. Government Printing Office, Bridgetown, Barbados.

GOUS (Government of the United States). 1978. The Percy Amendment. In Report on women in development. Submitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, USA.

Hunt, D. 1989. Economic theories of development: an analysis of competing paradigms. Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, NY, USA.

ILO (International Labour Office). 1991. The window of opportunity: strategies for enhancing women's participation in technical cooperation projects. ILO, Geneva, Switzerland. WID Occasional Paper No. 3.

_____ 1994. ILO Plan of Action on Equality of Opportunity and Treatment of Men and Women hi Employment. In Women and work: selected ILO policy documents. ILO, Geneva, Switzerland.

Massiah, J. 1982. Women who head households. In Women and the family. Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, Barbados, p. 105.

Moser, C. n.d. Policy approaches to women and development. Mimeo.

Sen, G.; Grown, C. 1987. Development, crisis and alternative visions: Third World women's perspectives. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

UNDFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women). 1993. Agenda 21: an easy reference to the specific recommendations of women. UNIFEM, New York, NY, USA.

World Bank. 1990. Women in development: a progress report on the World Bank initiative. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.

Rao, A.; Anderson, M.; Overholt, G, ed. 1991. Gender analysis in development planning: a casebook. Kumarian Press, West Hartford, CT, USA.

Wieringa, S., ed. 1990. Women's movements and organizations in historical perspective. Women and Development Studies Program, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands.

Wiltshire, R. 1993. DAWN: environment and development, the grassroots women's perspectives. Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Bridgetown, Barbados.

C HAPTER 5 A LTERNATIVE A PPROACHES TO W OMEN AND D EVELOPMENT

Maxine McClean

Women's NGOs

Internationally, the women's movement has given birth to a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and groups that continue to challenge many of the implied and stated assumptions of the traditional feminist movement. These NGOs and groups offer indigenous approaches to solving women's problems in their particular environments. The focus of many NGOs is action, developing programs and institutions to improve the daily lives of women in their communities.

As we have seen, the general belief among women's NGOs and other development institutions is that the concepts of modernization and development have often led the primary international agencies to effectively ignore the plight of women in the societies they target and, in many instances, make the women worse off. The failure of their programs has forced indigenous NGOs and other entities to develop their own solutions.

Initiatives to improve women's economic situations demonstrate the need for indigenous solutions to women's problems. Nancy Barry, President of Women's World Banking, remarked, "What has become very clear is that what women need is access, not subsidies. They need opportunities, not paternalism" (Howells 1993, p. 22).

Research and action

Research should inform both theorizing and policy-making, to make these credible. The women's movement and the various national and international institutions involved in development have recognized the importance of research and data, as illustrated in the foreword to the United Nations document The World's Women 1970-1990:

For many years, women's advocates have challenged stereotypes depicting women as passive, dependent and inferior to men. But efforts to reinforce then-challenges with hard evidence have been undercut by serious limitations hi available statistics and analysis, including a male bias hi the definition and collection of many statistics and indicators. ... Putting this land of numerical and analytical spotlight on the needs, the efforts and the contributions of women is one of the best ways to speed the process of moving from agenda to policy to practice to a world of peace, equality and sustained development.

— United Nations (1991)

The creation of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and DAWN's stated objectives are evidence that NGOs emphasize research. Discussed below are some currently active women's NGOs. Research is a critical activity of each of them. The exercises in each section use the following abbreviations for development approaches: WID, women in development; WAD, women and development; and GAD, gender and development (see Chapter 3 ).

Women's World Banking

Women's World Banking (WWB) is a nonprofit financial institution created in 1979 to give poor female entrepreneurs access to financing, market information, and training. It grew out of the 1975 United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Mexico City, to address the need for global structures to fund women in microenterprises. WWB currently operates in more than 50 countries and has provided assistance to more than 1 million clients internationally. WWB's goal is to help poor women create wealth.

Four basic principles inform WWB's policy formulation and operations:

Self-employed Women's Association

The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) is a union of 40 000 of India's poorest women. It is an example of a new development model relevant to low-income earners. The membership covers the range of self-employed women typically working in the informal sector and effectively marginalized by mainstream development strategies:

SEWA successfully integrates a complex myriad of lives, occupations and issues into one union. Under SEWA, women have forged a new model of what a trade union can be — a Third world model, which defies conventional conceptions about who unions organize and what they do for their members. Most unions in the world organize workers in one kind of industry, who share one fixed workplace, and concern themselves with problems which revolve only around the work issues of their members. Some unions do take up issues related to women workers, or include a women's wing in the larger body of the union, but there are very few unions in the world which are devoted entirely to a female membership, as SEWA is. SEWA organizes women who work in their homes, hi the streets of cities, in the fields and villages of rural India, with no fixed employer, carving their small niches in the economy, day by day, with only their wits to guide them against incredible odds of vulnerability, invisibility, and poverty. These then are the common denominators around which SEWA has gathered 30,000 members into its fold since its inception in 1972: they are women, they are "self-employed," and they are poor. From these common bases, diverse individuality in trades, religious and ethnic backgrounds, and living environments are brought together. Where these women are individually extremely vulnerable to the forces of their day-to-day poverty which are compounded by financial exploitation, physical abuse, and general social harassment, they have found that collectively they ait able to struggle against these forces and odds to effect change in their lives and work. SEWA's choice of the term "self-employed" to define this large sector of workers was consciously made to give positive status to people who are often described negatively as informal, unorganised, marginal, or peripheral.

— Rose (1992, pp. 16-17)

The WAD approach has been criticized for failing to challenge male-dominated power structures and for failing, as a result, to transform existing social structures. SEWA appears to fall into this category. However, further examination of SEWA's approach to organizing women demonstrates that the institution recognizes the importance of confronting existing power structures:

There is not just one goal which is fought for. Women understand that change is a process of struggles. Their experience has equipped them for this — they have struggled all their lives. ...

Whether small or large in nature, die changes this convergence has generated continue to influence increasingly broader spheres. The day-today, grassroots changes centre around trying to improve women's working situations. The tactics vary with each individual trade, but usually begin with confronting the direct exploiter and presenting him with demands for change. For women engaged in piece-rate work, this means asking the contractor for higher wages. For vendors, it means confronting the police officers who beat the women and extract bribes from them on charges of "encroachment." For women providing services, it means ensuring fair wages and steady work.

From the beginning of SEWA's work, however, it has been apparent that this direct confrontation could never accomplish all the long-term, structural and social changes needed to seriously change women's lives. Women who earn just enough each day to keep their families going are vulnerable. Missing one day's work can mean a crisis in the family. ...

Yet SEWA has found that the only way to bring change is to "organise, organise, and organise some more." In numbers they have found voice and strength. When they stand in sufficient numbers, their voices do shake the balance and change things in their favour — from the tactics of their neighbourhood trader or local landowner, up to the national and international policies. Once they have policy backing, the ground is firmer from which to organise more women and push their demands into broader spheres.

— Rose (1992, pp. 22-23)

Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action

The Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) was launched in April 1985 as a vehicle to encourage a gender perspective in action research and establish a network of women's organizations in the Caribbean. Its primary objectives include developing the feminist movement in the Caribbean, developing an approach to analyzing relations between men and women, and promoting the integration of research and action. In the words of the organization, We are a network of individual researchers and activists and women's organisations who define feminist politics as a matter of both consciousness and action. We are committed to understanding the relationship between the oppression in the society, and are working actively for change.

— CAFRA (1993)

Membership spans the Dutch-, English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean and includes Caribbean women living outside the region. Decision-making occurs at four levels:

CAFRA has identified several priority research-action areas:

The nature and focus of research

Implications for action.

The types of research undertaken and the methodology used are functions of the context of research and the ideological orientation of the researcher. Two broad ideological perspectives can be used to illustrate this point: family-and woman-centred approaches. A family-centred approach, according to Buvinic (1984), sees motherhood as a woman's most important role in society and thus the most effective role for her in economic development. Women's reproductive and home production roles are, therefore, the focus of research and, consequently, the target of interventions to assist women. In any study, the unit analyzed is the family, rather than the woman.

In contrast, a woman-centred, or feminist, approach recognizes women's productive and reproductive roles:

Its unit analysis is the woman and, while she can be conceptualized in the context of the family, she is seen in her economic roles in the household and the marketplace. The main arguments of the woman-centred approach are that inequality between women and men has increased with economic development and that interventions that are designed to achieve equality will lead to economic efficiency and growth.

— Tinker and Bramsen (1976) (cited in Buvinic 1984, p. 7)

With this approach, two variants guide research and action:

Institutional responses to the limitations of traditional approaches

Recognizing the limitations of the traditional approaches has sometimes also come, and should come, from the various development institutions and national agencies charged with developing programs to address the subordination, marginalization, and oppression of women. Lycklama à Nijeholt (1992) posited that there have been some shifts in development thinking, as illustrated by the following policy documents and other related publications:

Lycklama à Nijeholt (1992) analyzed these policy documents. Each presents views on development as it affects women; however, the perceptions of women differ.

The United Nations, through its various agencies, has also exhibited obvious shifts in its focus and its development thinking as it continues to address women's issues. Pietila and Vickers (1990) documented these shifts and contributing factors:

These shifts in thinking within the United Nations system can perhaps be best illustrated by the creation of agencies within the system that formally address women's issues (Braidotti et al. 1994). Some organizations in the United Nations system have played a role in the debate on sustainable development, as well as in bringing the perspective of women into the analysis of the crisis and making proposals for sustainable solutions. The International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women is one of these agencies. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations is also credited with long involvement in women's issues and, more recently, the issue of women and the environment.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established in 1972 and with headquarters in Nairobi, has been instrumental in putting the issue of women and the environment on the international agenda. Braidotti et al. (1994) identified a number of activities undertaken by UNEP:

Braidotti, R.; Charkiewicz, E.; Hausler, S.; Wieringa, S. 1994. Women, the environment and sustainable development: towards a theoretical synthesis. Zed Books, London, UK.

Buvinic, M. 1984. Projects for women in the Third World: explaining their misbehavior. International Center for Research on Women, Washington, DC, USA.

CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action). 1993. CAFRA News, 6(2).

Dhamija, J. 1989. Women and handicrafts: myth and reality. In Leonard, A., ed., Seeds: supporting women's work in the Third World. City University of New York, New York, NY, USA.

Howells, C. 1993. Women's World Banking: an interview with Nancy Barry. Columbia Journal of World Business, 23(3), 21-32.

Lycklama a Nijeholt, G. 1992. Women and the meaning of development: approaches and consequences. Institute for Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands. Sub-series on Women's History and Development, Working Paper No. 15.

Moser, C.O.N. 1987. Women, human settlements, and housing: a conceptual framework for analysis and policy-making. In Moser, C.O.N.; Peake, L., ed., Women, human settlements, and housing. Tavistock Publications, London, UK. pp. 12-32.

NMDC (Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation), n.d. A world of difference: a new framework for development cooperation hi the 1990s. NMDC, The Hague, Netherlands.

Peake, L. 1987. Government housing policy and its implications for women hi Guyana. In Moser, C.O.N.; Peake, L., ed., Women, human settlements, and housing. Tavistock Publications, London, UK. pp. 113-138.

Pietilä, H.; Vickers, J. 1990. Making women matter: the role of the United Nations. Zed Books, London, UK.

Rose, K. 1992. Where women are leaders: the SEWA movement hi India. Zed Books, London, UK.

Tinker, L; Bramsen, M.B., ed. 1976. Women and world development. Praeger, New York, NY, USA.

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 1990. Human development report, 1990. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.

