WID, WAD, GAD: INTEGRATION OF WOMEN, WOMEN'S CONCERNS, AND GENDER ISSUES IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND POLICY DEBATES Valentine M. Moghadam Senior Research Fellow, UNU/WIDER Introduction The field of Women in Development (WID) has grown considerably since its beginnings in the early 1970s. It has also gone through changes in its intellectual and policy focus. Proponents of WID include advocates, practitioners, and scholars (Tinker 1990), feminists and non-feminists, those inspired by Marxist thought and those trained in neoclassical economics. The issues have included welfare, equality, education, employment, poverty-alleviation, efficiency, and empowerment. In general, the field in its various permutations (WID, WAD, GAD), arose from and remains situated in the modernization/modernity/development paradigm, as is suggested by its main conceptual tools and policy foci. WID proponents, and especially the feminist or Marxist inspired advocates/scholars, do not reject "development" per se (or today's term “sustainable human development"), but they tend to be very critical of specific economic policies and they advocate better terms for women in their various productive and reproductive activities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of women-and- development, or gender-and-development (WID/GAD), since its beginnings in the 1970s through the present period. This will entail an intellectual history, a differentiation of those who "do" WID/GAD, a delineation of the various policy approaches, and an assessment of various feminist critiques, including those that interrogate and reconceptualize "development" itself.An Intellectual Overview In this section I survey the making of the field of women-in-development, with an emphasis on the major contributions and some of the current orientations in GAD research. It should be noted that the pre-WID approach to women in development and donor circles was a welfare-oriented one, an approach that took as its point of departure women's roles as mothers. It should be further noted that the three approaches of WID, WAD, and GAD should not been regarded as mutually exclusive or as strictly chronological. Women in Economic Development The Women in Development approach to the study of women in the Third World has dominated the field since the early 1970s. The term WID was coined by development practitioners in Washington D.C. who had been inspired by Ester Boserup’s now classic book, Women's Role in Economic Development, published in 1970. USAID, with its Office of Women in Development, became one of the most resolute advocates of the WID approach, Together with the Harvard Institute of International Development they produced a case study-based methodology to identify how women have been left out of development on the grounds that "women are key actors in the economic system, yet their neglect in development plans has left untapped a potentially large contribution" (Overhalt et al., 1984, p. 3). Boserup’s pioneering contribution, and the research it inspired, viewed inequality between men and women as the effect of women's displacement from productive work caused by imperfections in the modernization process. According to Boserup, colonialism first, and then industrialization, had exacerbated women's subordination and distorted pre-existing patterns of reciprocity and complimentarity between men and women. The solution to women's marginalization and inequality lay in birth control programmes, the incorporation of women into the paid labour force, and an improvement of educational levels. Irene Tinker (1990) points out that economic development was the original primary focus of WID. In the United Nations,the motivation to integrate women into development programming arose from the gender bias that had characterized previous attempts at economic development and so had ignored or undercut women's economic activities. The growing number of women who headed households were particularly disadvantaged, a trend encapsulated in the phrase "the feminization of poverty." National planners may have seen women as an unused labour force, but the thrust of the WID argument was that women were overworked and underproductive in their economic activities. Before being available for alternative work, women needed to be relieved of much of the drudgery characterizing their daily struggle to supply basic necessities to their families. The 1975 UN World Decade for Women spurred the growth of the field, and many books and articles came to be published at this time, largely with a focus on women and economic development. One such book, Women and World Development, with contributions by Fatima Memissi, Deniz Kandiyoti, Hanna Papanek, Marie- Angelique Savané, and others, became very influential. While calling for greater equity between women and men, particularly in regard to education, employment and other material benefits, many WID advocates tend to assume that women will continue to be responsible for reproductive labour. As such, their policies and prescriptions have sought to increase women’s access to social benefits such as education, employment, property, and credit without challenging basic gender stereotypes. The double and triple day, in which women struggle under the burden of both reproductive and productive labour, is thus seen as an inevitable part of women's lives, rather than something requiring the reassessment of societal assumptions about the responsibilities, rights, and relations between men and women. Women and Capitalist Development In the 1970s, critiques of both mainstream development and liberal feminist assumptions began to emerge. Dependency theory and Marxist political economy became fairly influential, the "Third World” was a serious category of analysis, and calls for a New International Economic Order were widespread. UNCTAD and theSouth Commission were established as Third World institutions. Some theorists, such as Samir Amin, called for a "delinking” from the capitalist world market and the establishment of self-reliant, internally-oriented, diversified economies. Multinational corporations were the bogeyman, and foreign investment was considered detrimental to self-reliance (what would now be called sustainability). In the same period, radical feminists began to openly question the possibility that women's lives could be improved within patriarchal and capitalist structures of power, and they too called for delinking from