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WID, WAD, GAD:
Theoretical Debates and
Issues
Theoretical Framework
• WID liberal Feminists (a school of thought )
• WAD Marxist feminists
• GAD Socialist Feminists
• WED - Ecofeminists
Theoretical basis of Women in
Development (WID)
Different approaches of WID:
• Welfare approach
• Equity approach
• Anti-poverty approach
• Efficiency approach
• Empowerment approach
Policy and Analytic Approaches
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Welfare: Focus on poor women, mainly in the roles of wife and mother.
This was the only approach during colonial periods, and was favoured by
many missionaries.
Equity: Focus on equality between women and men and fair distribution of
benefits of development
Anti-poverty: Women targeted as the poorest of the poor, with emphasis on
income-generating activities and access to productive resources such as
training and micro-finance.
Efficiency: Emphasis on need for women’s participation for success,
effectiveness of development; assumes increased economic participation
will result in increased equity. They are most likely to be useful when
advocacy for the advancement of women is based on the more effective
use of all factors of production, and/or desire for stronger and more
sustainable project results. This is the approach currently most favoured by
development agencies
Empowerment: Focus on increasing women’s capacity to analyze their own
situation and determine their own life choices and societal directions. likely
to be most useful where a human development and rights-based approach
to development predominates, or is desired.
Theoretical basis of Women and
Development (WAD):
Women And Development Approach
(WAD)
Origin:
• Emerged from a critique of the modernization theory and the WID
approach in the second half of the 1970s
Theoretical base :
• Draws from the dependency theory
Focus:
• Women have always been part of development process-therefore
integrating women in development is a myth
• Focuses on relationship between women and development process
WAD Approach
Contribution :
• Accepts women as important economic actors in their
societies
• Women’s work in the public and private domain is central
to the maintenance of their societal structures
• Looks at the nature of integration of women in
development which sustains existing international
structures of inequality.
Wome And Development (WAD)
Approach
Features :
• Fails to analyze the relationship between patriarchy, differing modes
of production and women’s subordination and oppression.
• Discourages a strict analytical focus on the problems of women
independent of those of men since both sexes are seen to be
disadvantaged with oppressive global structure based on class and
capital.
• Singular preoccupation with women’s productive role at the expense
of the reproductive side of women’s work and lives.
• Assumes that once international structures become more equitable,
women’s position would improve.
• WAD doesn't question the relations between gender roles.
Gender and Development (GAD)
approach
Origin
• As an alternative to the WID focus this approach developed in the
1980s.
Theoretical base:
• Influenced by socialist feminist thinking.
Focus:
• Offers a holistic perspective looking at all aspects of women’s lives.
• It questions the basis of assigning specific gender roles to different
sexes
Contribution
• Does not exclusively emphasize female solidarity- welcomes
contributions of sensitive men.
• Recognizes women’s contribution inside and outside the household,
including non-commodity production.
Gender and Development Approach
Features:
• GAD rejects the public/private dichotomy .
• It gives special attention to oppression of women in the family by
entering the so called `private sphere’
• It emphasizes the state’s duty to provide social services in promoting
women’s emancipation.
• Women seen as agents of change rather than as passive recipients of
development assistance.
• Stresses the need for women to organize themselves for a more
effective political voice.
• Recognizes that patriarchy operates within and across classes to
oppress women
• Focuses on strengthening women’s legal rights, including the reform
of inheritance and land laws.
• It talks in terms of upsetting the existing power relations in society
between men and women.
Women ,Environment and Development
(WED)
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Origin in 1970s (Northern Feminist )
Male control over nature and women
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminist (Rosi Braidotti, Harcourt, Maria Mies,
Vandana Shiva etc.)
• Theoretical stream within feminist movement
• Environment decline – patriarchal authority in
Development planning
• Destroying relationship between community, women
and nature
Practical Gender Needs and Strategic
Gender Interests
The following is a summary of some of the principal differences between
practical gender needs and strategic gender interests.
Practical needs:
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Short-term, immediate (e.g. clean water, food, housing, income)
Unique to particular women (i.e. site specific)
When asked, women can identify their basic needs.
Involves women as beneficiaries/participants
Problems can be met by concrete and specific inputs, usually
economic inputs (e.g. water pumps, seeds, credit, employment)
Benefits the condition of some women
Is potentially successful in ameliorating the circumstances of
some women
Strategic Gender Interests
Strategic interests :
• Long-term
• Common to all women (e.g. vulnerability to physical violence, legal
limitations on rights to hold or inherit property, difficulty of gaining
access to higher education)
• Women are not always in a position to recognize the sources or
basis of their strategic disadvantages or limitations
• Solutions must involve women as active agents
• Must be addressed through consciousness raising, education and
political mobilization at all levels of society
• Improves the position of all women in a society
• Has the potential to transform or fundamentally change one or more
aspects of women's lives. This is called 'transformatory potential' of
the project/policy