engendering development: through gender equality in rights, resources and voiceby world bank

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Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice by World Bank Review by: Elizabeth Asante The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring, 2002), pp. 291-294 Published by: Canadian Journal of Sociology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3341723 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 10:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Canadian Journal of Sociology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 194.29.185.230 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:13:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voiceby World Bank

Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice by WorldBankReview by: Elizabeth AsanteThe Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring,2002), pp. 291-294Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3341723 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 10:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Journal of Sociology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheCanadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.230 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:13:06 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voiceby World Bank

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 291

World Bank, Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice, A World Bank Policy Research Report, Washington DC: World Bank/Oxford University Press, 2001, 364 pp.

Collating several cross-country and interdisciplinary studies, this World Bank policy research report on gender inequality points out the human and develop- ment costs of gender disparities and the social benefits gained by actively seeking more equality between the sexes. The 364 pages of text, maps, graphs, figures and statistics, fortunately, commences with a 29 page summary of the document, then proceeds to thematically present the empirical evidence estab- lishing the existence of gender disparities and how gender inequality inhibits societies' ability to reduce poverty, progress, or govern effectively. Engendering Development roots gender inequality in biases within country-specific internal social norms, laws and economic institutions. From this perspective, the authors propose a 'three-part strategy' to address these internal biases. This strategy includes: reforming national institutions to establish equal rights and opportuni- ties for women and men; fostering economic development to strengthen incentives for more equal resources and participation; and taking active mea- sures to redress disparities in the command over resources and political voice.

The report concedes to the evolutionist view that gender roles and disparities initially developed in traditional societies as social survival strategies. With technological and economic advancement these norms, then, have become increasingly "inequitable, ... inefficient, imposing significant cost to societies and on development" (p. 35). Gender equality, then, according to this World Bank report would constitute "equality under the law, equality of opportunity - including assess to human capital and other productive resources and equality of rewards for work - and equality of voice" (ibid.). The authors, however, do not advocate that gender equality be also defined in terms of equality of out- come, primarily, because societies follow different paths in their pursuit of gen- der equality and, secondly, because the authors believe that freedom of choice is an intrinsic aspect of equality. In order words, women and men should be allowed to choose what roles and outcomes they prefer. This assertion immediately beggars the question: why then should the World Bank seek to question gender relations within other cultures and deem it their prerogative to propose strategies to resolve the perceived disparities? The report takes the view that gender, the socially constructed roles and socially learned behaviors and expectations associated with females and males, as well as gender asymmetries are cultural universals. The authors assert that gender inequality is universally identifiable, pointing out those "familiar markers" of gender inequality: disparities that translate into inability to partake effectively in the economy and its benefits because of unequal access to rights such as education, health and representation. Gender equality, then, would constitute women and men's equal ability to partake in production and its benefits.

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Page 3: Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voiceby World Bank

292 Canadian Journal of Sociology

This report raises again the highly contested meaning, utility and relevance of the concept of 'gender' in development. Typically, while the focus is on gender, the report's early assertion that women are the more disadvantaged of the two sexes (p. 34) immediately shifts the focus and solution to recognizing women' s voices as the means to bringing a gender perspective to policy analysis and design, ignoring for the most part, what relative disparities men experience because of their gender, or what disparities men and women face often because of their complementary roles. As with most of the gender and development literature, the mass of data presented in this report on 'gender inequality' mainly concentrates on how women have been denied rights, resources and voice in their many dimensions of life; male statistics are presented, generally, to illustrate their relative advantage over those of females. Women still remain the center of analysis in spite of the label 'gender equality' and the strategies are designed to enable women (but not men as well) overcome barriers created by gender divisions. While the evidence in a predominantly patriarchal world may indicate that women are the more disadvantaged, one main reason for consider- ing 'gender' rather than 'women' in development theory, policy and practice, is the empirical recognition that patriarchy is not the same everywhere and that women and men are 'not antagonistically poised against each other in all cultures' as was previously assumed by the development industry. It is clear from this World Bank policy report that it still remains a challenge to bring 'men' into the GAD regime while retaining attention also to addressing wom- en' s subordination. Focusing only on women, however, fails to bring a balance to the analysis of gender, foreclosing the possibilities of exploring gender relations in the development process in coordinated and alternative ways that address the development needs of non-Western cultural contexts.

