Textbook Chapter 4: Gender Planning

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Textbook Chapter 4 Gender Planning Development

• Third World Policy Approaches to Women in
  Development

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Overview of Policy Approaches to slide 2 Women
in Development

• Concern for low-income womens need coincided
  with the recognition of the importance of womens
  role in development
• Since 1950, innumerous policies, programs
  projects have ignored womens role in development
• Recently a shift in policy approaches towards
  women took place from welfare approach to equity
  to anti-poverty to efficiency approach and
  finally the most recent approach is the
  empowerment approach
• This shift happened from modernization policies
  of accelerated growth through focus on basic and
  practical needs to re-distribution and
  compensatory measures associated with structural
  policies
• Despite this, women in development are still
  undergoing a process of struggle for gender
  planning in order to meet womens strategic and
  practical needs
• This requires womens active participation in the
  planning and implementation processes
• Hence, it is important for planners to understand
  the implications of their interventions in terms
  of limitations and potential in assisting Third
  World women
• To examine policies effectiveness, we need to
  assess how these policies recognize womens roles
  and the extent which their practical and
  strategic needs are met
• Shift in approaches can take place during
  formulation of plans or the implementation of
  these plans

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slide3 Review of Major Approaches

• Welfare Approach
• Equity Approach
• Anti-Poverty Approach
• Efficiency Approach
• Empowerment Approach

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Slide4 1- Welfare Approach

• Welfare Approach 1950-1960, this is the earliest
  approach concerning women in developing countries
• Its purpose is to bring women into development
  as better mothers
• Women seen as passive recipients of free goods
  services
• It seeks to meet practical gender needs by
  top-down hand-outs of food-aid, nutrition and
  family planning
• It is non-challenging to womens subordinate
  position hence, it is very popular
• It is modeled after the colonial approach prior
  to the Third World countries independence
• Their goal is the maintenance of trade, mineral
  and agricultural expansion
• Social needs was ignored under the assumption
  that individuals must satisfy their needs in the
  market-place therefore, government left the
  social welfare concerns to the volunteer
  organizations
• Since women were seen as the main beneficiaries
  as wives and mothers, most volunteers were women
  who managed the welfare because it was cheap and
  effective
• Women were marginalized with the sick, disabled
  and the vulnerable
• In training, it focuses on women being housewives
  and how to help them become better mothers
• For this, we see refugee camps focus on pregnant
  and lactating women since womens reproductive
  role, including limiting fertility through forced
  contraceptive use and other population programs
  are considered womens sole responsibility
• Top-down hand-outs creates dependency
• This approach does not question womens role
  within gendered division of labor
• Third World women see themselves responsible for
  childbearing as social duty rather than personal
  matter and their bodies are pawns in the hands of
  the state, religion, male heads of household and
  private corporations
• By 1970, this approach was rejected because it
  affected women negatively

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Slide5 2- Equity Approach

• This approach addresses women in development from
  1970-1985
• Its goal is to gain womens equity in development
  processes
• Women seen as active participants in development
• It recognizes womens triple role
• It seeks to meet womens strategic needs through
  state intervention
• It seeks to give women political economic
  autonomy
• It challenges womens subordination
• Although women are main contributors to their
  community productivity, their contribution is not
  considered in the national data, planning, or
  implementation
• Highly technical agricultural projects affected
  women negatively and displaced them from
  traditional productivity and diminished their
  supplemental income from the informal sector
• Consequently, womens status declined in
  developing countries
• Equity approach is top-down legislative planning
  to ensure equity and consultative participatory
  is assumed while in actuality is questionable
• Consequently, Third World bottom-up womens
  organizations began to call for integrating women
  into the development process to ensure their
  participation and improve their options in
  society
• To examine validity of this approach, we need to
  look at its accomplishments in terms of womens
  rights to divorce, child custody, rights to own
  property, access to credit, voting, and other
  civil rights

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Slide6 3- Anti-Poverty Approach

• Its purpose is to ensure that poor women increase
  their productivity
• It recognizes womens productive role
• It seeks to meet practical gender needs through
  employment in small income-generating projects
• Economic inequality is linked to poverty rather
  than insubordination (toned down equity approach)
• It recognizes Equity Approach failure with its
  accelerated growth hence, it shifted to
  low-income womens basic needs (food, shelter,
  clothing)
• It focused on womens productive role on the
  basis that poverty alleviation requires increased
  womens productivity and that womens poverty is
  due to lack of access to private land ownership
  and capital
• Despite this intent, women still lack access to
  raw materials, small production facilities and
  markets due to cultural constraints that restrict
  women from mobility outside the domestic arena
• Lack of collateral means lack of credit, which in
  turn leads to inability to expand in enterprises
• Until womens domestic labor and childcare
  responsibilities are partiality alleviated,
  ignoring womens reproductive role increases
  womens burden drastically

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slide7 4- Efficiency Approach

• Its purpose is to ensure efficient effective
  development through womens economic contribution
  (1980s)
• It relies on womens flexible time within their
  triple role assumption that women can work as
  long as possible
• This approach recognizes that 50 of human
  resources are ready for development were wasted
  and under-utilized and that including them is
  crucial for developments total success
• This approach did not achieve much due to lack of
  education training
• This approach did not consider womens un-paid
  time, but introduced the self-help concept and
  the need for greater efficiency
• Meanwhile, women proven more reliable in
  re-paying credits and were better builders
• During budget cuts, planners relied more on
  womens flexibility of labor to increase food
  production and to reduce purchasing and
  consumption, which in turn increased womens
  domestic work, reproductive and managing human
  resources
• Unpaid labor of childcare, gathering fuel,
  processing food and nursing the sick and elderly
  continued regardless of the pressure to increase
  womens economic productivity. These excessive
  demands exasperated the pressure on women by
  pushing them to the breaking point.
• With increased demand for elasticity womens time
  and balancing their time between paid and un-paid
  work, mostly took place on the cost of womens
  reproductive work. That forced women to leave
  childcare to their young daughters, which led to
  the disintegration of the household.
• Pressure to switch from un-tradable to tradable
  labor-intensive manufacturing crops for export
  left women with less time for subsistence
  production, which resulted in child malnutrition

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Slide8 5-Empowerment Approach

• Empowerment Approach is primarily expressed by
  Third World women
• Its purpose is to empower women through greater
  self-reliance
• It recognizes womens triple role
• It seeks to meet strategic gender needs through
  bottom-up mobilization around practical gender
  needs
• It is popular only among Third World NGOs women
• Its strategies to change the position of Third
  World women
• It stems from grass-roots organizational
  experiences of Third World women
• Empowerment Approach acknowledges womens
  inequalities and that subordination begins within
  the family
• It maintains that women have to challenge
  oppressive structures at all costs and levels
• It questions some fundamental assumptions
  concerning the interrelationship between power
  and development
• It seeks more capacity and self-reliance and
  inner-strength, this means rights to
  determination, choices in life and to influence
  the direction of change through gaining control
  of resources
• The Empowerment Approach looks at how women
  historically and currently have had no choice in
  defining the kind of society they want
• During Nairobis International Womens
  Conference, the purpose was to formulate a vision
  of an alternative future society
• It requires transformation of the subordination
  structure, such as changes in laws, civil codes,
  property rights, and labor codes, if women are to
  obtain justice in society
• Recognition of limitation of top-down government
  legislation will not be implemented without
  sustained and systematic efforts of womens
  organizations in order to include consultative
  and participatory action during planning
  procedures
• Only then legal changes, political mobilization,
  consciousness raising and education can ensure
  gender planning takes place effectively