male-dominated institutions. Some writings pointed out that Boserup's perspective did not analyze the effects of capitalist investments on women of different classes, nor did it examine processes of capital accumulation and the consequences of these processes on technical change and women's work (Benerya and Sen 1986). Marxist-feminist research on women in the informal economy, urbanization, and rural-urban migration contributed to this emerging perspective (Deere and Léon de Leal, 1981), as did studies on women and the new international division of labour (Nash and FernJndez-Kelly 1983), on working women in southeast Asia (Heyzer 1986), and on export-led industrialization and female labour (Elson and Pearson 1981). Also. part of this body of literature is the analysis by Maria Mies (1986) of the links between capitalist accumulation and the patriarchal subordination of women. In the Netherlands, action-oriented research studies both reflected the influence of WAD and contributed to its growth, for example, through the creation of the Research and Documentation Centre for Women and Development. These new perspectives inspired a new policy approach to women's development, one that focussed on small-scale, women-only projects designed to circumvent male domination, both from the North and the South. The WAD approach influenced the policy and programmes of many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and became the basis of many NGO activities. WID policy-makers responded to these critiques by modifying mainstream development policy for women. In the place of concem with equality between women and men, they now emphasized basic human needs, particularly for health, education and taining, WID specialists arguedthat this approach would increase women's effectiveness and efficiency at work, as well as reduce fertility, thus assisting both economic development and women's lives. Planners also called for more credit, greater access to land, legal reform and greater female involvement in development planning. Income-generating projects for women and "microenterprises" were (and remain) operational expressions of this approach. This policy orientation has given rise to a plethora of WID-oriented studies on credit for rural women (e.g., Fong and Perrett 1991) and on overcoming sex inequalities in the labour market in the Third World (Anker and Hein 1986). The Turn to Efficiency Parallel to the equity discourse there emerged an argument that the solution to weaknesses or failures in development projects or in programming for the poor was to design development programmes so that women were integrated into them. The growing power of multilateral organizations such as the World Bank may have contributed to the conceptual shift in WID discourse towards the efficiency argument. In addition, the trend in development circles towards alleviation of poverty and meeting basic human needs facilitated the efficiency argument. Characteristic of this trend was the ILO's World Employment Conference in 1976 which, among other things, sought to link the basic-needs and poverty-alleviation strategy with increased employment opportunities, particularly in small enterprises and microenterprises in both rural_and urban areas. One of the best-known and most successful WID projects that combines the efficiency and poverty-alleviation approaches for micro- entrepreneurship is the Grameen Bank, Now that the evidence shows that women have been borrowing and repaying loans from the Grameen Bank and similar institutions at rates far above male borrowers at any level of enterprise (Tinker 1990, p. 39), their resourcefulness and usefulness in development terms has become more widely appreciated. Another contribution to the efficiency approach was through the work of Caroline Moser. Rural development has always preoccupied development agencies,based on the assumption that cities are populated by the middle class, and that the urban poor are better off than their rural cousins. The rapid growth of squatter settlements, however, forced agencies to begin to look at issues of housing and community development. Moser traced the critical role women play in these urban settlements and observed that the management role of women -- which consumes a vast amount of time -- remained unrecognized The WID approach sought to emphasize how a focus on women could contribute to the implementation of dominant development strategies. For example, its focus on poor women in the 1970s was complementary to the dominant World Bank strategy of redistribution with growth. In the 1980s, the World Bank's structural adjustment strategy forced WID proponents to switch to showing how returns on investments could be raised and balance of payments improved through investing in women. Ingrid Palmer’s work on gender and adjustment in Africa is an attempt to argue that gender discrimination in society and gender-blind economic policies "send ripples of inefficiencies throughout the economy" (Palmer 1991, p. 163). The efficiency approach is also dominant among practitioners of reproductive health, family planning, population and development, and education. The essential argument is that having resources allocated to women will raise women's productivity levels; there may or may not be a subtext that reallocating resources to women will lead to women's equality, autonomy, or empowerment. The utility of this approach is that it is more amenable to dialogues with policy-makers who invariably come from a neoclassical economic background, and more effective in winning over policy-makers and bureaucrats. It may be especially useful in the Middle East, where feminist theorizing or even equity arguments may be more counter-productive than effective. Some feminist researchers, however, are skeptical about this approach, finding that it assumes a benign set of institutional arrangements -- and of male policy-makers -~ that can be easily persuaded to alter public policies in favour of women; and that it ignores the role of conflict, social movements, and political action in bringing about the fundamental changes that are called for.Feminist Influences and the Experience of Structural Adjustment In the 1980s, some scholars and activists from both the North and the South began to argue for a new approach to women's development. Influences came from the international political economy literature with its concern about widespread poverty and the internationalization of capitalism, radical-feminist