gender, women and development

8/14/2019 Gender, Women and development

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What is To Be Done? What is Being Done?

The implications of the above discussion on the conceptualization of poverty and gender are the

following: Poverty elimination can not be based on a narrow approach that relies solely on rising

incomes or macroeconomic growth. Although achieving a positive and a sustainable growth rate is

important for poverty alleviation, it is not sufficient since the benefits of growth do not trickle down

automatically to all households or to all household members. Households must not be treated as

harmonious units. Gender differences in the experience and incidence ofpoverty must be addressed in a

contextualized way. If it is

found that FHHs or women as individuals are poorer in income terms and how and why they are poorer,

such information should be used for designing policy. Gender-aware

benchmarks and gender-aware monitoring must accompany gendered analyses ofpoverty. This requires

gender-disaggregated statistics and capacity building in gender analysis.

2. Poverty must be understood in a multidimensional sense, i.e., it must bconceptualized not only through

the lens of consumption/income poverty, but also that of human poverty, i.e., deprivation in basic

capabilities. Given that poverty elimination strategies must be informed by the concept of human

poverty, they must be multidimensional and cognizant of the trade-offs that poor people may face

between

different dimensions ofpoverty. Eradicating illiteracy, closing gender gaps in education, public provision

of health services, water, etc. all contribute to overall poverty eradication, but they are particularly criticalfor eradicating womens poverty by enhancing womens capabilities. They also help alleviate womens

time poverty since the absence of health services, clean water and energy sources usually translate into

added burdens for women.

3. However, eliminating womens drudgery must require other interventions scubas increasing the

productivity of their labour in both paid and unpaid activities through access to better technologies and

knowledge. Efforts toward redistributing the burden of reproductive labour toward men within households

or socializing the cost of child care or

other types of caring labour are necessary for both reducing womens time poverty and helping them

participate in labour markets more fully.

4. Gender discrimination in labour and a variety of other markets are a cross-cultural phenomenon.

Womens empowerment as labourers can be realized throughcollective action. Since women are often

casual and informal labourers, they are also less


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organized than men. New and innovative approaches to womens organizing such asSEWA (Self

Employed Womens Association) should be emulated. This meansgovernments must create an enabling

environment for such organizations and for tradeunions in general by recognizing and enforcing workers

rights.5. Asset distribution strategies, such as land reform, or privatization policies (thatredistribute assets)

must be made gender aware and gender fair. Similarly, strategies that

increase poor peoples access to productive resources such as credit as well as employment schemes must

be made gender aware. The effects of all such policies must be

monitored from a gender perspective as well as from a poverty perspective.6. Anti-poverty strategies

must also include the goal of democratic governance as a poverty issue. Ifpoverty is to be eradicated, it

cannot be done without the empowerment of the poor. This is particularly important for women because

of the worldwide gender

inequalities in political and economic empowerment. Self-help groups (and particularly

14womens self-help groups) and the creation political space for NGOs and CBOs are important not only

for political but also economic empowerment of poor women, whose voices must be heard.

7. All policies, including macroeconomic policies must be examined from a gender and poverty

perspective. For example, social expenditure reviews without gender audits are not sufficient until

universal literacy and universal access to health services or clean water are achieved. Fiscal policies must

be audited from a gender perspective. WomensBudget Initiatives are useful for making fiscal policies

gender aware. Public awareness of

the predicament of poor women must be enhanced. National machineries must be set up to further the

cause ofgender equality in general and the cause of poor women in particular.

In the long run, elimination of poverty, as opposed to alleviation of poverty,

requires transformatory approaches that go beyond coping with poverty.

Similarly, eliminating gender inequalities require transformatory approaches,

which are about addressing the strategic needs of the poor or women, while

coping approaches are about addressing their practical needs. The latter is

necessary for alleviating poverty and gender inequality while the former is

necessary for the eradication of poverty and gender inequalities. Finally, it

must be recognized that all this depends on political will, patience and an

understanding that mental landscapes change slowly and need to be


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challenged constantly by the production of new and better knowledge for the

empowerment of the disadvantaged.

Womens responsibilities for reproductive labour limit the range of paid economic

activities they can undertake. Women are less mobile than men because of their

reproductive/caring labour activities and because of social norms that restrict theirmobility in public. In the paid sphere, they tend to be concentrated in informal

labour activities (such as home working), since such activities allow them to

combine paid work with unpaid reproductive labour. However, these are also

insecure forms of work. It ishard for such workers to get organized for collective

action. The gender-based division of labour between unpaid (and often

reproductivelabour) and paid labour renders women economically and socially more

insecure and vulnerable to not only chronic poverty but also to transient poverty

that can result from familial, personal or social and economic crises, including those

that arise from macroeconomic policies, political and ethnic conflict situations or

health-related crises such as the HIV/AIDS epidemics. Yet, in such crises, as in thecase of structural adjustment policies and macroeconomic crises, women work

harder compared to men and increase their paid and unpaid labour activities to

maintain their households.

