The term “women in development” was originally coined by a Washington-based network of female development professionals in the early 1970s<ref name="Tinker1990">{{cite book|author=Irene Tinker|title=Persistent Inequalities: Women and World Development|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R6aCgdeafDAC|year=1990|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-506158-1|page=30}}</ref> who sought to question [[trickle down effecteconomics|trickle down]] existing theories of development by contesting that economic development had identical impacts on men and women.<ref name="Razavi1995p2">{{cite report |last1=Razavi |first1=Shahrashoub |last2=Miller |first2=Carol |year=1995 |title=From WID to GAD: Conceptual shifts in the Women and Development discourse |url=http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |journal=United Nations Research Institute Occasional Paper Series |publisher=United Nations Research Institute for Social Development |volume=1 |page=2 |access-date=22 November 2013 |hdl=10419/148819 |hdl-access=free |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055921/http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Women in Development movement (WID) gained momentum in the 1970s, driven by the resurgence of women's movements in developed countries, and particularly through liberal feminists striving for equal rights and labour opportunities in the United States.<ref name="Razavi1995p3">{{cite report |last1=Razavi |first1=Shahrashoub |last2=Miller |first2=Carol |year=1995 |title=From WID to GAD: Conceptual shifts in the Women and Development discourse |url=http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |journal=United Nations Research Institute Occasional Paper Series |publisher=United Nations Research Institute for Social Development |volume=1 |page=3 |access-date=22 November 2013 |hdl=10419/148819 |hdl-access=free |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055921/http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Liberal feminism]], postulating that women's disadvantages in society may be eliminated by breaking down customary expectations of women by offering better education to women and introducing equal opportunity programmes,<ref name="Connell1987">{{cite book|author=Robert Connell|title=Gender and power: society, the person, and sexual politics|url=https://archive.org/details/genderpowersocie00conn_0|url-access=registration|year=1987|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=978-0-8047-1430-3}}</ref> had a notable influence on the formulation of the WID approaches.<ref name="Razavi1995p3"/>
The focus of the 1970s [[feminist movements]] and their repeated calls for employment opportunities in the development agenda meant that particular attention was given to the productive labour of women, leaving aside reproductive concerns and social welfare.<ref name="Razavi1995p3"/> This approach was pushed forward by WID advocates, reacting to the general policy environment maintained by early colonial authorities and post-war development authorities, wherein inadequate reference to the work undertook by women as producers was made, as they were almost solely identified as their roles as wives and mothers.<ref name="Razavi1995p3"/> The WID's opposition to this “welfare approach” was in part motivated by the work of Danish economist [[Ester Boserup]] in the early 1970s, who challenged the assumptions of the said approach and highlighted the role women by women in the agricultural production and economy.<ref name="Razavi1995p4">{{cite report |last1=Razavi |first1=Shahrashoub |last2=Miller |first2=Carol |year=1995 |title=From WID to GAD: Conceptual shifts in the Women and Development discourse |url=http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |journal=United Nations Research Institute Occasional Paper Series |publisher=United Nations Research Institute for Social Development |volume=1 |page=4 |access-date=22 November 2013 |hdl=10419/148819 |hdl-access=free |archive-date=4 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304055921/http://unrisd.org/unrisd/website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/d9c3fca78d3db32e80256b67005b6ab5/$FILE/opb1.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