ideas about global patriarchy, and socialist-feminist writings, including analyses by feminists in the South. The 1985 Nairobi Conference encouraged contacts and better understanding between feminists worldwide. It provided a springboard for South-South linkages among women, including the creation of an international organization, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), which grew out of discussions among Third World feminists before the conference. DAWN has continued to organize and deliberate about development issues of concern to women in the South. The group has published a book which emphasizes the importance of listening to and learning from women's diverse experiences and knowledge, and to maintaining a commitment to long-range strategies dedicated to breaking down the structures of inequality between genders, classes and nations. (See Sen and Grown 1987.) Contributing to the emerging GAD approach were feminists at at The Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) in The Hague (where Maria Mies, Kumari Jayawardena, and others were based), and at Sussex University. The latter sponsored a conference and then produced what became an influential book called Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination in International Perspective (Young, Walkowitz and McCullough 1981). This perspective, with its commitment to understanding class, K and gender inequalities in a global context, provided an intellectual meeting point for some like-minded feminists from around the world (Parpart 1994). The resulting dialogue, increasingly known as Gender and Development (GAD), rejects the liberal and radical emphasis on women, and focusses on gender tead, particularly the social construction of gender roles, relations, and hierarchies. In the GAD perspective, gender is seen as the process by which individuals who arebor into biological categories of male or female become the social categories of men and women through the acquisition of locally- or culturally-defined attributes of masculinity and femininity. Among other things, the shift from biology to social construction thus establishes the possibility of transforming gender roles. This approach also emphasizes the importance of examining the gender division of labour in specific societies (e.g., Stichter and Parpart 1990; Ward 1990; Benerga and Feldman 1992), particularly the more invisible aspects of women's work (Benera and Roldan 1987), their spatial arrangements and the relation between these labour patterns and other aspects of gender inequality (Chafetz 1990). It looks at the issue of power as it relates to gender and at strategies for empowering women and challenging the structures and ideas maintaining gender hierarchies (Kabeer 1994). Increasingly, it examines built-in gender bias in the development process (.g., Elson 1991), and connections between gender, family, and economy (Blumberg 1991; Moghadam 1993). A parallel development during this period that also greatly influenced the thinking of women in development, was the experience of structural adjustment and the expansion of neoliberal economic policies. The period of economic difficulties and of adjustment showed that the benefits of targeted projects, and even of long- lasting policies to advance women, could be swept away by macro-level changes and policies. Until the 1980s, WID proponents had mainly viewed development as "something done by development agencies", and "women were in it insofar as they were recipients of projects and programmes" (Elson 1991, p. 13). Prior to the 1980s, the WID policy approach had deliberately avoided questioning the dominant concepts of development. It sought acceptance by mainstream economists in order to emerge from the social welfare category in which the issue of women had been kept and to obtain more funds for the advancement of women. Nuket Kardam (1991) writes that as a result, it consciously accepted compromises about some of the goals WID activists had originally pursued such as empowering women through a process of in- depth social, economic and political change.Structural adjustment, in that it was broadly challenged and criticized for its impact on the poorer countries, on the most vulnerable sections of the population, and on progress towards gender equality, played a key role in initiating anew, more ambitious approach to women and development. The WID movement started to reflect on the type of development in which women were "to be integrated". A gender perspective and a clear will to achieve gender equality had to be part of the overall debate on goals and means of development. There is now a large and growing literature on gender and development (¢.g., Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Elson 1992; Afshar and Dennis 1992; Blumberg 1991; Femnandez-Kelly 1989; Moser 1989.) Sophisticated theoretical work by GAD scholars on gender and macroeconomics, gender and social transformations, gender and industrialization, gender and labour markets, gender and technology, gender and the world-economy Among the initiators of this new, alternative WID approach have been committed activists from the South. Some are grouped in international networks such as DAWN. Many of the members are researchers involved in NGO work. This approach, called by some "global feminism’, by others the "empowerment approach” sees gender inequality as part of a continuum of inequalities between countries, social class and ethnic groups. It stresses the capacity of people, and poor women in particular, to promote their own development, if proper support and a conducive environment are provided. (Some call this "women's self-empowerment”.) The new GAD approach has had considerable influence in academia, but reactions on the part of the large donor agencies have been mixed, particularly because of its fundamental criticisms and its consideration of the need for more profound social transformation (rather than merely new policies). On the other hand, some of the bilaterial donor agencies (most notably the Scandinavians, Dutch and Canadians) and some non-governmental organizations have adopted a more gender- oriented approach to women’s development, including the addtion of gender-analysis training to established WID training programmes. Within the UN system, the most10 enthusiastic supporters include UNIFEM and the Division for the Advancement of ‘Women -- in addition to the WID specialists and researchers in other agencies. Proponents of