The relationship between gender and poverty is a complex and controversial topic that is now

being debated more than ever before. Although much policymaking has been

informed by the idea of feminization of poverty, the precise nature of the nexus between gender

and poverty needs to be better understood and operationalized in policymaking.

The difficulty originates from the different shapes and forms gender inequalities and poverty takedepending on the economic, social and ideological context. Yet another difficulty involves the

scarcity of gender disaggregated data for a number of countries.

For the last three decades, many womens advocates have been arguing that women are poorer

than men. The most common empirical expression of this idea is the concept of feminization of

poverty.

This idea has become popular both in shaping analyses of poverty and poverty alleviation

strategies. Thus, targeting women has become one vehicle for gender-sensitive poverty

alleviation. Poor women have become the explicit focus of policymaking, for example, in the

areas of microcredit programmes and income generation activities

However, the universal validity of the feminization of poverty is being empirically challenged.

Although the idea that there are gender differences in experiences of poverty is not abandoned, a


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more nuanced and complex analysis of poverty and gender inequalities is emerging. This, in turn,

is giving rise to a more gender-aware approach to poverty elimination strategies.

Such strategies include the examples of credit schemes for women or income generation

activities for women that try to overcome gender biases in credit and other markets by focusing

specifically on poor women. The Grameen Bank (Bangladesh) is one example of an institution

that does its lending only to the poor. The great majority of Grameen Banks clients are poor

women.

In the literature on poverty, In these discussions, the concept of feminization of poverty is used

as a short hand for a variety of ideas. It can mean either one or a combination of the following:

a. Women compared to men have a higher incidence of poverty.

b. Womens poverty is more severe than mens.

c. Over time, the incidence of poverty among women is increasing compared to

men. In addressing womens poverty, many studies measure the incidence of income or

consumption poverty among female-headed households and compares it to that of male headed

counterparts.

On a priori grounds, there are reasons to be concerned about the welfare of FHHs, since women

are subject to discrimination in labour, credit and a variety of other markets and they own less

property compared to men. In some societies, widows, divorced or abandoned women may be

subject to social exclusion, isolation and harassment, making it very difficult for them to

maintain a livelihood for themselves or their children. Women heads of households with young

children may face great time constraints and may have t limit their work hours. Even though

FHHs are a relatively small proportion of households, evidence shows that in the last 20 years,

their share in the total is increasing in most regions of the world (Buvinic and Gupta 1997). This

has been seen as evidence that women are becoming poorer over time relative to men.

The evidence on the comparative poverty of FHHs vis--vis male-headed counterparts is not

universal, (Moghadam cited in UNDP 1997, Chant 1998, Gammage 1997). However, there is an

association between female-headship and poverty. Buvinicand Gupta (1997) report that out of 61

studies on the relationship between female headship and poverty, 38 found that FHHs are over-

represented among the poor and 15 other studies found that poverty is associated with certain

types of female heads or that the association emerged for certain poverty indicators. This is

partly a reflection of the heterogeneous nature FHHs. For example, some of the households that


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are headed by women as a result of male migration may be relatively affluent if the remittances

are high. It has also been argued that it may be more meaningful to study female-maintained

households as opposed to those headed by women (Gammage 1997). Female-maintained

households are those in which women are the primary providers of the family. What is also

necessary to understand is the process through which households become women-headed or

female-maintained rather than viewing headship as a static indicator. When programmes

targeting FHHs analyze the reasons for the rise, nature and vulnerability of such households, it

has been possible to design effective anti-poverty programmes that target

female headship as in the case of Chiles Womens National Service (Servicio Nacional deja

Mujer, SERNAM) agriculture development, migration and its adverse

impact,HIV/AIDS,poverty,etc.

(i) Globalization. The gender and development Plan takes into account the trends and challenges

of global change. Government policy choices, often made in the context of Structural Adjustment

Programmes, have shifted in favour of openness of trade and financial flows. Liberalization

policies have favored economies of scale (e.g., large-scale commercial farming)and export cashcropping over household subsistence production. As a result of reduced Government spending

for the public sector, sponsored agricultural services, such as training and extension, as well as

investment in rural infrastructure, have also been scaled down. The farmers who were already

better off appear to have benefited while the overall impact on small farmers appears to have

been quite negative and at times even self-defeating (UNIFEM, 2000). "the benefits and risks (of

globalization) are distributed unequally, and the growth and prosperity it provides for many is

offset by the increasing vulnerability and marginalization of others".

Due to gender inequalities and discrimination, women can be affected negatively by

globalization and liberalization processes to a greater extent than men, particularly in the rural

areas.The opening of local markets to cheaper imports and the removal of agricultural subsidies

have had adverse effects for female farmers who have found it increasingly difficult to reap the

fruits of liberalisation due to, for instance, difficulties to access agricultural inputs (FAO, 2000f).However, there can be significant gains for women, if the expanded opportunities brought about

by globalization are equally shared by women and men.

Furthermore, the Secretary-General, in his report for the Beijing +5Review (UN, 2000), stressed

that the significant gender differences and disparities with respect to decision-making powers


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and participation that prevail in different societies must be taken into account when responding

to the diverse implications of globalisation.

gender, women and development

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