World Bank. 1990. World development report, 1990. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA.

Birdsall, N.; and McGreevey, W.P. 1983. Women, poverty, and development. In Buvinic, M.; Lycette, A.; McGreevey, W.P., ed., Women and poverty hi the Third World. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, USA. pp. 3-13.

Fenton, T.; Heffron, MJ. 1987. Women in the Third World: a directory of resources. Orbis Books, New York, NY, USA.

Sen, G.; Grown, C. 1987. Development, crises, and alternative visions: Third World women's perspectives. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY, USA.

C HAPTER 6 T HE W OMEN'S M OVEMENT AND I TS R OLE IN D EVELOPMENT

Anne S. Walker

This chapter focuses on the women's movement and its role in development. It describes the development activities of women at the international, regional, national, and local levels, outlining why the overall development scenario should include women's activism and organizing skills.

The women's movement

The global formation of the women's movement is unlike the human rights and ecological movements. There are not single large organizations with a global membership base clearly associated with the goals of the movement in the public arena. The women's movement resembles, much more, the constantly growing and shifting cobweb characteristics of new politics in the global age. In many ways, the amorphous character of the movement may reflect an earlier stage hi organizing, a more effective utilization of the institutions of the United Nations, or a unique characteristic of the type of organizing that is unique to women's issues. Whether more formal linkages would be useful is an open question.

— Dorsey (1994)

The women's movement does indeed resemble a constantly growing and shifting cobweb, one made up of thousands of large and small local, national, regional, and international women's groups and organizations, connected and unconnected to each other and involved in traditional and nontraditional activities. What all of these women's groups and organizations have in common is that for the most part they have been left out of the history of development as currently written.

The reasons for this are many. Perhaps the biggest one is that the women themselves, especially women's groups in the South, have recorded very little about their activism and their efforts to organize for their rights within their communities.

International women's organizations and networks

Women historians have made recent efforts to record the history of women's international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and much of these efforts have focused on the work of affiliated groups in the South.

As part of its centennial celebrations in 1994—95, the World Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) undertook to record the history of 100 years of women's organizing and activism on women's issues and concerns. I selected this organization as an example because it holds a unique position in the history of the women's movement., Very early in this organization's history, women set up autonomous national YWCA groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and later in the Pacific. Then, with assistance and support from a world office, these groups planned and built permanent headquarters for their programs. This has given women a kind of bastion or stronghold, which they themselves control, in more than 80 countries. Each national YWCA is engaged in activities — with, for, and by women — in training, health, nonformal education, human rights, public affairs, energy and the environment, and other community and social work.

The YWCA trains women for jobs in the community and positions of leadership in all facets of the organization. This creates a core of women leaders who often go on to become leaders in other parts of community life. Each national YWCA has complete control over management, programs, and future directions. The world office provides a set of guiding principles and, when requested, support for fund-raising and leadership-training opportunities.

Having a central building and a staff of trained leaders gives the YWCA a head start in influencing the development of a community and providing a place for other forms of activism and organizing. Women are given the opportunity to be managers, trainers, decision-makers, and planners in an atmosphere that is women centred, nonthreatening, and safe. And remarkable achievements have come out of this safe atmosphere:

For example, many women on national delegations to the United Nations gained their leadership training and experience as committee or board members of the YWCA in their respective countries.

Not much work has yet been done to record the history of international women's networks. Networks are a more recent phenomenon. More flexible than an organization and much more reliant on each individual or group to keep the web of contacts alive, a network arises to fill a need and then often disappears when the need is gone. A true network has no headquarters, main offices, or staff. However, variations on this theme are more common, usually with a group taking on the responsibility of keeping the contacts alive, using some full-or part-time staff.

During and since the United Nations International Women's Year (1975) and the subsequent Decade for Women (1976-85), international women's networks emerged to fill a need that women's groups had for better contact with others and for access to information and resources. Best known among these networks are Isis International (Manila and Santiago), Isis Women's International Cross Cultural Exchange, the Women's Features Service (India), and the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC). Neither the Isis groups nor IWTC have affiliated members such as belong to the World YWCA and other more established international NGOs (for example, the World Association of Girl Guides and Scouts, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the Associated Country Women of the World [ACWW]). The Women's Features Service came out of the Inter Press Service and functions as a news wire service, providing news stories by and about women for the world's media.

The Isis groups and IWTC have "constituencies" of women's groups in every world region, most of which are not formally affiliated with any other group and have previously functioned in relative isolation. The main channel of communication is a journal or newsletter used to inform member groups of issues and available resources on women-or gender-and-development activities and plans and preparations for upcoming events and conferences, etc.

In the case of IWTC, the mailing list also includes government women's bureaus and ministries, United Nations departments and specialized agencies, donors, and other support groups for women-or gender-and-development activities worldwide. Both IWTC and the two Isis groups undertake training and technical-assistance activities on request, and both collaborate with national and regional groups to develop manuals, guidebooks, bibliographies, and other women-or gender-and-development resource materials. In recent years, their emphasis has been on training women to use computers for desktop publishing, for electronic networking, and for developing resource centres and databases for women involved in development activities.

Regional women's organizations and networks

As in the case of the international women's organizations and networks, very little has been written about the history of their regional counterparts. Perhaps an exception is the Women and Development Unit (WAND) of the University of the West Indies in Barbados. Several booklets and articles have been written about WAND's history, and newspaper features on various aspects of WAND's development and work are disseminated regularly.

WAND grew out of a regional conference held in Jamaica in 1977, where women's groups from across the English-speaking Caribbean gathered to draw up a plan of action for women in their region. One of the needs expressed at this conference was for a central agency to provide resources, technical assistance, and training for the women's groups and projects. This would keep isolated women's groups a little more in touch with the women's movement.

WAND has forged a path that intersects with the development of women's bureaus in the Caribbean, the regionalization of resources, and the burgeoning of women's human rights as a major focus among women activists and groups in the Caribbean. WAND epitomizes the work and dedication of regional women's organizations by providing women-or gender-and-development information from a central resource centre and database, helping to develop project proposals and search for funds for projects, and leading the way in lobbying regional governments for legislation that moves ahead on women's human-rights issues and concerns.

Regional women's networks, especially those concerned with the flow of information within regions, have grown in importance during and since the United Nations Decade for Women. Women's regional media networks can now be found in every world region (Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North America). They usually operate within the framework of alternative media, sending their information directly to women's groups. But increasingly these networks are crossing over into the world of mass media and mainstream media channels.

Fempress (a women's alternative media network for Latin America) began in 1981 as a clipping service. Working out of offices at the Institute for Studies of Transnationals in Latin America, two women began collecting clippings about women's activities in Latin American countries and pasting them together in a magazine format for distribution to every country in the region. Having expanded into a regular monthly magazine of original articles and clippings, Fempress is now acknowledged as one of the leading networks, linking women activists across Latin America and putting forward the cause of women's human rights and women's equality of opportunity in every country in the region.

Fempress operates on a simple but extremely effective logic — it has a correspondent in each country, who notes what is happening in that country, clips relevant articles, and writes an article on a major issue concerning women each month. These are published at the Fempress headquarters in Santiago, Chile, in its monthly magazine. Fempress also prepares and distributes radio broadcasts of interviews and talks by various women in each country of the region. Fempress puts out a quarterly compilation of clippings and writings on specific subjects; this quarterly is known as Mujer Especial (Women's Space).

National women's organizations and networks

The National Councils of Women (NCWs) have been foremost among national women's organizations and networks. NCWs comprise national women's organizations (such as Maendeleo ya Wanawake of Kenya, a network of women's groups in Kenya that are affiliated with ACWW; national YWCAs, which are affiliated with the World YWCA; and national women's groups that have member groups within the country but are not affiliated with any international organization).

NCWs are usually set up to unite the efforts of national women's groups to lobby government or to improve facilities and programs for women in their country. Over the years, NCWs have had mixed reviews. Combining the efforts of national women's groups that have sometimes had long histories in a country before the inception of an NCW is not easy. But most of the member groups of an NCW come together when there is a common cause, such as the need to develop a national plan of action for women or to promote legislation on issues related to women's human rights.

Maendeleo ya Wanawake is the major national women's organization of Kenya. Maendeleo has member groups in every town and village, an impressive headquarters in Nairobi, and a full-time staff of administrators and trainers. It undertakes projects in a wide variety of areas and has been responsible for village water-pump projects, schemes for craft production and marketing, workshops for leadership training, and a multitude of other rural and urban development activities — with, for, and by the women of Kenya. Increasingly, Maendeleo ya Wanawake has become involved in political and government activities, in addition to its programs for training and project implementation, and this has provoked much discussion of the roles and responsibilities of women in Kenya. Maendeleo is a member group of the Kenyan NCW.

The Friends of Women (FOW) project was set up in Thailand by women concerned about the rising numbers of young girls and women lured from villages to work as prostitutes in Bangkok. The women of FOW set themselves up in a couple of rooms in the centre of Bangkok and began to make contacts with groups and individuals across the country and region and eventually with groups in other countries around the world. Their efforts and continuing concern for the welfare of young women in Bangkok have now become a national network of people fighting against violations of women's human rights and specifically against luring girls from poor families into a life of sexual slavery.

FOW is not just a lobbying group, however. It provides counseling to young girls and their families, both in the village and in town; workshops for young leaders and helpers; resource materials, including flash cards and posters for group sessions; and a newsletter, which is published in both Thai and English. It is a network, rather than an organization, because it does not require membership, and its activities focus on needs as they arise, rather than on any set program. Anyone interested can take part in FOW activities.

Local women's organizations and networks

Because women's groups function in so many different ways and the definitions of an organization and a network become blurred, it is better to discuss examples of women's local activities than to discuss specific women's groups.

In Santiago, Chile, during the long years of dictatorship (1972-89), women's groups organized for the right to democratic elections and women's equality in decision-making positions in government. Beginning with a few established women's groups, protest marches were organized for each 8 March (International Women's Day). Momentum grew each year, with many thousands of women from every walk of life marching through the streets of Santiago or gathering in the sports stadium, demanding democratic rule and equality of opportunity for women. Individual women courageously approached soldiers and police in the streets and shouted "Give us back our country!"

When democratic rule returned to Chile, credit was given in large part to the relentless activism of women's groups, and the new government appointed women to positions of power and authority.

In Ahmedebad, India, women's work in the informal sector received little recognition and, therefore, little was done to make these women's livelihoods more economically sustainable. Within the trade-union movement, Ela Bhatt tried to push forward the cause of these women but had little success. She decided to form a breakaway union for self-employed women, those who work at home or within women's groups — rather than in factories or other businesses — and have a hard time making ends meet. The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) was the result. It now has many thousands of members and maintains a type of revolving bank: all the members donate a small amount each month, and money is available when they need it to purchase equipment or set up a small business. Women around the world often cite, and try to emulate, SEWA's example.

From a small village at the foot of Mount Meru, Kenya, generations of women traveled each day down a large hill to collect water and carry it back up the hill for use in the village. Some days, a woman would make several trips to the river below, carrying heavy pots full of water on her head as she strained up the slippery path to the village. One day, at a meeting of the village women's group, the women decided that enough was enough. They did not want their daughters to suffer as they were, with bent backs and endless pain in their old age. Offering their savings from work in nearby tea plantations, they asked the men to buy water pipes when they went to town — one at a time over a period of years.

An expert from the Food and Agriculture Organization was approached to assist in setting up a simple pump at the foot of a waterfall in the river. Slowly, the women laid the pipes. Up the hill the pipes went, branching off at each woman's hut. Then large plugs were made of corklike materials and inserted into the pipes, and finally the pump was started. Now every woman in that village has her own water supply, which has not only improved the health and well-being of the village but also ensures that future generations of girls and women will not have to damage their backs and live in pain from carrying heavy pots on their heads up the mountain each day.

