User:Quentin.Ncs/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:04, 22 November 2013

Revision as of 17:05, 22 November 2013

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The term “women and development” was originally coined by a Washington-based network of female development professionals in the early 1970s1 who sought to put in question the trickle down theories of development by contesting that modernization had identical impact on men and women2. The Women in Development movement (WID) gained momentum in the 1970s, driven by the resurgence of women's movement in northern countries, whereby liberal feminists were striving for equal rights and labour opportunities in the United States3. Liberal feminism, postulating that women's disadvantages in society may be eliminated by breaking down stereotyped customary expectations of women by offering better education to women and introducting equal opportunity programmes4, had a notable influence on the formulation of the WID approaches, whereby little attention was given to men and to power relations between genders5.

The translation 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 welfare6. Yet this focus was part of the approach pushed forward by advocates of the WID movement, 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 mothers7. 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 economy8.

A dominant strand of thinking within WID sought to link women’s issues with development, highlighting how such issues acted as impediments to economic growth; this “relevance” approach stemmed from the experience of WID advocates which illustrated that it was more effective if demands of equity and social justice for women were strategically linked to mainstream development concerns, in an attempt to have WID policy goals taken up by development agencies9.