Chapter 6: Feminist Theories of Development

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Chapter 6 Feminist Theories of Development

• Jeana Wiser, Scott Wagoner, Brad Hanson, Kyle
  Summer, and Jeremie Berthonneau

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Waves of Feminist Activism

• First wave of feminist activism and politics,
  which began as an organized movement in the
  latter half of the 19th century, the exclusion of
  women from suffrage (voting rights) revealed the
  partial and biased nature of modern, political
  democracy.

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Feminism Activism Cont

• Second wave of feminist activism and theory,
  during the 1960s, capitalism was contested as
  biased, discriminatory, and unfair.

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Feminism Activism Cont

• The third wave of the 1990s is often associated
  with the entry of post-structural and post-modern
  ideas into a more differentiated feminism.

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Women Facts

• Women are half of the worlds population
• Perform 2/3 of the worlds working hours
• Receive one-tenth of the worlds income
• Own only 1/100 of the worlds property

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The Socialist Element

• Failure of classical Marxist theory to recognize
  unequal treatment of women
• Womens work in the home going unpaid
• Women not naturally the weaker sex
• Historical reasons for the unequal power share
• Social creation of human nature including gender,
  race, other distinctions, and class
• Goals
• Reproductive democracy
• Voice in sexual and procreative decisions
• Control in commodity production

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Feminist Epistemology

• Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that
  deals with the origins and nature of knowledge
• Sciences androcentrism
• Enlightenment vs. Postmodernism
• Enlightenment and Postmodernism

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Womens Criticism of Development Theory

• Womens perspective needed for development theory
• Modern/industrial/ publicmen
• Traditional/nature/ private-women
• Reconsideration of modernity, industrialization,
  and development

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Womens perspective on Development Theory

• Everyday life is joined to its societal aspect
• Productive ventures of all kinds are valued more
  equally
• Sustainability of environment always considered

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Women in Development (WID)

• Recognized the sexual division of labor in the
  3rd World
• Taken as a natural occurrence. Did not question
  it.
• Placed technologies under the control of men
• Led to marginalization of women and reducing
  their status, power and income
• Liberal Modernization Theory
• Development as a linear process of economic
  growth
• WID accepted this theory believed that women
  had been left out of the development process
• U.S. Response
• 1973 Foreign Assistance Act
• WID Response
• Aligned itself with liberal feminism while using
  the poor woman image to evoke sympathy and obtain
  funds

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What WID Did Not Do

• The unequal value placed on mens and womens
  activities were ignored
• Did not consider influences on women such as
  class, race or culture
• Avoided calling into question womens
  subordination as part of a wider global system of
  capital accumulation
• Emphasized POVERTY but not OPPRESSION
• Only partial analysis of womens roles and
  relations
• Represented women in the Third World as
• Backward
• Vulnerable
• In need of help from the First World
• Development as a technical problem requiring
  sophisticated methodologies available only in the
  First World

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Women and Development (WAD)

• Women have always been a part of the development
  process
• Link to modernization led to impoverishment
• Drew from Dependency theory and neo-Marxist
  approach
• A good feminist strategy should
• End the exploitation of women and nature by men
• End the exploitation of colonies by the First
  World
• End the exploitation of classes by the elite
• 2 groups within the WAD school
• Dependency Feminism
• Traditional Marxist-feminist framework
• Global Capitalist Patriarchy and Male Violence
• Aligned more with radical feminism, which saw
  gender having precedence over class
• Women were controlled through sexual violence
• Modern education and mass media perpetuated
  sex-biased stereotypes

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What WAD Did Not Do

• Neglected social relations of gender within
  classes
• Did not take completely into account variations
  in patriarchy in different modes of production
  and how these impacted women
• Marxists in this school gave insufficient
  attention to reproduction
• Just as in the WID school of thought, WAD tended
  to group women together without much notice given
  to race, class, or ethnicity

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Gender And Development (GAD)

• Origin in the late 1970s Institute of
  Development Studies (University of Sussex)
• Analysis of womens subordination in development
  process with respect to gender relation
• Drew on
• Marxist analysis of social change
• Feminist analysis of patriarchy

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GAD ? WID and WAD

• GAD - Reject conceptualization of sexual
  division of labor.
• - Asked for a change in allocation of tasks.
• - Take gender relation as main analytical
  category.
• Disadvantage come from the ideology of male
  superiority.
• The state should play a role in promoting women
  emancipation.
• Rathgeber (1990) deep questioning of social,
  economic and political structures.
• Kabeer (1994) New strategies for feminist
  intervention developed by GAD.
• Then come an important offshoot of Gad and WAD
  which focus more on relation among women,
  development and natural environment.

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Women, Environment, And Development

• Origin in the 1970s, drew parallels between
• - Male control over nature
• - Male control over women
• - Connected men sciences and industrialization
  with assault on the ecological health of the
  planet (impact)
• Carolyn Merchant (1980) the root of
  environmental dilemma induced by the fathers of
  modern sciences (Bacon, Descartes, Newton)
  reality as a machine death of nature
  exploitation of human and resources.
• Shiva (1989) consider science and development as
  a project of Western Patriarchy.
• Moreover she show that third world women have
  ecological implication like conserving forest,
  land and water that challenge the western concept
  of nature as an object of exploitation

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WED

• Diane Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and
  Esther Wangari (1996) explain that gender
  difference in nature exploitation and
  responsibility
• - Is not from biology
• - But from social construction of gender
• (which vary with class, race and place)
• Feminist political ecology
• - gendered knowledge
• - gendered environmental rights
• - gendered environmental politics
• Sustainable development as the central idea of
  the WED perspective
• Challenge Development Economic growth equation

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Postmodernism And Development (PAD)

• Reacted to the controversial entry of post
  structuralism and postmodern critiques into
  feminist theory by asking whether a more
  accessible and politicized postmodern feminism
  had relevance for the problems facing women in
  the Third World.
• Step away from Eurocentric Development theories
• placed value in local knowledge
• Criticized other views for representing Third
  World women as others (GAD), or images of women
  as victims, sex objects and as cloistered beings
  (WIN).
• Emphasized on postmodernisms sense of
  difference, allowing spaces for marginalized
  voices.

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Postmodernism And Development (PAD)

• Favored an approach that accepts and understands
  difference and the power of discourse, and that
  fosters open, consultative dialogue which can
  empower women in the South to articulate their
  own needs and agendas (Parpart and Marchand
  1995 19)

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Critique

• Theories attempt to address development from a
  feministic perspective in a variety of ways-
• What similarities and differences are there
  between Western feministic ideals and Third World
  feministic ideals?
• As we address gender, how can we address race,
  class, and culture?
• How do human rights, economic justice, and
  degradation of the environment value in women?
• All five theories have values that can be
  appealed to, yet take different approaches as to
  how to address what women are in addition to
  identifying what development is.

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• Typical criticism from a feminist standpoint
  tends to reverse the dominant trend, turning
  society upside down (the just becomes unjust,
  normal becomes abnormal)
• We are moving away from Western feminist
  reactions to understand the different experiences
  of different groups of women, and the development
  theories are just starting to try to address this.