In Suva, Fiji, the newly established YWCA decided to open multiracial kindergartens. At that time, all education in the country was segregated by language, with Fijian children attending Fijian-language schools, Indian children attending Hindi-language schools, and children of expatriates (from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) attending English-language schools. The facilities and standard of education were vastly different in each type of school, with the English-language schools having the most advanced facilities and teaching. Although much could be said for maintaining the cultures and traditions of each linguistic group, in reality, children in the non-English schools were receiving a poorer education, diminishing their future career prospects.

In keeping with its long-time principle of ensuring equal opportunity, the YWCA began multiracial kindergartens, open to everyone. The effect was dramatic. Educationalists came from all over the country to observe the experiment. There was considerable doubt about the wisdom and propriety of the project. The time came when several Fijian and Indian parents wanted their children to attend the better equipped and better staffed "European" primary school. The YWCA asked the Education Department whether this was possible. A top-level meeting was called. Clearly, this had been a racial and not a linguistic matter before, but now the authorities were faced with making a precedent-setting decision. Amid much consternation, the decision caime down that any child could attend the European school if they passed an English-language test. All of the children passed and were accepted. All schools in Fiji are now multiracial. It is the official policy of the country. English, Fijian, and Hindi are Fiji's official languages, and all official documents and materials are printed in each one of these languages.

Women's activism and its role in development

As discussed earlier, anthropologists have often identified the stages of modernization and "progress" as hunter-gatherer or foraging, horticultural, agricultural or agrarian, and so on (see list on p. 41). Feminist anthropologists have argued for giving greater weight to the organization of social and production relations, patterns of social stratification, family structure (monogamous or other), patterns of property ownership, and forms of work and production. To this list should be added patterns of women's orgambang and activism.

Perhaps "organization of social and production relations," as suggested by feminist anthropologists, would encompass some of the activities outlined here. But the activities and efforts of women worldwide are much more likely to be totally left out of the development matrix. By adding "patterns of women's organizing and activism," we could write a whole new chapter in development theory.

It should be obvious by now that the activism and continuing efforts of women's groups have been responsible for a great deal of what has happened in the history of the world, and more specifically in the area of development and "modernization." Each women's organization and network discussed, whether international, regional, national, or local, illustrates the extent to which women have been actively involved in the major changes taking place in their country and in the world. And yet, it is impossible to conclude this chapter without giving the following examples of how the activism and organizing skills of women have changed the course of history.

Women activists at the international level — the early years

Seventeen women were among the delegates at the founding meetings of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1946. Initial discussions revolved around setting up a commission on human rights. The women met and decided that the rights of women were not being given the priority they deserved. So a Subcommission on the Status of Women was agreed on. Still, the women were dissatisfied. At an introductory meeting of the subcommission, they decided a full Commission on the Status of Women was required.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) had its first meeting in January 1947. The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) had its first meeting in February 1947. Insufficiently funded and having no secretariat or centre of its own, the UNCSW nevertheless placed women's rights firmly on the agenda of the United Nations.

Women activists at the international level: the 1990s

In the two years before the historic United Nations World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, women held worldwide hearings on violations of women's human rights and collected more than 500 000 signatures on a petition demanding that women's human-rights issues (particularly violence against women) be placed on the conference agenda of the UNCHR and not merely discussed by a small group during sessions of the UNCSW. UNCSW was hampered by a lack of resources and the lack of an official protocol to deal with violations of women's human rights. In addition, women requested the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and asked for a tribunal on crimes against women.

The final documents to come out of the World Conference on Human Rights are a testament to the organizing and activism of women worldwide. The Vienna declaration put violations of women's human rights on the world's agenda, and the Plan of Action called for a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women.

Women activists at the regional level

Deciding that progress on women's-rights issues was too slow in Latin America and the Caribbean and mindful of the fact that a large number of countries in the region were military dictatorships with little or no regard for the equal right of women to be decision-makers in their own countries, a small group of activists organized a feminist Encuentro (encounter) in Colombia in 1981. About 200 women participated over a 4-day period. Reveling in the freedom of the occasion, the women made plans of action for the region and decided to hold an Encuentro every two years in a different Latin American country.

By 1983, word had spread. Feminists from across the region made plans to travel to Lima, Peru. Seven thousand eventually turned up, to the consternation of organizers, who were unprepared to receive this many delegates. But creativity and goodwill prevailed, and the women crafted major plans and decisions to strengthen the feminist movement in the region. Two years later, emergency plans had to be made to cope with the crowds in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Almost 10 000 women participated, with more clamouring to get in from the favelas (urban slums) and urban areas of Saõ Paulo.

And so the feminist movement in Latin America has continued to grow and develop from those small beginnings in Colombia. Feminist Encuentrosin Taxco, Mexico (1987), Mar del Plata, Argentina (1990), and El Salvador (1993) consolidated the feminist cause, with more and more women taking part in the political campaigns, assuming positions of responsibility in local and national councils, and becoming informed about women's human rights and equality under the law.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that in 1995 the region was rid of military dictatorships.

Women activists at the national level

In Tanzania, as in most countries worldwide, the issue of violence against women was becoming a national disgrace in the 1980s. A group of women met to discuss and map out plans to face this growing problem.

They decided they needed a multifaceted plan of action. Information had to be placed in front of the country at large to give everyone a clearer picture of the situation and just how it was violating the rights of women and damaging the very fabric of the nation. Men as well as women needed to be educated about the rights of women and to see more clearly that violence was never an answer to a problem within the home, or anywhere else. At the same time, the government had to be lobbied to pass legislation that would give women some protection against the violence they were experiencing. Women also needed safe houses and refuges where they could go, with or without children, to escape beatings.

From this meeting of women in Tanzania, the Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) was formed, with a special mission to face head-on the question of violence against women. TAMWA now has a regular newsletter, a resource centre, a crisis centre, and a refuge for women. Laws have been passed strengthening the rights of women, and women lawyers have joined the effort to put an end to violence against women.

Women activists at the local level

Stories of women activists in their own small villages, towns, and settlements are numerous, and it seems almost impossible to choose one over another.

The Suva Crisis Centre in Fiji is the result of a group of local women activists who saw the need to set up a place for women to go when they have been violated in some way, whether by beating, rape, or any other form of violation.

Local women activists in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, and Serbia regularly held peace vigils and marched across front lines to face soldiers and take home sons and fathers involved in the battles. Women in Serbia ran rape-crisis centres for women of Bosnia-Herzogovina and organized protest marches against the leaders of their country who perpetuated war.

Local women activists protest against the custom of burning brides and widows in India and protect women who have been threatened or hurt by domestic violence.

Local women activists in refugee camps in Croatia, Guantanamo Bay, India, Liberia, Somalia, Thailand, and many more parts of the world are the ones who lobby for justice, run the soup kitchens, educate the children, and look after the health of the family.

Although most regions of the world have been influenced by the activism of women, almost no mention is made of these efforts when history or progress in any area of development is recorded. But there can be no serious discussion of gender and development without the recognition of the vital part the women's movement has played.

Dorsey, E. 1994. The transnationalization of women's movements: towards a global culture of women's human rights. Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, New York, NY, USA.

A PPENDIX 1 K EY C ONCEPTS

Ordinary people who create historical change through the activities and straggles of their everyday lives. Compare this with "change agent," an especially knowledgeable person or organization that brings change to others.

Androcentric

Male centred, a masculine point of view.

Androcentrism

A term developed by feminist theorists to describe the dominant worldview that, until recently, mostly excluded the experiences of women from its analyses. This term also refers to an approach taken to knowledge and the production of knowledge.

A supposition that is taken to be true but might not be based on factual evidence.

Biological determinism

A view on which it is argued that human social behaviour is the result of factors inherent to the biological makeup of human beings. This is often contrasted with explanations of human behaviour based on social or sociopsychological factors.

A social or economic division in society. Theorists sometimes differentiate between economic class (based on access to economic resources or material goods) and social class (based on status, prestige, family background, and other factors). One's class is defined largely by one's relationship to the means of production; the capitalist class owns the means of production.

Comprador class

Elites in the South who collaborate with the dominant capitalist class in the North and ensure the continued subordination of the South to the North.

Deconstruct

To examine the underlying assumptions attached to certain concepts.

Deconstruction

An analysis of the derivations, contexts, and uses of language or discourse, conducted to unpack their implicit power relations and hidden agendas.

An historically, socially, and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms, categories, and beliefs.

Economic growth

The assumption that increased economic productivity and exchange constitute the basic requirement for development. It is measured by market output, GNP, per capita income, etc.

Usually focuses on technological and economic efficiency as measured by standard economic output-input (ignoring nonmarket inputs and outputs).

Egalitarianism

Relations based on the more or less equal participation of all adults hi the production of basic necessities, as well as in their distribution or exchange and hi their consumption. 1

Epistemology

A theory of knowledge, a strategy for justifying beliefs.

Equal opportunity

Conditions that must be created so that women have the same options as men and the same life chances.

Essentialism

Lumping a variety of categories into one, ignoring differences, and emphasizing similarities, despite little evidence for such a generalization.

Group associations based on any combination of common characteristics, including culture, language, religion, phenotype, geographic region, and ancestry. It is recognized that historical and social factors shape the formation of ethnic groups and bestow on them a distinct identity.

1 Etienne, M.; Leacock, E., ed. 1980. Women and colonization. Praeger Publishers, New York, NY, USA.

Ethnocentric

Believing that one's own race, nation, or culture is superior to all others.

Export-processing zones

Areas set up by countries for TNCs to manufacture products for export, free of normal tariff and tax regulations and often also free of labour and environmental regulations.

An individual who is aware of the oppression, exploitation, or subordination of women within society and who consciously acts to change and transform this situation.

Flexibility

The ability of companies to quickly adapt to changes in markets, technology, and competition. Flexibility strategies include tying wages to productivity or profits, eliminating longterm commitments to workers by subcontracting and or offering part-time work, and finding cheaper sources of labour.

Fordism-post-Fordism

"Fordism" describes the post-World War It regime of accumulation based on mass production of standardized products, coupled with growth of mass consumption. High aggregate demand was maintained by institutional arrangements promoting high wages and a Keynesian state. "Post-Fordism" refers to the breakdown of these arrangements since the mid-1970s, as a result of changes in technology and international competition. In post-Fordism, production is more decentralized, specialized, and flexible and requires new institutional arrangements to respond to the pressures of globalization.

Gender barriers

Obstacles to equality that may exist in the laws, norms, and practices of a society and can be identified and removed.

Gender relations

A society's socially constructed relations between women and men.

Global feminism

The celebration of different feminisms, grounded in the specificities of women's multifarious experiences. This will not occur until women from all racial groups believe that feminism recognizes their lived realities and incorporates those realities into feminist theories.

The idea that the world economy has reached a new level of integration. Heightened capital mobility with globalization means that companies operate worldwide, creating a "global assembly line"; goods, capital, and, to a lesser extent, people move around the globe.

Grand theories, or metanarratives

Grand theories, such as liberal and Marxist frameworks, claim universal validity and thus the capacity to explain global realities, particularly modernity.

A supposition made as a starting point for further investigation.

A cluster of ideas and language or discourse that defines the way most people behave and think about a subject and that increasingly forms the bases of major cleavages among people.

Any body of discourse that has the effect of masking and sustaining power relations and inequality.

