The Sociologist and the “Poor Third World Woman”, or How an Approach Focusing on Gender Relations Has Helped Sociology of Development

The “gender” focus is playing an increasingly prominent role in poverty studies in developing countries as well as in the various policies and measures recommended to reduce or, under optimistic scenarios, eradicate it. This focus has not achieved what it set out to do, namely to place the issue of women, or gender relations,3 at the heart of the fight against poverty, and has seemingly not even succeeded in alleviating poverty, particularly among women. Nevertheless, it has contributed toward a changed mindset driving sociology of development: there is not a single analysis, controversy or political proposal that can now get away with being “gender-blind”, which is what sociology of development had been for decades. However, this apparently consensual embracing of the issue of “gender” hides the heterogeneity of the many points of view and paradigms involved, given that simply adopting a word does not in any way signify a shared understanding of the underlying problem.