Gender and Development

Marxist Feminist: Capitalism is to blame for women's oppression in society

Radical Feminist: Men create Patriarchy and oppress women, the solution is political lesbianism

Liberal Feminist: Things for women are gradually getting better but are still not equal

Difference Feminist: Women in different cultures have different experiences of oppression

-Since the mid 1990’s there has been an increase in women’s involvement in development policy e.g. world bank and UN -Millennium Development Goals have specialist goals to help women: goal 3 to promote gender equality and empower women -NGOs have created products that have created an increase in power for women (microcredit)

Nationality

Patriarchal culture leads to child gender preference and gender selective abortion

Morality

Women generally outlive men, however this is not true everywhere

Household

Power within men may favour men and make decision-making unfair. Gender Division of Labour

Basic Facilities

Women lack access to institutions, in particular education

Special Opportunities

Beyond the basic facilities women encounter more barriers with higher education

Professional

Horizontal and vertical segregation in the workplace restrict women's opportunities leading to under representation

Ownership

Assets are shared unequally and can restrict women’s social influence and their ability to engage in buisness

•Traditional cultural factors are to blame for women's oppression

•Women have little status and therefore suffer patriachy

•70,000 teenage girls as young as 10 are married every day

•14 million girls under 18 are already mothers

EVALUATION 

•For all of this to happen the developing world need to be changed into the model western woman- ethnocentric •There are some values that women in developing countries hold that do empower women

• Muslim women wear Burkas in order to protect them from the ‘hands’ of men, it controls the men's perceptions of women

• Feminist (liberal) 
• Danish economist 
• Her work and books encouraged aid agencies to question gender neutrality  in costs and benefits of development 
• she looked at how jobs were divided between men and women and and type of education needed to enhance development 
• shift; womens contributions both paid and domestic contributed to national economies 
• others also argued that costs of economic development were shouldered by women 
• example: in Africa many agricultural activities carried out by women 

There are 3 perspectives that explain how women experience development

Intergration thesis:

• modernisation theory
• through Rostows ladder women are intergrated into society              (traditional cultures are patriarchal)
• this challenges patriarchy an MNCs need women            (Rostows ladder and development require this attitude to change)
• leads to financial independence from men and less oppresssion 

exploitation thesis: Neo marxist theory

• Women are cheap to employ
• complient;less likely to form union and rebel. low skiled less moaning as they will be appreciative for the job 

marginalisation thesis:

• Dependency theory 
• men are integrated into society by working   (colonial powers bought a disregard for women with them)
• women are therefore excluded and become reliant on husbands (this was imposed on the societies)
• patriarchal society creted 

•70,000 teenage girls as young as 10 are married every day •14 million girls under 18 are already mothers

• Bottom up aid approach addresses the needs of the individual. Development project in the past have had a tendency to look at impacts on national levels and men and women collectively 
• men are also poor in the developing world although do not have same level of inequality as have more power and income than women more involved in politics and and literate, so have more career opportunities 
• aid is not gender neutral, comes with western values attatched thus male dominated values eg agricultural programmes aimed at men as it is assumed men are more suited to scientific training, despite women playing vital role in farming