Reducing the complex experiences of an individual or group to one dimension, thereby controlling them more effectively and making it more difficult for them to gain credibility for their own struggles.

Metatheories, or metanarratives

See grand theories, or metanarratives.

The capitalist countries that dominate the world economy, mostly found in Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s. See also periphery.

Mode of production

The organization of wealth creation in a society, including the technical "means of production" and the "relations of production," which determine who controls production and owns the wealth produced.

A graphic representation of the links between various phenomena and concepts on which a theory is based.

Multiple jeopardies

Racism, sexism, and classism simultaneously experienced by women from marginalized groups, especially visible minorities. This simultaneous experience not only compounds these oppressions but reconstitutes them in specific ways.

Obstacles to growth

Barriers that distort the "natural" process of economic growth. If this growth does not occur, then the obstacles or barriers must be identified and removed.

Patriarchal ideology

A set of ideas defining women's roles as different from, and subordinate to, those of men.

A system of male domination that is widespread but historically specific and can vary over tune and context. Originally, this term was used to describe societies characterized by "the rule of the father," that is, the power of the husband or father over his wives, children, and property. The term has now come to refer to the overall systemic character of oppressive and exploitative relations affecting women.

The Third World countries, characterized by underdeveloped economies and dependent relations with the metropole. See also metropole.

Personal is political, the

The view that male domination and women's resistance to male domination occur in both of the so-called public and private spheres. The concept is often associated with radical feminism.

A philosophical doctrine contending that sense perception is the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought. This doctrine became the basis of a hierarchy of knowledge emphasizing the sciences over theological or metaphysical inquiry.

Personal, economical, political, or social ascendancy and control exercised by one individual or group over another. Often this is most clearly seen in relationships between people. Liberal and Marxist thinkers associate power with control over resources and institutions. Postmodernists see power not as something held only by the ruling class but as something diffused throughout society, exercised in many diverse ways by many diverse people, and closely tied to control over knowledge and discourse through attitudes, perceptions, and behaviour.

Producing commodities for the capitalist system and producing the commodity "labour power" on a generational basis.

Production relations

A Marxist-derived concept that refers to the organization of work and production among genders, classes, or other social groupings in a specific social and physical environment.

Public and private spheres

A distinction defining the limits of governmental authority with a view to preserving individual liberty. Women have often been associated with the private sphere; men, with the public one.

Differentiation of human beings into various subspecies. This is usually based on outward physical (or phenotypical) features, such as skin colour, facial features, and hair type. Many social scientists today recognize that race is defined differently in different societies and at different tunes and so is largely socially determined. They prefer, therefore, to use the term ethnicity . Race is socially constructed and plays a crucial role in women's experiences and opportunities.

Representation

A term commonly used to refer to an aspect of democratic processes that permits individuals or groups to select those who will carry forward their ideas and agendas to higher authorities. The term is used in a different sense hi current theoretical writings to question the power relations implied by having one group convey information about another group in authoritative ways that may deny the people being "represented" the opportunity to present their identity on their own terms.

Reproduction

The biological reproduction of children, that is, childbirth and lactation; the physical reproduction of the wage labour force on a daily basis through domestic work; and the social reproduction of the patriarchal capitalist system through maintaining the ideological conditions that reproduce class and gender relations and the political and economic status quo.

Reserve army of labour

Labour that is cheap and available for capitalist expansion; acts to keep downward pressure on wages; and includes unemployed workers and potential wage workers now doing domestic and agricultural work.

Action or inaction, talk or silence, often hidden or covert, through which members of oppressed groups indicate to themselves, each other, and, more rarely, outsiders that they reject the conditions of their oppression and the legitimations proffered by dominant groups.

Restructuring

The changes occurring in companies and economies as a result of the rapidly changing world economy and heightened global competition. Both economic forces and policy choices shape restructuring.

Sexual division of labour

The allocation of tasks and responsibilities in society to women and men. In most inegalitarian societies, the tasks allocated to women have a consistently lower value than those assigned to men.

Social capital

Anything, other than capital, that enhances economic performance.

Social construction of gender

The social definition and determination of ideas and practices. People socially define and determine and can therefore change the ideas and practices related to feminine and masculine characteristics, activities, and ways of relating to one another.

Stratification

Structured inequalities between groups in society, based on gender, class, ethnicity, or other distinguishing characteristics. Although systems of stratification have existed in virtually all societies, significant differences in wealth and power emerge within state-based systems.

Period when the barriers to development are finally overcome and self-sustaining economic growth can be achieved.

A system of ideas and principles for explaining a particular phenomenon.

Transnational corporations

Corporations that operate in many countries and plan production, investment, and distribution strategies across the borders of nation-states.

A PPENDIX 2 A CRONYMS AND A BBREVIATIONS

A ppendix 3 c ontributors a uthors.

Barbara Bailey is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies and has been acting as the Regional Coordinator of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies since 1996. Between 1980 and 1996, she was the Specialist Lecturer in Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education. While there she also served as Coordinator for the Women and Development Studies Programme, between 1992 and 1994. Dr Bailey has published in the area of gender and education and its relationship to the social status of women in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean region.

V. Eudine Barriteau is a Lecturer and Head of the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. She has been involved in the research, administration, and coordination of regional projects in the Caribbean. Currently, she is writing on gender and development planning in the postcolonial Caribbean and gender and economic relations. Her most recent publication is "Postmodernist Feminist Theorizing and Development Policy and Practice in the Anglophone Caribbean" in Feminism/Postmodernism/Development, edited by Marianne H. Marchand and Jane L. Parpart (Routledge, 1995).

M. Patricia Connelly is a Professor Emeritus at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr Connelly is the author of Last Hired, First Fired: Women and the Canadian Work Force, coauthor of Women and the Labour Force, and coeditor of Feminism in Action: Studies in Political Economy . She has published numerous articles on women's work. Her current research is in the areas of social policy, economic restructuring, and gender.

Elsa Leo-Rhynie is a Professor and Deputy Principal of the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. She has carried out research in education with a focus on gender issues and differences in socialization and achievement of very young children, as well as young adults. Dr Leo-Rhynie has authored or coauthored several articles in books and journals, the most recent being Gender and Mainstreaming in Education, a reference manual developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat for Governments and other stakeholders.

Tania Murray Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She teaches in the areas of economic anthropology, development, family, and social theory. She is the author of Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy and Ideology (Oxford University Press, 1989). Her current research focuses on class-and gender-structuring issues in the context of agrarian transformation in the Indonesian uplands.

Martha MacDonald is a Professor in the Economics Department at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr MacDonald is coauthor of Women and the Labour Force . Her research and publications are in the area of women and the economy; her recent work is on gender and economic restructuring and feminist economics. She is Vice-President of the International Association for Feminist Economics.

Maxine McClean is a Lecturer in the Department of Management Studies at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, where she teaches marketing, strategic management, and entrepreneurship. A former Coordinator of the Women and Development Studies Group at Cave Hill, she has published in the areas of strategic management in small businesses in Barbados and credit unions. With Diane Cummins, she is completing a monograph on entrepreneurship in Barbados, and currently she is carrying out a study on women in microenterprises in Barbados.

Jeanette Morris is currently Head of the School of Education, University of the West Indies, St Augustine. She is a Lecturer in the Teaching of Modern Languages and teaches a postgraduate course in qualitative research methods. She is a resource person for modern languages with the Caribbean Examinations Council and was a Coordinator of the Women and Development Studies Group on the St Augustine campus. She is a member of the Caribbean Studies Association, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Her research interests lie in the area of gender issues in education and foreign-language education.

Jane L. Parpart is a Professor of History, Women's Studies, and International Development Studies at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Dr Parpart is the author of Labour and Capital on the African Copperbelt and the coeditor of several books on women, development, and Africa. She coedited a collection, entitled Feminism/Postmodernism/Development (Routledge, 1995), with Marianne Marchand. She is involved in research and teaching on gender and development theory, as well as on the issues of gender and the construction of a middle-class identity in southern Africa.

Rhoda Reddock is Head and Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. At the time of writing, she was a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology. Dr Reddock is a women's activist and the author of numerous publications, including Women, Labour and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago: A History .

Anne S. Walker has been the Executive Director of the International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC) since its inception in 1976, a year after the two international Women's Year meetings held in Mexico City. A feminist, activist, educationist, artist, and writer, Dr Walker has spearheaded IWTC's support for women's initiatives with a program of technical assistance and training; collaborative projects; skills-sharing; and the collection, production, and dissemination of information on a wide range of women and development issues. Dr Walker works collaboratively with women's groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and the Pacific to advance the status of women.

About the Institution

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is committed to building a sustainable and equitable world. IDRC funds developing-world researchers, thus enabling the people of the South to find their own solutions to their own problems. IDRC also maintains information networks and forges linkages that allow Canadians and their developing-world partners to benefit equally from a global sharing of knowledge. Through its actions, IDRC is helping others to help themselves.

About the Publisher

IDRC Books publishes research results and scholarly studies on global and regional issues related to sustainable and equitable development. As a specialist in development literature, IDRC Books contributes to the body of knowledge on these issues to further the cause of global understanding and equity. IDRC publications are sold through its head office in Ottawa, Canada, as well as by IDRC's agents and distributors around the world. The full catalogue is available at http://www.idrc.ca/booktique/ .

• Understanding Poverty

publication

World Bank Group Gender Equality Strategy (FY16-23)

Gender equality is central to the World Bank Group’s goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. No society can develop sustainably without transforming the distribution of opportunities, resources and choices for males and females so that they have equal power to shape their own lives and contribute to their families, communities, and countries.

Henriette Kolb

WDR 2012: Gender Equality and Development

Gender equality is a core development objective in its own right. But greater gender equality is also smart economics, enhancing productivity and improving other development outcomes.

You have clicked on a link to a page that is not part of the beta version of the new worldbank.org. Before you leave, we’d love to get your feedback on your experience while you were here. Will you take two minutes to complete a brief survey that will help us to improve our website?

Feedback Survey

Thank you for agreeing to provide feedback on the new version of worldbank.org; your response will help us to improve our website.

Thank you for participating in this survey! Your feedback is very helpful to us as we work to improve the site functionality on worldbank.org.

The Latest Evidence on Gender and Development

David evans.

Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

Join the Conversation

• Share on mail
• comments added

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 15 May 2024

Neglecting sex and gender in research is a public-health risk

• Sue Haupt 0 ,
• Cheryl Carcel 1 &
• Robyn Norton 2

Sue Haupt is an honorary senior research fellow at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, and a research associate at The George Institute for Global Health, Women’s Health Program, Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Cheryl Carcel is the head of the brain health programme at The George Institute for Global Health UNSW Sydney, Australia.

Robyn Norton is a founding director of The George Institute for Global Health, a professor of public health at UNSW Sydney and chair of global health at Imperial College London, UK.

Illustration: Sophi Gullbrants

You have full access to this article via your institution.

In 2022, clinical trials indicated that a drug called lecanemab could slow cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease; soon after the results were published, the global Alzheimer’s community heralded lecanemab as a momentous discovery. However, closer inspection of the data by independent investigators revealed that the drug might significantly help men, but not women 1 .

The finding is a reminder that, even though tremendous advances are being made in the clinical application of cutting-edge technologies, such as gene editing and artificial intelligence (AI), there is a remarkable lack of understanding about how many aspects of human health are affected by variables as seemingly basic as sex and gender.

Sex and gender in science

Over the past decade or so, funders and publishers have made extensive efforts to encourage researchers to address the effects of sex and, in human studies, gender where appropriate. Thanks in part to these efforts, more insights are beginning to emerge. For Alzheimer’s and many other diseases that are common causes of death, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory conditions and diabetes, a person’s sex and gender can influence their risk of developing the disease, how quickly and accurately they are diagnosed, what treatment they receive and how they fare.

