Women in Developing Countries

A Policy Focus

Kathleen A Staudt, Jane S Jaquette

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135818357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Here is an insightful volume on the integration of women in the modernization process of developing countries, with research studies on women and development in Guatemala, Tanzania, Indonesia, and several other countries. Drawing from theory and practice, authorities examine how development in any kind of economy marginalizes women, illustrate the existence of a feminist awareness among impoverished rural women, demonstrate the importance of understanding the policy and program implementation institutions within which any transition toward more women-sensitive change is to occur, and suggest the kind of research that would be useful and credible to policymakers. Each of the controversial chapters reflects a new phase in women and development research, and each is a reminder that the fundamental issue--women's subordination--remains key to theory and practice in development.

INTRODUCTION

Women and Development

Kathleen A. Staudt
Jane S. Jaquette

Who gets what, when and how have been standard concerns in the study of politics. Decisions about the allocation of society's resources and opportunities to men and women and the ways in which bureaucracies implement those decisions are key issues for women and development researchers. Women and development emerged and grew with feminist critiques of modernization theories and development practice.¹ That women and development research is entering a new phase is a theme reiterated by several contributors to this volume.

Women and development is a growing field in which the social sciences, women's studies and “developmentalists” converge. Although the field consists of much applied, policy-oriented research, it also serves as a vehicle by which to question the economic theory and direction of development itself. Such questioning has ordinarily involved Marxist and dependency critiques.² Feminist analysts have discovered, as in most areas of inquiry, that women's issues are so subsumed as to render them virtually invisible in both the development and dependency literatures.³

The women and development literature displays a common tension between broad, macro-perspective generalizations about structure and evolution, and micro-level, detailed case or single-issue policy studies. Optimally, the power behind these two perspectives is theory, either from traditional perspectives in established disciplines or from innovative attempts to carve out wholly new feminist lines of analysis.

The differences between women's studies and women and development are significant, but not unbridgeable. Women's studies is concentrated primarily in the humanities and only secondarily in the social sciences. It is parochial in its almost sole focus on the U.S. and western world.⁴ Its conceptions of feminism fit within the western historical heritage. Only recently has women's studies had an applied focus. Finally, women's studies seeks to be an interdisciplinary field in itself; this separateness allows for and even stimulates a “purist” thrust.

Women and development, on the other hand, is concentrated in the social and applied sciences. Women and development is inherently comparative, drawing from comparative subfields in various disciplines and especially from anthropology. Comparative training typically requires extensive field experience outside the U.S. and sensitivity to alternative cultural, political and economic contexts; some comparative methodological approaches call for immersion in other modes of understanding. For women and development researchers, the commitment to development is as important as that to feminism, but like in women's studies, the primary focus is placed on gender in explanatory frameworks. While no consensus on definitions of feminism exists in women's studies, the range of feminist critiques of development and modernization is vast.⁵ The importance of this variation is critical for women and development because potentially contradictory implications exist for application to policies and programs.

A strong, applied focus distinguishes women and development from women's studies. The applied focus virtually commits women and development researchers to work within the framework of existing institutions. Such work in no way means that the women and development researcher accepts or values those institutions (or that those institutions accept women and development research). The compromises inherent in working with existing institutions are seen as a necessary trade-off in order to influence those institutions and thus to expand or redirect resources to women. Yet the strong resistance of existing institutions to accepting and incorporating knowledge by and about women makes efforts to apply research extremely difficult.⁶ Research by and about women has little legitimacy in the eyes of many mainstream development researchers and practitioners. The commitment to work with existing institutions stimulates the concern to place more women-sensitive people and especially women in decision-making positions. While there is no undue faith that more women can radically change those institutions, the interest in improving the quality of decision makers is consistent with this approach. Women and development researchers’ attempt to influence the mainstream of development research and practice is different, but as difficult as forging a new interdisciplinary field like women's studies. Certainly, however, there are implications of these two approaches for retaining the “purity” of isolation versus the “complicity” of influence.

If these differences between women's studies and women and development can be termed a battle, it is hardly a surprising one. After all, many of the same differences and/or tensions are found between policy-oriented and non-policy-oriented women's studies researchers.⁷ Between those groups, as between women and development and women's studies, there is growing understanding, overlap, and some convergence in approaches.

It has been more than a decade since 1970, when Ester Boserup's classic, Woman ‘s Role in Economic Development, combined theory and practice in new ways to understand women's reality. Now we are at a crossroads facing key decisions about research and action. Do analysts focus on the concrete strategies of putting lessons learned into the practice of existing structures and bureaucratic institutions? Do such strategies involve complicity with an evolving structure which overwhelmingly marginalizes women and increases the gap between rich and poor, male or female? Does the strategy of attacking the structure relegate analysts to distant critics, powerless to influence an evolving process? Should analysts continue the critique of the larger structure? Would more radical structures also face women and development problems?

Our selections in this special issue draw from both perspectives. New field research from Guatemala and Tanzania demonstrates that development, whether in capitalist or socialist economies, continues to marginalize women. In the first selection, Tracy Ehlers analyzes the movement of independent female artisans into a machine knitting process largely outside their control. Not only are women undergoing economic marginalization via “modernization,” but traditional institutions of solidarity between mothers and daughters are breaking down. Can bureaucratic activity, women's programs or better ways to conceptualize women's work really address this process? Or are we simply observing women's integration in the “modern” labor force, with potential for future growth in political consciousness?⁸ Like the growing literature on women's employment in labor-intensive multinational corporations,⁹ Ehlers, has something to say about the importance of looking beyond simple labor force participation and its meaning for women. Her subtle critique of western capitalist consumerism falls within the tradition of women and development research.

