WID WAD GAD Lec3

							   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

•   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)
• 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:

•   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