But even for the most-studied conditions, many questions remain. Few investigators have begun to probe the interrelationships between sex and gender , for example. And in cases in which researchers are managing to unpick the multifaceted effects of sex, this knowledge is not being sufficiently incorporated into the design of clinical trials or adequately changing the practice of medicine.

The consideration of sex and, where appropriate, gender in biological research must become routine — especially as molecular genetics, biomedical engineering and AI open up possibilities for treatments that are better tailored to the needs of individuals. Likewise, the culture of medicine must be transformed so that approaches to treatment evolve in response to the data. This will require further engagement from funders and publishers, but action from many other players, too. Pharmaceutical companies and intergovernmental organizations, among others, must acknowledge three things: how sex and gender can have huge effects on health outcomes; how these effects are often disregarded in basic research and clinical trials; and that change can come only through increasing awareness among all stakeholders of the importance of shifting the dial.

Health outcomes affected

In most human clinical records so far, sex is reported by physicians or participants in studies ticking one of two boxes: ‘female’ or ‘male’. In those clinical studies in which data are collected on chromosomes, hormone levels, reproductive anatomy or other sex characteristics, these features will frequently reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. But this is not always the case. Added to this, sex and gender have often been used interchangeably, but they are not the same and they do not always align. Current definitions of gender include the social, psychological, cultural and behavioural aspects of being a man or woman (whether cisgender or transgender), non-binary or identifying with one or more other evolving terms 2 .

In several countries, new recommendations about how researchers should obtain data on people’s sex and gender should mean that, in the future, investigators will be able to more-accurately probe the roles of both in human health. But in general, there has been incomplete capture of information for sex and gender so far, including for individuals whose sex characteristics and/or gender identities don’t fall into a binary categorization scheme.

Women are more likely to die after a severe heart attack than are men. Credit: Simon Dawson/Reuters

In this article, consistent with much of the published population-wide data, we refer to a woman as someone who identifies with that gender and was assigned female sex at birth (a cis woman), and a man as someone who identifies with that gender and was assigned male sex at birth (a cis man). But we recognize that participants in the studies we describe might not have been asked about both their gender and their sex.

For all sorts of non-communicable diseases, there are differences between men and women in the average age at which they are diagnosed, the average age at which they die and even in their rates of death.

We need more-nuanced approaches to exploring sex and gender in research

Such variations, from the earlier onset of cardiovascular diseases in men to the more frequent occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease in women, might stem from differences in biology, which can affect people’s likelihood of developing a disease and how they respond to treatment. Or these discrepancies might stem from variation in people’s exposure to the environmental factors that trigger the disease, how they manage their condition, how they are treated by carers and so on, all of which can be influenced by a person’s gender. Often, a combination of factors will be at work.

Take heart attacks. Studies conducted over the past decade have revealed extensive sex differences in the expression of certain genes in heart tissue, which in turn affect the type and function of the cells that make up the heart.

Such variation could help to explain why men are likely to have a heart attack for the first time around six years earlier than women — in the United States, at 65.6 years old in men compared with 72 years old in women 3 — and why (in Australia, at least) heart attacks are at least twice as common in men relative to women of comparable ages (see go.nature.com/3qbvrxq ). Likewise, although mechanisms are yet to be fully understood, it is plausible that differences in people’s biology help to explain why women are more likely to experience pain between their shoulder blades, nausea or vomiting and shortness of breath during a heart attack; why men are more likely to experience chest pain and increased sweating; and why women are nearly twice as likely as are men to die after a severe heart attack.

Yet, when it comes to the risk of dying, social and environmental factors — shaped by gender — also seem to be important.

Tobacco consumption increases a person’s risk of having a heart attack, and smoking is much more common among men globally. Worldwide, around 37% of men smoke compared with around 8% of women . Also, in part because health-care professionals and others are more familiar with the heart attack symptoms commonly seen in men, when women have a heart attack, they are more likely to delay seeking help, and carers are often slower to intervene 4 . In fact, in a study of more than 500,000 people who experienced a heart attack and were admitted to hospital in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2013, women were 37% more likely to receive an incorrect initial diagnosis after a severe heart attack than were men 5 . Even when women tell their physicians that they have chest pain, they are two to three times less likely to be referred to a cardiologist than are men 6 .

A similarly complicated picture has been emerging in relation to strokes 7 — another cardiovascular disease — and, in the past few years, in relation to cancer.

Smoking is more common among men than women globally. Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty

Most cancers that occur in non-reproductive organs develop earlier in men than they do in women. In the United States, oesophageal cancer is 4.5 times more likely to occur and cause death in men than in women, for example, and lung cancers, the most common drivers of cancer-associated deaths worldwide, kill around 40% more men than women 8 .

Just as with heart disease and stroke, some of this variation seems to stem from behavioural differences. Tobacco consumption increases a person’s risk of developing several cancers 7 . For thyroid cancers, however, women are more likely to develop the disease than are men — three times more likely in some places — which suggests that other factors might drive the different rates of this particular cancer in women and men 9 . But tumours typically arise because of problems with cells’ genetic-repair systems, together with inadequate damage clearance, and genetic differences between men and women that affect cancers are beginning to emerge.

Male–female comparisons are powerful in biomedical research — don’t abandon them

Much more research is needed to understand how sex affects the rate at which genes mutate, cells’ capacities to repair and clear damaged DNA, and when genetic damage starts causing disease. Yet research led by one of us (S.H.) on lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer, suggests that women can survive for longer than men after they are diagnosed, in part thanks to cancer-defence genes in women driving more-robust immune responses 10 . X chromosomes encode many genes that are linked to immunity, and women with two X chromosomes might express these genes at higher levels than men with XY chromosomes.

Responses to cancer treatments also differ between men and women. Chemotherapies tend to work better in women than in men. This could be because it can take longer for women’s bodies to clear certain drugs, which could partly explain why women are also 34% more likely than men to experience harmful side effects 11 . Moreover, women with lung cancer typically have better outcomes after surgery, which they undergo more often than men 8 . This is probably due, at least in part, to women having less advanced disease when they are diagnosed than men do 12 . But the generally stronger immune responses in women might also help their recovery 8 .

Too often ignored

Despite these compelling indications that sex and gender matter, when it comes to many diseases that are leading causes of death, many researchers and health practitioners still fail to adequately take sex and gender into account. They might also be influenced by conscious or unconscious bias.

In the case of heart disease, the differences in gene expression and cellular make-up and activity found in men and women’s hearts highlight the need for sex-specific cardiac tissue models, sustained by sex-appropriate vasculature 13 . (Women on average have smaller hearts with narrower vessels compared with men.) Currently, researchers tend to construct heart models using either animal or human cells, but without necessarily ensuring that cells are sourced from individuals of only one sex per model. In fact, identifying sex disparities in basic heart biology is crucial to engineering relevant heart models with stem cells, for example, which investigators are now developing to aid the study of heart disease 13 .

For both heart disease and stroke, because of decades of under-representation of women in clinical trials, many of today’s standard treatments are based on studies of what happens in men who weigh around 70 kilograms. In clinical trials conducted for stroke and heart conditions between 2010 and 2017, women worldwide were under-enrolled relative to the prevalence of these diseases in the general population — by around 20% 14 . There is also significant underfunding of research for many conditions that are more prevalent in women compared with those that are more common in men (see ‘Disparities in health and disease’).

Source: A. A. Mirin J. Womens Health 30 , 956–963 (2021).

Basic research on cancer is similarly riddled with problems. Take the sex of the cell lines that are stored in commercial cell banks, which have been studied for decades and are the source of much of today’s textbook knowledge. For lung cancers, male lines outnumber female lines by two to one. For liver cancers, the ratio is seven to one. Until a few years ago, few researchers studying cancer in cultured cells in the lab even considered the sex of the cells they were studying. Also, the standard media in which cells are grown is frequently supplemented with fetal calf serum from a mixture of male and female calves, and so contains both male and female sex hormones. And phenol red, a dye commonly used to monitor the pH of tissue culture media mimics the hormone oestrogen 8 .

To add to the difficulties, research findings that emerge from the use of these cell lines are often tested in mice of only one sex. The results of these studies are then used to guide human trials that include both men and women participants. And in oncological clinical trials, just as with stroke and heart disease, women are still under-enrolled relative to the burden of disease they experience 7 .

Inclusivity in human trials will ensure the best possible outcomes for all participants, including cis and trans women and men, gender-diverse and intersex people (see ‘Inclusivity in practice’). Studies are showing, for example, that circadian rhythms — which can affect heart function and might impact how drugs are metabolized — differ between men and women 15 . So how might they compare in non-binary or transgender people? Likewise, knowledge about the immune responses of people with atypical numbers of sex chromosomes is likely to be crucial when it comes to the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors and other immune therapies for treating cancer. Those with Klinefelter syndrome, for example, who, similar to cis women, are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer than are cis men, have multiple X chromosomes that are rich in genes involved in the immune response.

Inclusivity in practice

How researchers include diverse groups of people in clinical trials with enough participants to be able to uncover between-group differences is a challenge.

Women represent nearly half of the population, but they are still under-represented in many clinical trials for numerous diseases, even in cases in which disease prevalence for women has been measured. For smaller population groups, such as transgender people, there are not enough data to even know what representative inclusion looks like. In fact, even if participation does reflect the prevalence of disease in the broader population in any one trial, teasing out effects might require combining the results of multiple studies in meta-analyses.

Advisory governing boards for pharmaceutical companies, such as the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use, funders and regulatory agencies could help with this by ensuring that terminology is adequately and consistently defined, and that populations are properly profiled.

Heightened awareness

Routinely taking sex and gender into account in research and using that knowledge to change health care could benefit billions of people. So what’s needed to make this happen?

Policy changes — such as the US National Institutes of Health’s 2016 call for the inclusion of male and female sexes in studies involving cells, tissues and animals — are crucial. But for many researchers, such calls seem burdensome, especially because studying more than one sex can increase costs. ( Sample sizes might need to be increased to achieve sufficient statistical power when comparing groups.)

Alongside initiatives from funders and publishers, awareness must be built — among students, researchers, clinicians, medical ethics committees, research governance bodies and community groups — of the ramifications of failing to consider sex and gender, and how to correct the problem.

Accounting for sex and gender makes for better science

Efforts led by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are encouraging. Even though the permeation of knowledge from research to health care has been glacial, between 2011 and 2019, the proportion of all research grant applications submitted to the CIHR that took sex into consideration increased from around 22% to 83%. Gender as a variable is now also included in many of the human studies funded by the CIHR .

Several initiatives have contributed to this. As an example, as well as asking grant applicants to include a section in their research proposals on whether they are considering sex and gender and how they will do so, or why this is not considered applicable, the CIHR has provided training for scientists and organized workshops involving researchers and specialists in sex and gender. Applicants are more likely to receive funding if they provide a satisfactory rationale for their choices.

Convincing people in leadership roles — in governments, laboratories, medical ethics boards, education and so on — of the importance of including sex and gender in research is especially crucial. More studies demonstrating the financial costs of not doing so could help. Between 1997 and 2000, for instance, eight prescription drugs were retracted from the US market because inadequate clinical testing in women had failed to identify that the drugs put women at greater risk of developing health problems than men. This error cost pharmaceutical companies and taxpayers an estimated US$1.6 billion per drug 16 .

The scale of transformation needed will also require more engagement from global players.

