Transcript Document

Policy Approaches to Women
and Gender Equality
Approaches to Women and
Gender Equality
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Two conceptual frameworks: “Women in
Development” and “Gender and
Development”
•
Different policy approaches: welfare, equity,
anti-poverty, efficiency, empowerment and
gender mainstreaming
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Women in Development
Gender and Development
Focus on women
Focus on gender relations
Stress on practical needs
Stress on strategic
interests/needs
Rationale is effectiveness
Goal is equality
Enabling
Empowering
Changes the condition of
women
Changes the position of women
Aims to enhance women’s
participation
Aims to integrate gender
consideration into mainstream
Women primarily as agents
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Women in Development
Gender and Development
The Approach
An approach which views
women as the problem
An approach to development
The Focus
Women
Social relations between men
and women
The Problem
The exclusion of women (half of
the productive resources from
the development process)
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Unequal relations of power (rich
and poor, women and men) that
prevents equitable development
and women’s full participation
Women in Development
Gender and Development
The Goal
More efficient , effective
development
Equitable, sustainable
development with women and
men as decision-makers
The Solution
Integrate women into the
existing development process
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Empower disadvantaged women
and transform unequal relations
Women in Development
Gender and Development
The Strategies
Women’s projects
Women’s components
Integrated projects
Increase women’s productivity
Identify/address practical
needs determined by women
and men to improve their
condition
At the same time address
women’s strategic interests
Increase women’s ability to look Address strategic interests of
after the household
the poor through peoplecentred development
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Approaches to Women and
Gender Equality
Different policy approaches:
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welfare,
equity,
anti-poverty,
efficiency,
empowerment
gender mainstreaming
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.kit.nl
Welfare approach
• earliest approach, predominant 1950-1970.
• aim is to bring women into the development as
better mothers.
• women are seen as the passive beneficiaries of
development emphasizing their reproductive role
• seeks to meet practical gender needs in that role
through a top-down handouts of food aid, measures
against malnutrition and family planning
• not challenging, especially of gender division of
labour, and still widely popular.
Source: March, C., Smyth, I., and Mukhopahhyay, M. (1999). A Guide to Gender Analysis Frameworks. Oxfam: Oxford
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.kit.nl
Equity approach
• original WID approach, emerged during in the 76-85 UN
Women’s Decade, within the predominant “growth with
equity” development approach
• aim is to gain equity for women who are seen as active
participants in development
• recognizes women’s triple role (productive, reproductive
and community), and seeks to meet strategic gender
interests by direct state intervention giving political and
economic autonomy and reducing inequality with men.
• challenges women’s subordinate position
• criticised as western feminism, is considered threatening to
men and is unpopular with governments and donors.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Anti- Poverty approach
• 2nd WID approach, a toned-down version of equity, from
1970s onwards in the context of Basic Needs approaches
to development
• women seen as disproportionately represented among
poor
• aim is to ensure that poor women increase their
productivity
• women’s poverty is seen as a problem of
underdevelopment, not of subordination
• recognizes the productive role of women, and seeks to
meet their practical to earn an income, particularly in
small scale income generation projects
• still most popular with NGOs
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Efficiency approach
• 3rd WID approach, adopted since the 1980s debt crisis.
• aims to ensure that development is more efficient and
effective through women’s economic contribution, with
participation often equated with equity and decision
making
• seeks to meet practical gender needs while relying in all
three roles and an elastic concept of women’s time
• women seen in terms of their capacity to compensate for
declining social services by extending their working day
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Empowerment
• articulated by third-world women with aim to empower
women through greater self-reliance
• explicitly acknowledges centrality of power and women’s
need for more power to improve position
• women’s subordination is expressed in terms of male
oppression and colonial and neo-colonial oppression
• recognizes the triple role; seeks to meet strategic gender
interests indirectly thru grassroots mobilization of
practical gender needs
• potentially challenging, but its avoidance of western
feminism makes it unpopular except with third world
women’s NGOs.
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Gender mainstreaming
• associated with the 1995 World Conference on Women in
Beijing and the Beijing Platform of Action that signaled
the UN’s first official use of the term
• call for “gender mainstreaming” was a culmination of two
inter-related changes in discourse prior to Beijing:
• Women in Development to gender and development
• “integrating women” to “mainstreaming gender”
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Gender mainstreaming
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Women in Development to gender and development
• some improvements in women’s material conditions, but
little progress in their status
• the nature of women’s relational subordination was
ignored and unequal gender power relations remained
unaltered
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“integrating women” vs. “mainstreaming gender”
• relates to the second problem associated with WID, the
continued marginalization of women and women’s issues
from “mainstream” development
• mainly due to how WID was implemented: the
establishment of women’s national machineries and WID
units and the emphasis on “women’s projects”
• “mainstreaming” was seen as a way of promoting gender
equity in all of the “organization’s pursuits”
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