WID/WAD/GAD Irene Tinker has identified "WID proponents" as: (a) advocates (who inclulde feminists), (b) practitioners (mainly from the multilateral and bilateral donor agencies), and (c) scholars (who are usually feminists). These three have not, and do not, always agree on the issues; their respective approaches and prescriptions on particular issues may be quite different, sometimes irreconcilably. Practitioners ahve tended to selectively and sometimes simplistically adapt some of the ideas and concepts of the scholars, and try to "bring them down to earth” in policy and programme terms. This is, in one sense, a laudable effort, because it is salutary to operationalize abstractions, especially when they pertain to the well-being, equality, and empowerment of disadvantaged peole, in our case, women, But in another sense, the final produce is somewhat different from the original conceptualization. For example, "gender" and "gender analysis" may mean something different to a typical World Bank functionary than it does to a feminist scholar. Certainly the dimension of differential power relations and the need for transformation is absent in the former's understanding, which will emphasize market forces instead. (The term "empowerment" has also now been appropriated by non-feminists and even by right- wing pundits in the United States.) The figure below illustrates the different approaches to the issues by the various groups of WID practitioners.ul Viewpoints of Women in Development Proponents: Issues and Responses Proponents Issues ‘Advocates: Practitioners Scholars Economic ‘Adverse impact Efficiency Count women's development Integrate women economic activities Classigender Equality Legal rights Income as liberating Patriarchy major constraint Empowerment Form women's Women-only projects Global feminism organizations Distinct values Education Access to professional Nonformal education Scientific and schools technical Revise content for sex bias Employment Affirmative action Microenterprise Sexual division of Basis for status labour Welfare Seen as Participation in health, Dual roles dependency creating population and Female sphere housing programmes Efficiency Integration Sectoral programmes _Not feminist ‘Source: Tinker (1990), p. 36. In contrast to the efficiency approach which sees women, and gender, as instrumental in the realization of development objectives, the GAD approach sees gender as a powerful social force, or as a variable, that influences the operations of labour markets and other social institutions. Fernndez-Kelly (1989: 623-624) writes: ‘The need to support families has led [women] to become wage earners. However, caring for families often prevents them from holding jobs. That tension, resulting from a systematic requirement to maintain a devalued reproductive sphere outside the realm of paid employment, has been tenuously resolved in three complementary ways. First, women have clustered in a few niches of the occupational structure where jobs are seen as an extension of their domestic responsibilities. Second, those jobs have been assigned low productivity and wages... Finally, the two phenomena have been captured in ideological constructions that define women's paid employment as a supplement to that of men. .... Gender acts as an independent variable affecting alternatives in the labour market. Women earn lower wages than men simply because they are female.12 Recognizing Common and Divergent Needs and Interests Among Women The WID, WAD, and GAD approaches all recognize differentiation among women: principally North-South differences and social differences, and in many societies racial and ethnic differences as well. These differences are not, however, adequately theorized. "Class" is not a term widely used among development practitioners; the gender-class dialectic is rarely elaborated in GAD research, and the focus remains on "empowering women' (including elite women in decision-making positions). Many feminist scholars, however, continue to emphasize social relations, social hierarchies, class structure, and ethnic divisions. Among such thinkers, there is consensus that although gender is a central source of inequality and of people's differential access to resources and power, gender intersects with class and ethnicity in the determination of such access (Moghadam 1990, 1993; Bener,sa and Roldan 1987). A corollary is that while most women around the world engage in reproductive and productive activities alike, class and ethnicity again shape the kinds of work women do and their reproductive patterns, including fertility and health. The earlier arguments between Third World feminists concerned about poor women and basic needs and First World feminists concerned with gender equality at all levels, and arguments regarding the uniform versus divergent nature of women's interests and needs seem to have been overcome by innovative conceptual work and development planning designs. Caroline Moser introduced a framework for planning for low-income women in the Third World that was based on women's interests, or what she calls their prioritized concems. Drawing from earlier conceptual work by Maxine Molyneux, Moser identifies women's needs, strategic gender needs, and practical gender needs. As she points out, the concept of women's interests assumes compatibility of interest based on biological similarities: "In fact the position of women in society depends on a variety of different criteria, such as class and ethnicity as well as gender, and consequently the interests they have in common may be13 determined as much by their class position or their ethnic identity as by their biological similarity as women" (Moser 1989:1803). "Women's interests" are specific to particular class, ethnic, or age groups within a given society. "Practical gender interests" are inductive and usually formulated by women (or men) in concrete positions within the gendered division of labour; these do not challenge the division of labour itself or gender inequality more broadly. For example, if within a given division of labour women are responsible for childcare including nutrition and health, then they may articulate concems with food subsidies, prenatal care or immunizations. Policies aimed at these interests will alleviate some of the burden while not questioning the gendered basis of the division of labour. By contrast, "strategic gender interests", according to Molyneux (1986:284) "are derived ... deductively .. from an analysis of women's subordination and from the formulation of an alternative, more satisfactory set of arrangements". Thus, strategic gender interests often the form of broad reforms which question the structural basis of gender inequality: suffrage, legal reform of family law, freedom of choice over childbearing, overcoming the sexual division of labour. Moser adopted Molyneux's analytical distinction to a gender-and-development framework for planning purposes which usefully identifies and distinguishes practical and strategic gender needs in various areas, including gender needs in employment, gender needs in human settlement and housing, and gender needs in basic services. Evolution of WID Policy Approaches The proliferation of WID, WAD, and GAD research and advocacy has forced policy-makers to shift their focus from a concern with welfare-oriented, family- centered programmes which assumed motherhood as the most important role for women in the development process, to a diversity of approaches emphasizing the productive role of women. Buvinic (1983) and Moser (1989) have identified a number of policy approaches to women in the Third World: welfare, equity, anti-poverty, efficiency, and empowerment.14 ep esounszagpen'D ‘STOnezTeRTS ‘Auunjon paoueuysapun 0 qywou8 ueoypubie moje sueeUl "usin uisunwo) WersapA Je souepiony “sapuabe pue tuoyssaiddo sueow 5 Nod ‘SuoWwoM :2oue} 1498 so}e—6 ‘yBnouy} Uowom samoduse o1, “Aueyndod pay ‘Suunp payesojeo0e ‘suoyezvebso toossse16 pue Bunn tuo} 5 uOWOM PHOM pany = wauiamodusa sapuebe ‘Aunba ym payeoosse se uses uojedioqied a1uouooe s,uowiom ‘enpaye aiow pue 1uaWe ‘rou 8 quaurdojenap aunsu9 O], yoeordde Jeindod sow mou ‘S096 180d ‘a waunsnipe pue oe yoeordde IM wweunwopaid mou pue PIE ‘kasouoo9 plow uy von fovaoya fvo6a}e0 ayeiedas Potetes! uswom 100d ‘iy us vam 10; Ainba UreB OL ‘apeseq ‘yueiadod ‘suewon, sours pue Buunp plemuo sou6 dope oy exdwoue secu ‘uowom 40} 992900 Nn J0 woneseoop - woupuowy ‘span o1seg puP UNIO, forag uo sista; puom Www uounquisipaas © paxuy = ye14 pue druesog jo aouany 40 osne009 hynbo umop paud) - vuonez - uyoeoidde aim purses yoeosdce GINA IeUI6U0 Ayanod-auy ‘Aynba, <= (AIM) ,wowdojanog v1 uawonn, —> ‘9081.4 (6961) 28074 ‘e0un0g ‘Spo0u J0pu06 DIBSIEAS “NOS wowed, pazuBooe 59101 pue y0u vowom 10 SD00N uouidoyanop ul ojos wenodu SOU 04) $e UOOE 5) SIN, ‘sreyjow sanaq se woudoyanep ‘qu Uawom BuL9 OL seeding seindod pasn flap Ns Inq 01-0964 SOW POU, pow wouidojanap onowoo9 yrroi6 payeiojeode juoneziwapOw - sub eueyem sanss} UaWOM PHOM PAIL 0} SeyDeOIdde Aajjod yuaLEIG15 I have appended Moser's own tabular summary of the different approaches, which includes information on the origins of each approach, the period during which they were most popular, the stated purpose or goal of each approach, the needs of women that are met and the roles that are recognized, and Moser's commentary. Again, these approaches should not be seen as mutually exclusive or necessarily chronological; there is some overlap and crisscrossing. However, they can be distinguished from one another -- as Moser has usefully done ~- and also identified with various international organizations: Welfare UNICEF Equity DAW and WID focal points in various UN agencies Anti-poverty World Bank in 1970s; ILO Efficiency World Bank 1980s/90s Empowerment UNIFEM, UNDP/HDR Office, UNFPA, NGOs, some bilaterals As can be seen, the WID policy approach has evolved from an earlier emphasis on women's role as mothers to one that stresses the resource that women represent for economic and social development, and the positive link between economic participation and women's emancipation. WID sub-approaches have included one which favoured the achievement of equity of rights between men and women, another which was mainly concerned with the fate of poor women, and a later one which, against the background of adjustment programmes of the 1980s, stressed that maximizing female paid or unpaid contribution ensured more efficient investments and balance of payments equilibrium. The pertinent policy strategies have evolved from the implementation of small-scale income generating programmes to the objective of mainstreaming women in all policies, that is, ensuring that all policies, including sector-focussed programmes and policies aiming at influencing the functioning of the entire economy, be gender-aware.16 Integrating and Mainstreaming WID/Gender in the UN It should be noted that the GAD approach is being adopted in the United Nations system, at least in principle, and that "mainstreaming" is the official objective. The Division for the Advancement of Women -- the secretariat of the world conferences on women and the host of the annual inter-agency consultations and expert-group meetings -- has been advocating a gender analysis to issues of poverty, housing, health, education, employment, conflict, and so on. The 1994 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development is expressly based on a gender approach: One of the most important steps for researchers and activists in the field of ‘Women in Development has been the recognition that so called "women's issues" cannot be resolved in isolation from a broader reflection on the socially constructed relationships between men and women and more generally on social and economic structures and trends. In the 1990s, changing the status of women appears impossible in the absence of a rethinking by the whole society, and the type of development it pursues. This has reinforced the conclusion that advancing women cannot be a marginal exercise of micro level projects. Nor will gender aware sectorial or macro-level plans be sufficient. The entire range of social and economic relations and policies needs to be reviewed from a gender perspective and the concern for gender has to permeate the process of defining the goals pursued through development. It should be a category of analysis against which to evaluate the risks associated with current trends, the success or failure of development strategies and State policies, in particular in the field of education, employment, family law, population policy as well as national development plans generally. In 1992 the WID Division of UNDP was renamed the Gender in Development Programmeme (GIDP), which reflects both the influence of the GAD approach and UNDP's new emphasis on human-centred development. The UNDP has produced an7 information package entitled "Programming Through the Lens of Gender" (UNDP 1994) which