Even as far back as 2007, the 60th World Health Assembly — the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) — passed a resolution to urge researchers to split their data according to sex and to include gender analyses where appropriate. Steps to improve care for transgender people or those with diverse genders are also starting to be taken; in December last year, the WHO established a Guideline Development Group, to provide recommendations on how to address the health of transgender and gender-diverse people . But more extensive efforts, comparable to all United Nations member states committing to target 5.b of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, will be crucial. (This target is to “enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women”.)

Lastly, under the guidance of regulatory bodies such as the European Medicines Agency and the scientific entrepreneur community, the pharmaceutical industry must do more to ensure that preclinical work is robust, and that products are tested on enough people of different sexes and genders. Many leading pharmaceutical companies acknowledge on their websites the importance of including diverse groups in clinical trials , but evidence of actions to address the issue is only just emerging.

Awareness of the problems around sex and gender is growing fast. And although many are concerned that medical applications of AI will perpetuate already existing biases 17 , promising developments are emerging in the use of machine learning to make diagnoses that are appropriate for people’s sex and gender.

For decades, for instance, physicians worldwide have been determining whether a person has had a heart attack by using the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) score, which was derived from trials mainly involving men. In 2022, the application of machine learning to data that had been split for men and women refined the predictors for women. And these revised predictors did a better job of matching individuals to appropriate interventions 18 .

Greater awareness, the wealth of data now emerging and the possibilities presented by new tools, from AI to gene editing, could mean a new era for research and medicine.

Nature 629 , 527-530 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01372-2

Buckley, R. F., Gong, J. & Woodward, M. JAMA Neurol . 80 , 769–770 (2023).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Mauvais-Jarvis, F. et al. Lancet 396 , 565–582 (2020).

Benjamin, E. J. et al. Circulation 137 , e67–e492 (2018).

Stehli, J. et al. J. Am. Heart Assoc . 10 , e019938 (2021).

Wu, J. et al. Eur. Heart J. Acute Cardiovasc. Care 7 , 139–148 (2018).

Clerc Liaudat, C. et al. Womens Health https://doi.org/10.1177/1745506518805641 (2018).

Article   Google Scholar  

Carcel, C. et al. Nature Med. 30 , 51–60 (2024).

Haupt, S., Caramia, F., Klein, S. L., Rubin, J. B. & Haupt, Y. Nature Rev. Cancer 21 , 393–407 (2021).

Kim, J., Gosnell, J. E. & Roman, S. A. Nature Rev. Endocrinol. 16 , 17–29 (2020).

Freudenstein, D. et al. Cancers 12 , 1535 (2020).

Unger, J. M. et al. J. Clin. Oncol. 40 , 1474–1486 (2022).

Stabellini, N. et al. JTO Clin. Res. Rep. 3 , 100307 (2022).

PubMed   Google Scholar  

Lock, R. et al. Nature Rev. Mater. 7 , 295–313 (2022).

Jin, X. et al. Circulation 141 , 540–548 (2020).

Lévi, F. A., Okyar, A., Hadadi, E., Innominato, P. F. & Ballesta, A. Annu. Rev. Pharmacol. Toxicol. 64 , 89–114 (2024).

Wouters, O. J., McKee, M. & Luyten, J. JAMA 323 , 844–853 (2020).

Cirillo, D. et al. npj Digit. Med. 3 , 81 (2020).

Wenzl, F. A. et al. Lancet 400 , 744–756 (2022).

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Related Articles

Podcast: Sex and gender discussions don't need to be toxic

Let’s talk about (biological) sex

• Public health
• Medical research

Can mathematicians help to solve social-justice problems?

Career Feature 22 MAY 24

Why role-playing games can spur climate action

World View 22 MAY 24

Internet use and teen mental health: it’s about more than just screen time

Correspondence 21 MAY 24

Trials that infected people with common colds can inform today’s COVID-19 challenge trials

A global pandemic treaty is in sight: don’t scupper it

Editorial 21 MAY 24

Could bird flu in cows lead to a human outbreak? Slow response worries scientists

News 17 MAY 24

First ‘bilingual’ brain-reading device decodes Spanish and English words

News 21 MAY 24

Lab-grown sperm and eggs: ‘epigenetic’ reset in human cells paves the way

Recruitment of Global Talent at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOZ, CAS)

The Institute of Zoology (IOZ), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is seeking global talents around the world.

Beijing, China

Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOZ, CAS)

Full Professorship (W3) in “Organic Environmental Geochemistry (f/m/d)

The Institute of Earth Sciences within the Faculty of Chemistry and Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University invites applications for a   FULL PROFE...

Heidelberg, Brandenburg (DE)

Universität Heidelberg

Postdoc: deep learning for super-resolution microscopy

The Ries lab is looking for a PostDoc with background in machine learning.

Vienna, Austria

University of Vienna

Postdoc: development of a novel MINFLUX microscope

The Ries lab is developing super-resolution microscopy methods for structural cell biology. In this project we will develop a fast, simple, and robust

Postdoctoral scholarship in Structural biology of neurodegeneration

A 2-year fellowship in multidisciplinary project combining molecular, structural and cell biology approaches to understand neurodegenerative disease

Umeå, Sweden

Umeå University

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Top 10 gender research reads from 2021

• From CGIAR GENDER Platform
• Published on 18.02.22
• Impact Area Gender equality

Share this to :

In our series of recommended reading lists, gender experts provide starting points for researchers, students, practitioners and others looking to dive deeper into research on gender and a wide variety of topics.

This time, we asked the CGIAR GENDER Platform team members to pick out their top gender research reads from 2021. Explore below for their selection of the most interesting, important and captivating publications released last year.

Top picks by Nicoline de Haan, CGIAR GENDER Platform Director

#1  rural youth in southern nigeria.

There are three clear reasons why  Rural Youth in Southern Nigeria: Fractured Lives and Ambitious Futures   by Crossouard et al. sticks in my mind. First, because it is about youth. We often talk about youth and their importance for the future, but I have not seen much research about rural youth. As the CGIAR GENDER Platform evolves, we will work more on youth issues, so it is important we have more theoretical thinking and evidence in this space. My second reason is linked to the article’s approach: years ago, I was in the field in Kenya with a PhD student doing research on how rural education was preparing youth for the future, and she found that the education system was not at all linked to the realities. This article looks at that issue as well. Finally, I picked this because it is about Nigeria, and having spent seven years of my career there, Nigeria always interests me. It was also good to see a CGIAR scientist involved in this research.

#2 Gender equality in climate policy and practice

Gender Equality in Climate Policy and Practice Hindered by Assumptions  by Lau et al. is one of those articles that should have been written a long time ago. It lays out the assumptions we are still dealing with in gender in agriculture research. For example, that women are caring and connected to the environment; that women are a homogenous and vulnerable group; that gender equality is a women’s issue; and that gender equality is a numbers game. The authors very nicely show how these assumptions hinder progress on climate change and how they can even be counterproductive. Now that this article is out there for the public, we can move on and really deal with the issues at hand!

Top picks by Marlene Elias, CGIAR GENDER Platform Alliances Module Lead

#3 gender expertise in environment and development.

This book,  Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development  by Resurrección and Elmhirst, is thoughtful and beautifully written. It brings together critical reflections from gender experts on their experiences working in environment and development organizations, including CGIAR. It takes an innovative format: a series of conversations between the co-editors and writers, Bernadette Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst, and gender experts who are working to place gender and social inclusion issues at the center of research and practice on sustainability and environmental management. These conversations surface the motivations, negotiations, achievements and daily struggles of these professionals as they navigate the complexities of all that is implied by working on gender in largely technical fields. Every chapter has a different flavor, but all will resonate with those of us working in this area; and make us nod our heads, sigh, laugh (or cry!) and better understand our profession and ourselves.

#4 Masculinities in forests

Colfer’s book,  Masculinities in Forests: Representations of Diversity , focuses on how masculinities relate to forest management, drawing on her experience working in different forest contexts, from the USA to Indonesia. It takes a timely dive into diverse masculinities and how these shape practices in forest management, all the while recognizing men’s agency in expressing different masculine identities. Aside from the rich content that is discussed, couched in an accessible framework and language, I appreciated that the book examines masculinities among professionals working in the field of forestry as well as among various forest communities. I was also very impressed by how Colfer was able to re-examine decades of ethnographic research through a new lens to write this book. Wow!

Top picks by Els Lecoutere, CGIAR GENDER Platform Science Officer

#5 diffusion and dilution.

Doss’  Diffusion and Dilution: The Power and Perils of Integrating Feminist Perspectives into Household Economics  is important to me is because it acknowledges the advances we have made in integrating feminist economic perspectives into mainstream economics, but also points out areas for improvement. It helps us to stay focused. Personally, I find the call for careful consideration of benefits versus potential harm, and proper training of enumerators when collection data about domestic and gender-based violence, extremely important. I sometimes feel we make the decision to collect data about domestic and gender-based violence too lightly. The article further opens the discussion about two other pet topics of mine: First, how can we better capture the complexity of households, including the web of power relations between different members, in which individuals make decisions? Second, how can we measure social norms and their importance for people’s capabilities and choices? How can these be changed and what are the effects?

#6 A review of evidence 

I keep going back to this brief,   A Review of Evidence on Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment and Food Systems  by Njuki et al., mainly for its gendered food systems framework. The framework brings the different ways in which gender affects capabilities, choices and outcomes in food systems together. It provides a theoretical basis for various key questions in gender in agricultural and food system research and shows how this is supported by evidence. To me, its key contribution is the way it disentangles the different ‘entry points’ of gender constraints. Gender inequalities cannot only creep into biophysical, technological or economic drivers of food systems, shocks and vulnerabilities affecting these drivers can also affect men and women differently. Finally, the conceptualization of gendered food systems as systems underscores the dynamic, interdependent nature of the different elements and the need for a holistic approach to achieve gender equality in agriculture and food systems.

Top pick by Hazel Malapit and Elizabeth Bryan, CGIAR GENDER Platform Methods Module Co-leads

#7 advancing gender equality.

If you don’t have time to read the whole book, read the introduction.  Pyburn and van Eerdewijk’s introduction  to Advancing Gender Equality through Agricultural and Environmental Research excellently presents the topics discussed in the book, which features contributions from 55 CGIAR gender researchers. The book flips an often-posed question: instead of asking what gender equality can do for agricultural development, it asks how agricultural and environmental research can advance gender equality. One of the best overviews of gender research in CGIAR, the introductory chapter contextualizes CGIAR gender research within our organization’s struggles to address gender and within the broader thinking around gender and development. The introduction provides summaries of each chapter as well as information on the methodological and geographic breakdown of studies reviewed.

#8 Gender and agricultural economics

As gender researchers in the GCIAR are well aware, women and men in developing countries have different preferences and interests, and good policies and programs take these differences into account. But what about what researchers themselves bring to the table? This article,  How Women Saved Agricultural Economics , by Offutt and McCluskey, points out that women (and minorities) tend to be under-represented in economics positions in government and academia, and are not recognized for their achievements with awards and editorships due to both overt discrimination and implicit bias. Yet, the authors say, the diversity resulting from women’s increased presence in field has increased the relevance of the discipline over the last several decades. This research documents the importance of increasing representation in academic fields where women (and other minorities) are traditionally under-represented. While this study focuses on agricultural economics in the United States, it has prompted further analysis of how these patterns apply in other countries, such as India and Kenya, and within other institutions.

Top picks by Ranjitha Puskur, CGIAR GENDER Platform Evidence Module Lead

#9 food and agriculture systems.