Rather than assume that political consciousness only comes with labor force participation, Susan Rogers’ review of macro-level studies from Tanzania demonstrates the existence of a feminist awareness among impoverished rural women. Despite the symbolic commitment of the Tanzanian government to reduce gender inequalities, the issue is virtually unaddressed except by women themselves; however, even national women's organizations address the needs of rural women in limited ways and often within the confines of “improving family life.” No questions are raised about the larger structure of gender inequalities, by women's organizations or international assistance agencies. As such, Rogers reminds us that feminist critiques must go beyond that of capitalism and international dependency to a critique of existing patriarchy and patriarchal development strategies.

Turning from those critiques to existing institutions, the next three selections demonstrate how we must understand the policy and program implementation institutions within which any transition toward more women-sensitive change is to occur. Analyzing Agency for International Development (AID) project evaluations from Asia, Rae Lesser Blumberg finds little attention to women. Although Congress mandated AID to “integrate women in development” almost a decade ago, standard operating procedures do not appear to have incorporated the letter or the spirit of that mandate. The superficial and assumption-laden evaluations Blumberg uncovers raise questions about whether development assistance can ever grapple with integrating women.

In the fourth selection, Hanna Papanek addresses and answers many of the issues and questions familiar to those in the women and development field. For all the mainstream development researchers and practitioners who are oblivious to women's studies and women and development, some of whom are convinced that no rigorous piece of research analysis could be written by women, Papanek reviews solid studies and makes suggestions about the kind of research which would be useful and credible to policy makers. She convincingly argues that all policy issues are women's issues, but that policy must be sensitive to differentiation among women. Papanek discusses the shortcomings of using traditional strategies of separate administrative and political processes, such as women's bureaus, to put women's integration policy into place. Rather, separate political advocacy in bureaucracies must be complemented with research and technical planning efforts. Drawing on research in Indonesia, Papanek illuminates the relevance of women's work for policy making; she proposes concepts with which policy makers and researchers can grasp that reality.

To provide a case of the massive bureaucratic effort necessary to incorporate women-sensitivity into institutions, Cornelia Butler Flora traces the initiation and growth of women's programming within the Ford Foundation. Had not separate groups, composed largely of women, pressed the institutions from inside and out, response would have been unlikely, and the relative degree of institutionalization achieved, impossible.

While contributions in this volume provide no firm answers to questions posed earlier, they do represent and reflect a new phase in women and development research. The selections remind us that the fundamental issue—women's subordination—remains key to theory and practice in development.

NOTES

1. Jane Jaquette. “Women and Modernization Theory: A Decade of Feminist Criticism.” World Politics, 34, 2 (1982), pp. 267-284.

2. Dependency analysis, a major paradigm of neo-colonialism in comparative analysis, focuses on the uneven and disadvantaged integration of countries at the periphery of capitalism into the international economy controlled by exporters of finished manufactured products. At international conferences, this perspective manifests itself in calls for a New International Economic Order, which would redistribute power and capital resources in a more equitable fashion. The perspective puts the onus largely on capitalist countries to compensate for past exploitation. Adherents of this approach often refer to capitalist industrialized countries as the first world, socialist economies as the second world, and remaining countries (many of them excolonies) as the third world.

3. Sandra Danforth argues otherwise in her bibliography, which is part of this volume.

4. Some changes can be found in the special issue of Signs 3.1 (1977) on “Women and National Development,” containing selected papers from the Wellesley Conference on Women and Development, June 2-6, 1976; another special issue of Signs 7, 2 (1981) on “Development and the Sexual Division of Labor;” and the Copenhagen Mid-Decade Conference inspired International Supplement to the Women's Studies Quarterly co-edited by Florence Howe and Vina Mazumdar (the first issue came out in January. 1982).

5. See Jaquette. 1982.

6. See Kathleen Staudt. “Bureaucratic Resistance to Women's Programs: The Case of Women in Development.” in Women. Power and Policy, ed., Ellen Boneparth (New York: Pergamon, 1982) and Breaking the Invisible Barrier: Bureaucratic Resistance to Women's Programs, manuscript in preparation.

7. These issues are discussed in Jean Lipman-Blumen, “The Dialectic Between Research and Social Policy: The Difficulties from a Policy Perspective-Rashomon Part I,” and “The Dialectic Between Research and Social Policy: The Difficulties from a Research Perspective-Rashomon Part II,” in Lipman-Blumen and Jessie Bernard, eds., Sex Roles and Social Policy: A Complex Social Science Equation (Beverly Hills, California: Sage, 1979), pp. 17-60. At the Wingspread-sponsored conference on the possibility of creating an association for women in development, participants, including Florence Howe who spoke about women's studies and its growing internationalism, decided to create the Association for Women in Development, but maintain links with women's studies and other networks and organizations (Racine, Wisconsin: May 12-14, 1982).

8. Carmen Diana Deere, in “Changing Social Relations of Production and Peruvian Peasant Women's Work,” Latin American Perspectives 4, 1-2 (1977), des...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• WOMEN & POLITICS DATA BASES
• BOOK REVIEWS