Gender and Development: Back to Basics Continued Relevance of Marcal’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner

Taking the Discipline of Economics as base, this paper demonstrates how and why macro-economic policiesPolicy centrally anchored in the Discipline of conventional Economics cannot accommodate genderGender concerns; thereafter, it provides a brief overview of the shifts in “gender and developmentDevelopment” literature emphasising in particular the contribution of feministFeminist economists. FeministsFeminist’ continued efforts to move towards transformationTransformation of society to achieve gender equity finds articulation in the manner in which the Sustainable DevelopmentDevelopment Goals of Agenda 2030 have been formulated. We discuss briefly this movement from MDGs to SDGs highlighting the specific contribution of feminist economists. Next, using the Telangana SocialSocial Development Report, 2018, the paper not only demonstrates what a “gender” reading of secondary data can reveal but also the fact that the findings of the report are in sync with the concerns raised by feministsFeminist over the various Sustainable DevelopmentDevelopment Goals and Targets of Agenda 2030. The paper ends by supporting the framework that feministsFeminist have laid out for a transformative agenda using three of the concepts that underpin the human rightsRights framework, namely accountabilityAccountability, inclusionInclusion and non-discriminationNon-discrimination.