Foresight studies on agriculture tend to not integrate social dimensions as these often do not render themselves to quantitative measurement. This article,  Food and Agriculture Systems Foresight Study: Implications for Gender, Poverty and Nutrition  by Lentz, is a rare review that argues for mainstreaming a gender, poverty and nutrition focus into foresight research. This would help ensure that we reduce the risk of entrenching gender inequalities and promoting technologies that exacerbate inequality, and that we are able to inform policy- and innovation-led pathways. Having dabbled in participatory foresight analysis using scenario planning, visioning and backcasting, this piqued my curiosity. The paper offers helpful insights into how and when to bundle or sequence interventions and the need to understand the effects of interventions on the whole agri-food system. It offers a very engaging and useful read, even for those who are unfamiliar with foresight methods.

#10 Gender and land ownership

The issue of women’s limited land ownership is sticky and has occupied central stage in debates and discourses for a while. Nowhere have we been able to make any significant progress in reducing the gender gaps in land ownership. Cheryl Doss (2018) questioned the myth of women owning less than one percent of land globally. This continues to be a complex issue, with the definition of “ownership” being only one of the tricky issues. Agarwal’s 2021 paper,  How Many and Which Women Own Land in India? , uses longitudinal data from the Village Level Studies (VLS), collected by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from a set of Indian villages between 2009 and 2014, to look at which women are more likely to own land, why and how these patterns changed over the years. We at the CGIAR GENDER Platform have also been highlighting the need to focus more on unpacking intersectionalities to have better insights that can inform targeted solutions. This paper provides a very good example of the importance of intersectional approaches and it highlights the gap and the critical need for a national and state-level datasets.

Related news

Cultivating grit and harvesting resilience

• Climate adaptation & mitigation
• Gender equality

CGIAR gender researchers have studied a project that gave more than 25,000 Indian women access…

Adapt, assess, progress: Integrating measures of women’s empowerment into rural development projects

BY CARLO AZZARRI, SEDI-ANNE BOUKAKA, JESSICA HECKERT, RUTH MEINZEN-DICK, GREG SEYMOUR, AND SARA SAVA…

Exploring gender roles and women’s empowerment in the coffee value chain and coffee cooperatives: Evidence from Mexico

BY SARAH EISSLER AND DEBORAH RUBIN OPEN ACCESS | CC-BY-4.0 In southern Mexico, small-scale coffee…

This website uses cookies in order to improve the use experience and provide additional functionality Detail

• International website
• Find courses
• Find research
• Find organisation

• News and events

New research highlights gender roles and child agency in conflict zones

Gender perceptions and ideas about childhood influence child protection in UN peacekeeping missions. By analysing UN directives and training materials, and through firsthand interviews with peacekeepers, a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg seeks to understand the complex interplay of gender, childhood, and peacekeeping practices.

Child protection is a major component of UN peacekeeping missions as many of the armed conflicts they respond to are happening in countries with very young populations. 

“I wanted to understand how ideas about gender and conceptions of childhood influence how the UN does child protection in peacekeeping. I wanted to know the impacts of these ideas in practice, and if and how they rely on certain stereotypes and assumptions,” says Dustin Johnson, PhD student in Peace and Development Research at the School of Global Studies.

He has analysed UN documents such as manuals and training materials and has conducted interviews with a wide range of peacekeepers.

“I found that in the UN there is an emphasis on the role of women in child protection, and this often relies on stereotypical associations between women and children,” says Dustin Johnson. “However, while gender is important, interactions are influenced by a complex mix of gender, communication skills, trust in the mission, and other factors.”

Dustin Johnson also found that in recent years, the UN has improved how it addresses gender in child protection, for example, by bringing more attention to the importance of gender diversity and by focusing more on trust and communication in training materials. However, children are still seen primarily or only as victims of adults during wars. Dustin Johnson argues that this sees only children’s vulnerability and not their agency, which risks missing out on more productive ways peacekeepers could engage with children.

“It also fails to recognize an important aspect of children’s experiences: how they navigate the terrains of war, making consequential decisions, sometimes with life and death implications,” says Dustin Johnson.

The conception of children as being too innocent, immature, and lacking the capacity for agency is not just a product of their ongoing mental and physiological development. According to Dustin Johnson it is also reinforced to subordinate children to adults. He explains it as similar to how discourses about women being seen as less mature or rational play a role in women's subordination to men.

“While feminist movements have done much to challenge and de-naturalize the latter, the former power dynamics with children are still seen as mostly natural and not arising from social processes,” says Dustin Johnson.

“We know from other research that children are actively involved in peacebuilding and protecting themselves in armed conflict, and so ignoring or not being aware of what children themselves are doing, risks peacekeepers missing out on potential actions that could improve peace and better protect children.”

Dustin Johnson successfully defended his PhD thesis G endered Dynamics of Child Protection in UN Peacekeeping on 17 May 2024 at the School of Global Studies.

Abstract of the thesis is uploaded to the University of Gothenburg's database GUPEA:

• Link to GUPEA

Yale Economic Growth Center

Why women in India are dropping out of the workforce: Farzana Afridi and Kanika Mahajan on their research on gender and labor markets

Voices in Development: A Podcast from Yale’s Economic Growth Center explores issues related to sustainable development and economic justice in low– and middle–income countries. This episode features Farzana Afridi and Kanika Mahajan on understanding and overcoming the barriers to women’s labor market participation in India.

Voices in Development: 

Spotify |  Apple Podcasts |  Amazon  | Google Podcasts |  Subscribe

Although women around the world have joined the labor market in rising numbers over the past several decades, the percentage of women in the labor force in India has declined, even while their education levels have risen and the country has experienced rapid economic growth. 

In this episode of Voices in Development, Farzana Afridi, a professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi, and Kanika Mahajan, Associate Professor of Economics at Ashoka University in Sonepat, India, discuss their research collaborations on women and work, the benefits and risks of digital platforms for women in India, and how researchers can influence policy. 

Afridi and Mahajan recently participated in the Economic Growth Center’s Kuznets Visitors Program, which brings short-term visitors from around the world to the Yale campus to contribute to the development economics community. 

You want to look at the black box of what is happening within the household, and then see how that interacts with the outside world to determine, ultimately, the impacts of government policies. – Farzana Afridi

Mahajan’s interest in gender developed early in graduate school, when she visited agricultural regions of India, and observed how men and women expressed such different concerns related to the labor market. 

With their similar interests and complementary skills, Afridi and Mahajan began to collaborate on research examining women’s declining labor force participation in India. “It’s been such a huge puzzle,” said Afridi. “Unlike the developed countries, where you see declines in fertility rates, you see increases in women’s educational attainment, gender gaps in educational attainment declining. Typically women would increase their labor force participation. You would see more engagement with paid outside work. But in India, the opposite was happening.” 

They sought to understand how much of this decline over the last few decades was driven by the supply side, like social norms preventing women from seeking work outside of the home, and the demand side, such as a lack of jobs that were available or appealing to women.

Afridi and Mahajan suspected that the reasons for women’s declining labor force participation went beyond gender norms or other social constraints. 

“When your educational attainment goes up, your productivity increases,” Afridi said. “So you’re going to be more productive in the labor market, because you know, you're just more knowledgeable, you can do things much more efficiently and so on, which also means that you can be more efficient within the home.” Women might conclude that investing their educational gains into supporting their children might ultimately bring greater returns than whatever income they might derive from work outside the home.

It is possible that women are just not finding the kinds of jobs which will give them higher returns. And so it obviously makes economic sense for them to just stay back at home. Because the returns in terms of investing in the children's human capital, their education and their health – when these kids grow up, they're going to work in the labor market – all the educational attainment is going to feed back into the family. So it makes more sense for me to stay because I just don't have the good enough returns that I see in the labor market. – Farzana Afridi

Their research suggested that supply side factors, such as women’s lack of education, explained women’s low workforce participation in the 1990s. However, the persistence of low workforce participation levels during the 2000s, despite women’s rising educational attainment, indicated the significant role of demand-side factors, especially in rural India and the agricultural sector.

Agriculture in India underwent a lot of mechanization, especially for tilling the land, in the mid 90s, Mahajan said. She and Afridi found that 70 to 75% of the decline of women’s labor force participation in that decade could be explained by mechanization. Tilling reduces the growth of weeds, and because weeding is primarily done by women, the mechanization of tilling meant fewer jobs for women, Mahajan said. 

Mahajan and Afridi are both based in India, and find that being from the country they are studying has many advantages. “It gives you a pulse of the problem as people around you are perceiving it,” Mahajan said. But they also value the perspectives of development scholars based outside of India, who are well positioned “to place the problem in a bigger economic context.”

A recent focus of their research is women’s work and digital technology. While some hail digital technology as a tool for women’s economic empowerment, Afridi, who is leading a digital platforms and women’s economic empowerment program supported by the Gates Foundation, cautions that digital labor platforms can replicate inequalities if not approached thoughtfully. As Afridi points out, “knowing how to navigate the digital world is as important as that world existing.” In India, women’s smartphone ownership and usage is very low compared to men’s, a trend that begins in adolescence. 

A lot of times, these digital platforms end up replicating the kind of gender gaps that we see in traditional markets. So technology will not be a solution to all your problems. It can perhaps help you mitigate some of them, but it can also create more of them. – Kanika Mahajan

Afridi and Mahajan agree that ultimately, their work gains its power through its translation to policy. That is most likely to happen when development researchers communicate their work to policymakers in ways that non-specialists can understand.

I think each researcher, each one of us contributing to that knowledge, is what builds a space where there’s collective wisdom and brings it to the attention of the policymakers. So for each one of us, it's very important to take our research out there and make it accessible, so that we create the collective pressure on the policymakers to respond. – Farzana Afridi

About the Guests:

Farzana Afridi   is Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi, Visiting Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn. Her research focuses on the intersection of development and labor economics, covering three broad themes: gender and social identity, human capital, and governance.

Kanika Mahajan  is Associate Professor of Economics at Ashoka University in Sonepat, India. Her research focuses on issues around stagnation of women's labor force participation in India, exploring both the supply side and the demand side linkages using data from digital platforms as well as secondary household and firm data. Her other ongoing research examines growth and resilience of firms in India and its implications for labor, capital and trade.

Listen to the podcast

• Amazon Music
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Journal of Population Economics (2017)
• American Journal of Agricultural Economics (2022)
• Journal of Demographic Economics (2022)

Young People’s Perceptions of Inequalities

Insights from Participatory Research in Jordan and Lebanon

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 16 May 2024
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Kate Pincock 7 ,
• Nicola Jones 8 ,
• Sally Youssef 9 ,
• Sarah Alheiwidi 10 &
• Agnieszka Malachowska 11  

The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda to “leave no one behind” specifically calls for efforts to address gaps between the poorest and wealthiest people within countries. However, growing political tensions and mass displacement have exacerbated entrenched socio-economic inequalities in Jordan and Lebanon over the past decade. In both contexts, those most vulnerable to poverty and hardship – particularly refugees – have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing economic impacts, which in Lebanon have been exacerbated by a severe economic and political crisis that predates the pandemic.

Evidence suggests that young people in these contexts have very different responses to these inequalities. Young people in Lebanon are often at the forefront of protest for structural change and improved opportunities, whereas young people in Jordan are less likely to mobilize against the state. Some analysts argue that even in the face of major socio-political upheaval, inequality often endures – even if it shifts in nature. However, there is relatively little evidence on how inequalities are shaping the lives of young people in Jordan and Lebanon amid these multi-layered crises, or what young people see as possibilities for change.

