1. GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT
Reading assignment:
Kathryn B. Ward and Jean Larson Pyle, 1995, “Gender, Industrialization, Transnational Corporations and Development: An Overview of Trends and Patterns” in From Modernization to Globalization, eds. Timmons and Hite (book is on SKL reserves)

2. Millennium Development Goal 3: Gender equality
Gender Empowerment Measure:
Gender-related development index:
Gender gap in infant mortality:
Gender gap index:

3. “Women in Development” approach in the 1970s (WID)
A convergence among:
--modernization theory
--liberal feminism
--international development agencies
Main proponents: Irene Tinker, Ester Boserup, etc.

4. The processes behind the rise of WID
- Rise of liberal feminism in the US
Poor results of the development project, especially for women:
-- high population growth
-- increasing poverty, feminization of poverty
-- low productivity in agriculture
-- growth of the informal sector
UN women’s conference in Mexico City in 1975: “Decade of women”

5. WID Irene Tinker: Gender bias against women in development policies
The goals of the WID approach:
Equality before law for women, educational opportunities, empowerment, income earning opportunities, welfare (birth control and food aid)

6. Ester Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970)
-gender-based division of labor in most countries in agriculture
-colonization left a negative legacy for women (losing of land rights; no access to technology, to credit, etc.)
-women’s and men’s participation in urban labor markets is differentiated
Boserup’s suggestions: equality of opportunity for women; participation in the market will bring positive results

7. The main contribution of WID perspective:
Until the 1970s, women were considered by the development agencies only in terms of “welfare” considerations (population control, social aid)
But Boserup’s book brought attention to women’s roles as economic actors: food production, wage employment, etc.

8. Criticisms against WID
assumes that the experience of Third World women are the same everywhere: they are all oppressed!
assumes that equity and opportunity will bring positive results for women
overlooks class differentiation in Third World countries
ignores the sphere of household production and reproduction and women’s crucial role in both
It has created a discourse about Third World women as sexually repressed, poor, ignorant, uneducated, traditional, etc.
But women have agency; they resist oppression

9. Critical approaches to women’s role in development
Women are active agents of development
Patriarchy is not a uniform social order
 Policy makers and social scientists should focus on gender relations at home, in the workplace, and in the society
Participation of women in the market (income opportunities) has complex consequences (not simply positive or negative)

10. Women’s work What is work? Paid labor Informal paid labor
Unpaid household labor (subsistence and reproduction)
 Women have a “triple shift”

11. Based on this definition of work, in what areas are women active?
-- population growth, environmental management
-- food production
-- formal wage work
-- informal wage work
-- women’s migration

12. Women and “population control”
1960s-1970s: population control was considered to be a variable in development
How to elevate women’s status? More education, more access to family planning
This perspective has since been criticized
Why?

13. Women as “environmental managers”
1980s-2000s: population control is linked to environmental protection
High population growth  strain on natural resources  deforestation
Solution: women as “environmental managers” : elevate women’s status  fertility decline
How to elevate women’s status? More education, more access to family planning
Any criticisms?

14. Women as food producers
Women as producers of food
Men as wage cash earners (mining, factory work, seasonal migration)
Women have limited access to cash, credit and land
 Rural poverty

15. Women as income earners
Since the 1970s, urban labor participation rate of women has increased in the developing world
Women as factory workers
Women as homeworkers
Women in the informal economy
Why?
The New International Division of Labor  relocation of manufacturing in the Third World; initiation of export oriented manufacturing in many countries

16. Women in the informal economy
A case which demonstrates the intersection between class and gender
Women’s labor force participation is affected by both gender and class hierarchies in a society

17. Women in the informal economy
(Export-oriented) manufacturing is often layered:
--factory production with formal wage labor
--subcontracting with formal wage labor
--subcontracting with informal labor
--piecework for subcontractors at home
Where are women located in this schema?

18. Does earning wages emancipate women?
Possible positive results:
More agency by unmarried and married women in the household
More say in decisions on marriage and divorce
In some cases, women become “main bread winners” in a family

19. Does earning wages emancipate women?
Possible negative results:
More tension between traditional male and female roles  domestic violence
Sometimes women’s income earning might intensify patriarchal pressures
Increasing factory employment of women in some countries is accompanied by increasing male unemployment
In some countries, female headed households increase  feminization of poverty
Women’s overall work burden increases: “triple shift”

20. Women and migration “Feminization of migration” since the 1970s
From which countries to which countries?
What do migrant women do?
Domestic work, manufacturing work
Developmental outcomes of women’s international migration:
remittances