Gender and Development

This chapter discusses how development practice since the 1970s has been shaped by the notions of women’s representation, their access to resources, and reformation of institutional structures. These notions have resulted in three shifts in development approaches: from WID to WAD and finally to GAD. WID approaches were based on the assumptions that lack of women’s representation in institutions forms the basis of gender inequality in the labor market. The solution therefore lay in the integration of women into the workforce. This was tantamount to arguing that women do not participate in productive work, and so was challenged by WAD scholars. The WAD approaches were based on insights from research on the work done by rural women, which pointed out that while women work, they do not gain real benefits in terms of access to resources. They concluded that the problem of gender inequality in the labor market, rather than being about the participation of women, was due to their lack of access to resources. The development solution came in the form of income generation programs, which since the late 1970s have increased women’s access to resources but have also called into question the terms and conditions of their access to resources. GAD scholars, noting the exploitative nature of these programs, pointed out that both WID and WAD approaches had focused on women, but were exploitative in that the changes that occurred did not address the fundamental structural issues around power.