This chapter draws on vignette-based participatory research with adolescents and young people (aged 15–22) in Jordan and Lebanon, from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and including young people from host and refugee communities, undertaken as part of the wider Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) longitudinal research program. We present insights into young people’s lived experiences of intersecting inequalities; what they perceive to be the characteristics and causes of these inequalities; and what they see as their role (if any) in transformative social change.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Abdo, N. (2019). The gendered impact of IMF policies in MENA. The case of Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia . Oxfam International.

Book   Google Scholar  

Abed, D., Sawaya, R., & Tabbal, N. (2022). Analyzing voter turnout and behavior in Lebanon: Political change in times of crisis . Oxfam International.

Al Sharafat, A. (2019). Spatial inequality in Jordan. Journal of Economics and Management, 36 (2), 71–83.

Article   Google Scholar  

Alemán-Díaz, A., Toczydlowska, E., Mazur, J., Frasquilho, D., Melkumova, M., & Holmqvist, G. (2016). Why income inequalities matter for young people’s health: A look at the evidence (Innocenti Working Paper No. 2016-06). UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.

Google Scholar  

AlMakhamreh, S. S., AlHadidi, H. T., & AlBakar, A. M. (2015). Social work students field training as an opportunity to develop best practice in disabilities: The case of Jordan. European Journal of Social Work, 18 (5), 756–769.

Alvaredo, F., Piketty, T., & Assouad, L. (2018). Measuring inequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The world’s most unequal region? Review of Income and Wealth, 65 (4), 685–711.

Ammar, L., Alhamarna, H., AlWawi, Y., ElSayed, Y., & Harb, H. (2020). Analysis of the representation of the 2019 Lebanese protests and the 2020 Beirut explosion on TikTok. KIU Interdisciplinary Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1 (3), 53–72.

Assouad, L. (2017). Rethinking the Lebanese Economic Miracle: The Extreme Concentration of Income and Wealth in Lebanon, 2005–2014, World Inequality and WID.World Working Paper 13.

Assaad, R., Krafft, C., & Salemi, C. (2019). Socioeconomic status and the changing nature of school-to-work transitions in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia (Economic Research Forum Working Paper No. 1287). Economic Research Forum.

Assaad, R., Hendy, R., Lassassi, M., & Yassin, S. (2020). Explaining the MENA paradox: Rising educational attainment yet stagnant female labor force participation. Demographic Research, 43 , 817–850.

Assouad, L. (2023). Rethinking the Lebanese economic miracle: The extreme concentration of income and wealth in Lebanon, 2005–2014. Journal of Development Economics, 161 , 103003.

Baumann, H. (2019). The causes, nature, and effect of the current crisis of Lebanese capitalism. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 25 (1), 61–77.

Beck, M., & Hüser, S. (2015). Jordan and the ‘Arab Spring’: No challenge, no change? Middle East Critique, 24 (1), 83–97.

Benson, S. (2020). The evolution of Jordanian special education policy and practice. FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education, 6 (1), 102–121.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste . Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question . Sage.

Chaaban, J. (2016). I’ve got the power: Mapping connections between Lebanon’s banking sector and the ruling class (Economic Research Forum Working Papers No. 1059). Economic Research Forum.

Devonald, M., Jones, N., & Youssef, S. (2022). ‘We have no hope for anything’: Exploring interconnected economic, social and environmental risks to adolescents in Lebanon. Sustainability, 14 (4), 2001.

Egan, M., & Tabar, P. (2016). Bourdieu in Beirut: Wasta, the state and social reproduction in Lebanon. Middle East Critique, 25 (3), 249–270.

El-Haddad, A. (2020). Redefining the social contract in the wake of the Arab Spring: The experiences of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. World Development, 127 , 104774.

Gercama, I., Jones, N., Youssef, S., Sleiman, C., & Kwaider, O. (2018). Building social cohesion in conflict affected communities: A retrospective research study with refugee and host community adolescents in Lebanon . Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence.

Ghadi, N., Massing, C., Kikulwe, D., & Giesbrecht, C. (2019). Language and identity development among Syrian adult refugees in Canada: A Bourdieusian analysis. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 14 (1), 71–88.

Hajjar, M. S., & Abu-Sittah, G. S. (2021). The multidimensional burden of COVID-19 on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Journal of Global Health, 11 , 05003.

Harris, M. (2015). Jordan’s youth after the Arab Spring . Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Hoiberg, G. R. (2020). ‘We do not use freezers in Syria’: Realignment and the pursuit of belonging among refugees in a Norwegian village. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 21 , 1083–1096.

İşleyen, B., & Kreitmeyr, N. (2021). ‘Authoritarian neoliberalism’ and youth empowerment in Jordan. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 15 (2), 244–263.

Jackson, D., Tobin, S., & Eggert, S. P. (2019). Capacity building for politicians in contexts of systemic Corruption: Countering ‘wasta’ in Jordan (CMI Working Paper, U4 2019:9). Chr Michelsen Institute.

Jones, D. (2019). Talking about wasta: Attitudes toward informal politics in Jordan. Confluences Méditerranée, 3 (110), 87–98.

Jones, N., Baird, S., Hicks, J., Devonald, M., Neumeister, E., Presler-Marshall, E., & Yadete, W. (2019). Gender and regional inequalities in adolescent economic empowerment in Ethiopia. Policy Note . Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence.

Jones, N., Pincock, K., Baird, S., Yadete, W., & Hamory Hicks, J. (2020). Intersecting inequalities, gender and adolescent health in Ethiopia. International Journal for Equity in Health, 19 (1), 97.

Jones, N., Pincock, K., & Abu Hamad, B. (2021). Adolescents in humanitarian crisis: Displacement, gender and social inequalities . Routledge.

Jones, N., Baird, S., Abu Hamad, B., Bhutta, Z. A., Oakley, E., Shah, M., Sajdi, J., & Yount, K. M. (2022). Compounding inequalities: Adolescent psychosocial wellbeing and resilience among refugee and host communities in Jordan during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS One, 17 (2), e0261773.

Josua, M., & Edel, M. (2021). The Arab uprisings and the return of repression. Mediterranean Politics, 26 (5), 586–611.

Karmel, E. J., & Linfield, D. (2021). Jordan’s election law: Reinforcing barriers to democracy. Middle East Law and Governance, 13 (3), 395–408.

Kiwan, D. (2020). Constructions of ‘youth’ and ‘activism’ in Lebanon. In A. Peterson, G. Stahl, & H. Soong (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of citizenship and education . Palgrave Macmillan.

Klingensmith, A. (2019). The role of local communities in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in Jordan. Independent Study Project Collection, 3153 .

Lupieri, S. (2020). When ‘brothers and sisters’ become ‘foreigners’: Syrian refugees and the politics of healthcare in Jordan. Third World Quarterly, 41 (6), 958–975.

Merrifield, W. (2022). Contextualising principles: Lebanon and social justice perspectives on disability reform. Review of Disability Studies, 18 (1&2), 1–28.

Nasser, K., & Rennick, S. A. (2022). The imagined community of Lebanese youth activists: Political resistance by other means? In S. A. Rennick (Ed.), Reassessing activism and engagement among Arab youth . Transnational Press.

Odeh, K. B., Jones, N., Pincock, K., & Małachowska, A. (2021). ‘I wish someone would ask me questions’: The unheard voices of adolescents with disabilities in Jordan. European Journal of Development Research, 33 , 1328–1348.

Pascucci, E. (2019). Precarious work within humanitarian spaces. EPA: Economy and Space, 51 (3), 743–760.

Presler-Marshall, M., Youssef, S., Jones, N., & Małachowska, A. (2022). ‘Each one of us had a dream’: An exploration of factors supporting gender-responsive education and economic empowerment pathways for refugee youth in Lebanon . ODI.

Qazzaz, H. (2021). Fighting all demons: Feminist voices on popular protests in Lebanon and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Gender and Development, 29 (2–3), 431–446.

Ramadan, R. (2021). Determinants of income inequality in Jordan. Economic Research Forum Working Paper No . 1513. Giza, Egypt: Economic Research Forum.

Sayed, A. (2020). Income inequality and public debt: What can be learned from the Lebanese indebtedness? Business and Economic Research, 10 (4), 83–106.

Schwedler, J. (2020). Material obstacles to protest in the urban built environment: Insights from Jordan. Contention, 8 (1), 1–23.

Sender, H. (2021). Young people’s perspectives of inequitable urban change in Lebanese towns affected by forced displacement. Regional Science Policy and Practice, 14 (2), 293–306.

Skeggs, B. (1997). Formations of class & gender . Sage.

Stave, S. E., & Hillesund, S. (2015). Impact of Syrian refugees on the Jordanian labour market: Findings from the governorates of Amman, Irbid and Mafraq . International Labour Organization and Fafo.

Sumadi, M. A., Alkhateeb, N. A., Alnsour, A. S., & Sumadi, M. (2022). Perceptions and attitudes towards Syrian refugee on socioeconomic sectors: Evidence from Jordan. International Migration & Integration, 24 , 865.

Thorne, B. (2004). Theorising age and other differences. Childhood, 11 (4), 403–408.

Turner, L. (2020). ‘#Refugees can be entrepreneurs too!’ Humanitarianism, race, and the marketing of Syrian refugees. Review of International Studies, 46 (1), 137–155.

Tuzi, I. (2020). Forced migration and gender relations: The impact of displacement on masculinity among Syrian refugees . University of Rome Department of Social Sciences and Economics Working Paper Series. 5/2020.

United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development . United Nations.

United Nations. (2022). Sustainable development goals report 2022 . United Nations.

Verme, P., Gigliarano, C., Weiser, C., Hedlund, K., Petzoldt, M., & Santacroce, M. (2015). The welfare of Syrian refugees: Evidence from Lebanon and Jordan . World Bank and UNHCR.

Waltorp, K. (2015). Keeping cool, staying virtuous: Social media and the composite habitus of young Muslim women in Copenhagen. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 31 (58), 49–67.

Woodhead, M., Dornan, P., & Murray, H. (2014). What inequality means for children: Evidence from young lives. International Journal of Children's Rights, 22 (3), 467–501.

Woodman, D. (2013). Researching ‘ordinary’ young people in a changing world: The sociology of generations and the ‘missing middle’ in youth research. Sociological Research Online, 18 (1), 7.

Woodman, D., & Wyn, J. (2015a). Youth and generation: Thinking change and inequality in the lives of young people . Sage.

Woodman, D., & Wyn, J. (2015b). Class, gender and generation matter: Using the concept of social generation to study inequality and social change. Journal of Youth Studies, 18 (10), 1–9.

World Bank (2011) Gini Index. World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?name_desc=true (Accessed 13th July 2023).

Yom, S. L. (2015). The new landscape of Jordanian politics: Social opposition, fiscal crisis, and the Arab Spring. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 42 (3), 284–300.

Yom, S., & Sammour, K. (2016). The social terrain of Islamist radicalization: Insights from Jordan. Lawfare 21.

Zakharov, A., & Issaev, L. (2022). Roots of new wave of protests in Jordan. In L. Issaev & A. Korotayev (Eds.), New wave of revolutions in the MENA region . Springer.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford’s Department, Oxford, UK

Kate Pincock

Overseas Development Institute, London, UK

Nicola Jones

Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE), Beirut, Lebanon

Sally Youssef

Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE), Amman, Jordan

Sarah Alheiwidi

Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE), London, UK

Agnieszka Malachowska

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kate Pincock .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Pincock, K., Jones, N., Youssef, S., Alheiwidi, S., Malachowska, A. (2023). Young People’s Perceptions of Inequalities. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_419-1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_419-1

Received : 17 April 2023

Accepted : 05 May 2023

Published : 16 May 2024

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-87624-1

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-87624-1

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research