The report has several other limitations. Primary and major among these is the selective use of research information, from the mass of research evidence available in the gender and development literature, to argue the views of the authors and the World Bank. This is done on several levels but especially on raising controversial issues, the general tendency is to selectively incorporate in their conclusions those research evidence that support the authors' interpreta- tion and generally the World Bank stance on these particular issue. Two such interlinked instances are the authors' analysis of the impact of structural adjustment on gender relations and their interpretation of the regional trends in gender disparities in school enrollment rates and employment (Box 5.3, pp. 203-207; p. 206; pp. 212-219). The tell-tale statistics (negative impact on males) of the effects on gender relations of neo-liberal policies in the 1980s in Africa (e.g. p. 45) and in the 1990s in Asia-Pacific and in transitional Eastern Europe (pp. 9-10) are grossed over as the authors choose to pronounce as limited or inconclusive, research evidence on the social costs of adjustment and on the differential impact on males and females rather than acknowledge the

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Page 4: Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voiceby World Bank

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 293

wealth of evidence that point to the gender bias in structural adjustment. Of course, this tendency of the authors could be attributed to both their structural embeddedness and ideological acceptance of neo-liberal discourses and of the IMF/World Bank prescribed path of structural adjustment for the South.

Engendering Development also chooses not to look beyond internal socio- cultural and economic institutions of developing countries for the sources of gender inequality. However, power relations that discriminate against women in the South are not necessarily only included in the internal dynamics of gender relations of a country as this World Banks policy research report would have us believe. Country-specific norms do not exist in a vacuum. The report appears oblivious to the fact that the present structures of national political, social, economic, even cultural norms and institutions in the South are also rooted in particular histories and interaction with international capitalist modes of accumulation. Thus, the report neither sees nor factors the World Bank's own involvement in the construction, reconstruction, transformation or reinforcement of gender inequality in the South. Circumnavigating external influences on country-specific gender relations leads often to some unsound analysis and conclusions. For example, in debating the impact of adjustments policies on gender inequality (Chapter 5), the authors support the view of those researches which conclude that "Structural adjustment programs do not appear to have had significant impacts on gender equality ... independent of their effect on income growth" (p. 219). In other words, SAP has effect on gender equality only indirectly through their effect on income growth. Now since even the World Bank's own reports on several occasions have had to acknowledge that "structural adjustment polices have been excessively costly and made income distribution worse. ... (Caufield, 1997:163), surely, it would stand to reason that this collation of research studies, could then have perceived possible effects of adjustment on gender relations. This analysis, carried through to its logical conclusion, should have provided that since the evidence showed that many adjusting countries have failed to achieve equitable income growth, the possible contributions of IMF/World Bank SAP policy's to those social norms and economic institutions that create gender disparities then could be enormous. Indeed, this unsatisfactory line of analysis becomes more ridiculous as the authors' unyielding adherence to the viability of structural adjustment becomes more apparent: the report concludes rather that since the evidence for gender disparities is lower in countries that are more successful in implementing adjustment than those who are not, structural adjustment policies should be made to work in the latter to improve income growth and, thereby, gender equality. That the World Bank still refuses to acknowledge the well-documented multitude of evidence of the adverse effects of SAP on economies of Third World nations, the gender bias inherent in the SAP theoretical assumptions and the evidence of their adverse effects on gender relations, the hardship brought

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Page 5: Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voiceby World Bank

294 Canadian Journal of Sociology

on women in adjusting countries as well as how postcolonial neo-liberal de- velopment strategies have exacerbated, intensified, transformed gender dis- parities and even created new gender conflicts in many developing countries is surprising (see for e.g Sparr 1993; Carney 1996). Locating gender inequality solely in internal social processes, institutions, and country-specific norms fails to understand this context fully, and at the very least oversimplifies the social reality of people of different cultures, resulting in the failure of policies and programmes to deal realistically with the problems of development. In sum, gender relations should be approached in an encompassing manner in order to understand all the dimensions that have bearing on gender inequality. The report utterly fails to do this.

As a source book on gender equality the report offers an extensive summary of multi-country and interdisciplinary research studies, however, as a research report to feed policy Engendering Development offers no new, viable or radical programme to address gender inequality in the development process.

References

Carney, Judith 1996 "Converting the Wetlands, Engendering the Environment" in R. Peet and M. Watt (eds.)

Liberation Ecologies, London: Routledge.

Caufield, Catherine 1997 Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty ofNations, New York: Henry Holt

Co. Inc.

Sparr, Pamela, ed. 1993 Mortgaging Women's Lives: Feminist Critiques of StructuralAdjustment, London: Zed.

York University Elizabeth Asante

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