describes the steps taken by UNDP in developing its strategy for mainstreaming women's issues into the priority thematic areas of its programming work: poverty alleviation, environment, management development, transfer of technology, and technical cooperation among developing countries. As the Administrator writes: "UNDP is committed to a gender approach as an alternative and a complement to women-specific programming approach because we believe that increasing the participation of women in the decisions, events and processes which shape their lives is central to bringing about sustainable human development." The overview booklet states: Gender is the social construction of men's and women's roles in a given culture or location. Gender roles are distinguished from sex roles, which are biologically determined. ... Mainstreaming women and women's issues is a strategic planning process to incorporate the specific and complementary roles of men and women into development. The goal is to ensure equal access for women to decision- making, productive resources and development benefits. ... The gender approach consists of a set of tools and processes for understanding how relationships between men and women influence development. The gender approach involves analysis and planning procedures that take gender issues into account, and that aim to create more equitable gender relations, ... Gender-specific data and statistics are facts about women and men that can be analysed to reveal important information about gender roles. Gender statistics are the basis upon which gender sound policies and programmes are formulated. (UNDP 1994.) The UN Regional Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), commissioned a significant book entitled Integration of Women's Concerns into Development Planning in Asia and the Pacific (UN 1992), with contributions by well- known male and female economists from the region. Although the approach taken is18 neoclassical, the various chapters do a solid job of integrating women into the analysis of the allocation of resources from the household, market, and government. The opening chapter by Amartya Sen addresses the question of what "women’s concerns” are, and distinguishes between well-being and agency. It also emphasizes the interdependence of the market, the goverment, and the household for determining policy priorities to integrate women's concerns into development efforts, Nirmala Banerjee's chapter focuses on household-oriented barriers and constraints on advancement of women, such as the anti-female child bias in households which adversely affects the nutritional status and life expectancy of women; educational deprivation of women as a result of parental perceptions of the importance of education vis-a-vis the imperative of girls' family responsibilities from an early age; family ideology in some societies restricting women's physical mobility, confining them to home-based work; and consideration of household tasks in all societies as the exclusive domain of women. Noting that "for a very large number of women of this region, development so far has not provided even the minimum requirements of human life", Banerjee calls for immediate public action of their behalf, the most basic of which is education for girls, as well as provision of water and fuel to ease the burden of household work. Frances Perkins examines women's market-oriented work and patterns of women's employment, with a view towards recommending strategies to increase the participation of women in economic development. She deais with the effects of policies pertaining to trade, the macro economy, structural adjustment, taxation, and the financial sector on the advancement of women, Her chapter attempts to test whether there is a relationship between the pursuit of outward-oriented economic policies and an improvement in the economic position of women. In comparing the relatively closed economies of south Asia (now opening up) and the export-led economies of southeast and east Asia, she finds that women's employment levels, income, and educational attainment are higher in the latter than in the former.19 The chapter by Rehman Sobhan examines gender bias in allocation of resources by Government and criticizes the current approaches to integrating women's concerns into development planning in selected countries. It examines women's participation in politics and government administration, and shows that while women have been the head of Government in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines (and more recently in Bangladesh), there were no significant breakthroughs in the circumstances of women during their tenure; neither did women's representation in parliament or government administration increase sufficiently. Sobhan proposes far- reaching recommendations to improve gender equality, such as inducting women into government administration by placing five to six women in key ministries over the next five years as secretaries (or similar positions) of ministries of planning, agriculture, industry, labour, and finance; adopting a system of separate electorates for an interim period, say 10 years, where women would vote separately from men to elect women. to the legislatures. Under such a system a certain number (say one-third to one-fourth) of the seats would be asigned in the legislature exclusively to women. Under that system women would have two votes whereby they would vote ordinarily as well as_ only for women in order to give rise to a new breed of women who would not necessarily be elected under the normal system. The World Bank continues its work on women's health (including the Safe Motherhood initiative) and its research and policy work on the importance of women's education to national development, However, the World Bank has been criticized for the adverse social effects that its stabilization and adjustment policies have had, in precisely the areas of health, education, and welfare (¢.g., Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Comia, Jolly, and Stewart 1987). As mentioned above, much current GAD research critically examines macroeconomic policies from a gender perspective and finds World Bank policy prescriptions gender-biased and even inefficient (e.g., Elson 1991; Joekes 1989). The assessment and evaluation of mainstreaming or of integrating women's concems into development planning and specific projects is beyond the scope of this20 paper. This issue is, however, the