Policy Approaches to Women and Gender Equality

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Policy Approaches to Women and Gender Equality
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Approaches to Women and Gender Equality

• Two conceptual frameworks Women in Development
  and Gender and Development
• Different policy approaches welfare, equity,
  anti-poverty, efficiency, empowerment and gender
  mainstreaming

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Approaches to Women and Gender Equality

• Different policy approaches
• welfare,
• equity,
• anti-poverty,
• efficiency,
• empowerment
• gender mainstreaming

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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
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Equity approach

• original WID approach, emerged during in the
  76-85 UN Womens 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 womens 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 womens subordinate position
• criticised as western feminism, is considered
  threatening to men and is unpopular with
  governments and donors.

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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
• womens 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 womens 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 womens 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
  womens need for more power to improve position
• womens 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 womens 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 UNs 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

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Gender mainstreaming

• Women in Development to gender and development
• some improvements in womens material conditions,
  but little progress in their status
• the nature of womens relational subordination
  was ignored and unequal gender power relations
  remained unaltered
• integrating women vs. mainstreaming gender
• relates to the second problem associated with
  WID, the continued marginalization of women and
  womens issues from mainstream development
• mainly due to how WID was implemented the
  establishment of womens national machineries and
  WID units and the emphasis on womens projects
• mainstreaming was seen as a way of promoting
  gender equity in all of the organizations
  pursuits