WID, WAD, GAD: Theoretical Debates and Issues

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• WID, WAD, GAD Theoretical Debates and Issues

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Theoretical Framework

• WID liberal Feminists (a school of thought )
• WAD Marxist feminists
• GAD Socialist Feminists
• WED - Ecofeminists

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Theoretical basis of Women in Development
(WID)
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Different approaches of WID

• Welfare approach
• Equity approach
• Anti-poverty approach
• Efficiency approach
• Empowerment approach
  

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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 womens
  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 womens 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.

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Theoretical basis of Women and
Development (WAD)
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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

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WAD Approach

• Contribution
• Accepts women as important economic actors in
  their societies
• Womens 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.

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Wome And Development (WAD) Approach

• Features
• Fails to analyze the relationship between
  patriarchy, differing modes of production and
  womens 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 womens productive
  role at the expense of the reproductive side of
  womens work and lives.
• Assumes that once international structures become
  more equitable, womens position would improve.
• WAD doesn't question the relations between gender
  roles.

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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 womens 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 womens contribution inside and
  outside the household, including non-commodity
  production.

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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 states duty to provide social
  services in promoting womens 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 womens 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.

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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

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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

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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