subject of considerable discussion and many workshops and policy papers at the present time. Perhaps it is because of awareness of the difficulty of integrating women into development projects ~- or the resistance to it ~ that calls have been made for "gender conditionality” (see, e.g., Moghadam 1994) to be added to the growing list of "social conditionalities" that many European donor countries have established (which are at the present time human rights, good govemance, democracy, and the environment). What Are We Integrating Women Into?: New Critiques and Alternatives A more fundamental concern is that current world-market and political realities militate against the investments in women that WID, WAD, and GAD proponents call for; that NGOs are being asked to take on too much responsibility for the advancement of women, perhaps as a way of relieving states of the financial and moral responsibility to do so; and that global economic restructuring and the trend towards flexible labour markets, informalization, casualization, and so on are inimical to the objectives of equality and empowerment. Persistent inequalities -- social and gender alike -- are thus seen as systemic rather than the result of misguided policies (Moghadam 1994). In a recent paper, Jane Parpart (1994) notes that although GAD proponents rarely reject or question modemist assumptions, the GAD perspective provides the possible discursive space to do so. She observes that most development practitioners are situated squarely in the modernization paradigm, but that new thinking is questioning the validity of this assumption. She writes: Drawing on the postmodern critique of the modern and the crucial relationship between power and language, some scholars are questioning the underlying assumptions of development with its uncritical identification with westernization‘modemization. This critique of the modem, concem with difference and focus on the power of language has influenced the thinking of some21 feminists concerned with women’s development in the Third World. It has led to new questions, particularly a critique of development specialists’ representation of the Third World as the vulnerable "other", and an awareness that these representations have often undermined indigenous women's knowledge and self- confidence. It overestimates the knowledge of Western "experts" and devalues developmental solutions coming out of the South. This approach argues for a more careful attention to language and to the specific contexts and locales in which peoples lives are played out. It rejects analysis that draws primarily on macro- economic data and broad generalizations, and urges scholars to investigate the interstices of daily life, the small exchanges between women and men, which reveal changes in gender relations that cannot be seen at the macro-level (Parpart, forthcoming). Although in one respect I agree with Parpart's critique of the dominant modernization paradigm -- especially the current one associated with the international financial institutions, neoliberal economics, and the notion of the inevitability and desirability of free markets -- I do not agree that the postmodern approach can be fruitfully applied towards an analysis of or resolution to the socio-economic and political problems of our times. (The most blatantly irrelevant and morally outrageous application was Baudrillard's depiction of the Gulf War as mere text.) Nor do I think that the objectives of modemization or development should be abandoned, although it is important to define these concepts and objectives in a way that is compatible with feminist and progressive agendas. The critique of structural adjustment and the "50 Years Are Enough” campaign have put the World Bank on the defensive, and have emboldened the UNDP to elaborate its "people-first" notion of development -- “human development" or "sustainable human development". The authors of the Human Development Report (UNDP, 1990-1994) argue that to live along and healthy life, to be educated and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living are the most critical of22 human capabilities and choices. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and personal self-respect. Development enables people to have these choices, by creating a conducive environment for people, individually and collectively, to develop their full potential and to have a reasonable chance of leading productive and creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests. In this definition, genuine human development encompasses more than GNP growth, more than income and wealth and more than producing commodities, accumulating capital and balancing budgets. Development is about people and societies, about quality of life and the enlargement of human capabilities and people's choices. Or as Kari Polanyi Levitt has put it, "Development is ultimately . .. [a matter] of the capacity of a society to tap the root of popular creativity, to free up and empower people’ (Levitt, 1990: 1594). Thus, parallel to the market dogma of economists and politicians, there is also the revival of interest in poverty alleviation and productive employment. These are, in fact, two of the three priority themes of the UN World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 6-12 March 1995), the third theme being social integration. The main UN agencies behind this are the UNDP and ILO, with research work also carried out by UNU/WIDER and by UNRISD. The Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 9-16 September 1995) will also take a decidedly radical approach, a gender-informed interrogation of neoliberal policies, flexibilization and casualization of labour markets. At present, therefore, we may identify two, somewhat opposing development camps. On the one side are advocates of a people-first approach, with their concer for the social ramifications of economic policies and restructuring. On the other side are advocates of the market-first approach, with their emphasis on economic growth. The GAD specialists are almost entirely in the first camp.23 Macro and Micro Linkages in Gender and Development: Key Propositions GAD researchers and feminist social scientists have contributed in important ways to the critique of (mal)development, to the refinement and elaboration of concepts (especially those of production, reproduction, division of labour, allocation of resources, and gender bias), and to the integration of women's concerns in development thinking, development policies, and development cooperation. They have shown not only how economic policies have gender-specific effects, but how gender itself shapes attitudes, policies, and outcomes, at both macro and micro levels. Below I list some of the key propositions in the GAD literature linking women, family, and the economy. As will be seen, these propositions combine the equity, efficiency, and empowerment approaches. * Access to and control over productive resources are the most important sources of the relative power and well-being of men and women (Blumberg 1991: 100-101). + When women are in the main “only” wives and mothers, and not seen as economically active, they are so short-changed in the allocation of resources that, their chances for survival are reduced, + The greater women's relative economic power, the greater their self-esteem and control over their own lives. + The greater a woman's relative economic power, the greater her control over a variety of "life options", including marriage, divorce, fertility, overall household authority, and various types of household decisions. + There is a negative relation between a woman's education and income, on the one hand, and fertility on the other. The greater a woman's access to economic resources, the greater the likelihood that her fertility pattern will reflect her own perceived utilities and preferences (rather that those of her mate, family, or the state). Conversely, where women do not have adequate access to the means of24 production, and where men and women see children as unsubstitutable sources of labour, future crisis aid, old-age security, and so forth, they may want more. Where women have access to the means of production and income under their own control, household welfare increases, child well-being improves, and household decision-making become more participatory and equitable. Men and women have different patterns of expenditure and consumption. Women tend to spend income that flows through their hands differently than men, holding back less for personal use and devoting more to children's nutrition and family welfare. ‘As women tend to be the primary cultivators of food crops in most of the developing world (especially sub-Saharan Africa), the neglect of female farmers ‘(and their income incentives) may contribute to outcomes ranging from failed development projects to famines. National development is limited or is adversely affected when: female human capital is under-developed, female labour is under-utilized, and women are deliberately marginalized or excluded from the development process. Household welfare (and the well-being of children) is limited or is adversely affected when: women have no access to the means of production; they have no control over their income; they are denied literacy, education, or healthcare. Male bias in the development process -- the absence of a gender analysis in programme and project formulation, and the concomitant marginalization or devaluation of women producers -- could lead to outcomes such as failed development projects, household poverty, increased workloads for women, or labour migration. Although the supply of female labour may be affected by variables associated with class, caste, ethnicity, race, and age (social and gender variables), women's ability and willingness to enter and remain within the labour force depends upon the availability of institutional supports with respect to reproductive activities and childcare, as well as wage rates and income levels.25 + Women's practical gender needs and strategic gender interests are highly influenced by economic conditions and by economic policy (fashioned by states and international agents like). The more gender-sensitive the economic (and social) policy, the greater the likelihood that gender relations could become more equitable. + Change in the structure of labour force opportunities and rewards is key to gender equity. + Productive employment generation along with enhanced access to the means of production are prerequisites for social and gender equity, and for the goal of sustainable development. * Planning for and meeting women's practical and strategic gender needs may be incumbent upon a socially necessary rate of growth which in tum requires a resource shift from North to South as well as redistribution and a reallocation of resources within developing countries. Conelusions Since the political and social status of women is secondary to that of men in most_societies, proposing an improvement in their status could similarly be viewed as a threat to the status quo. But women -- as women and as workers -- have demonstrated a capacity for collective action through their participation in movements and organizations for change. Women are not only victims of bad policies but are actors in their own right and agents of social change. Moreover, as a result of WID/WADIGAD research and advocacy, of women's movements and of the efforts of various UN agencies, élites are beginning to recognize the practical benefits of gender awareness and of increased attention to women's work and women's lives. They are more cognizant that women tend to spend a high proportion of earnings to improve family well-being, and that development programmes or changes in laws, regulations and customs to build women's economic productivity and improve their earning capacity will have direct benefits for families as well. Using the efficiency language, it26 is clear that both the imperatives of distributive justice and concerns about societal development call for women's access to productive resources (employment, training, credit, land, extension services, legal reform), access to basic goods and services (household needs, education, health, childcare services) and external resource flows (such as debt reduction and gender-aware development cooperation). In turn, these contribute to the long-term goals of gender equality and the empowerment of women.27 References Afshar, Haleh and Carolyne Dennis, eds. 1992. Women and Adjustment Policies in the Third World. MacMillan. ‘Anker, Richard and Catherine Hein, eds. 1986. Sex Inequalities in Urban Employment in the Third World, Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: MacMillan. Benersa, Lourdes and Shelley Feldman, eds. 1992. Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and Women's Work. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 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