policy approaches to women and gender equality. amsterdam, the netherlands two conceptual...

Policy Approaches to Women and Gender Equality

Amsterdam, The Netherlands www.kit.nl

• Two conceptual frameworks: “Women in Development” and “Gender and Development”

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

Approaches to Women and Gender Equality


Women in Development Gender and Development

Focus on women Focus on gender relations

Stress on practical needs Stress on strategic interests/needs

Rationale is effectiveness Goal is equality

Enabling Empowering

Changes the condition of women

Changes the position of women

Aims to enhance women’s participation

Aims to integrate gender consideration into mainstream

Women primarily as agents



The Approach

An approach which views women as the problem

An approach to development

The Focus

Women Social relations between men and women

The Problem

The exclusion of women (half of the productive resources from the development process)

Unequal relations of power (rich and poor, women and men) that prevents equitable development and women’s full participation



The Goal

More efficient , effective development

Equitable, sustainable development with women and men as decision-makers

The Solution

Integrate women into the existing development process

Empower disadvantaged women and transform unequal relations



The Strategies

Women’s projects

Women’s components

Integrated projects

Increase women’s productivity

Increase women’s ability to look after the household

Identify/address practical needs determined by women and men to improve their condition

At the same time address women’s strategic interests

Address strategic interests of the poor through people-centred development


Approaches to Women and Gender EqualityDifferent policy approaches:

• welfare, • equity, • anti-poverty, • efficiency, • empowerment • gender mainstreaming


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


Equity approach• original WID approach, emerged during in the 76-85 UN

Women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s subordinate position• criticised as western feminism, is considered threatening to

men and is unpopular with governments and donors.


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

• women’s 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


Efficiency approach

• 3rd WID approach, adopted since the 1980s debt crisis. • aims to ensure that development is more efficient and

effective through women’s 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 women’s time

• women seen in terms of their capacity to compensate for declining social services by extending their working day


Empowerment• articulated by third-world women with aim to empower

women through greater self-reliance• explicitly acknowledges centrality of power and women’s

need for more power to improve position• women’s 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 women’s NGOs.


Gender mainstreaming• associated with the 1995 World Conference on Women in

Beijing and the Beijing Platform of Action that signaled the UN’s 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”


Gender mainstreaming• Women in Development to gender and development

• some improvements in women’s material conditions, but little progress in their status

• the nature of women’s 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 women’s issues from “mainstream” development

• mainly due to how WID was implemented: the establishment of women’s national machineries and WID units and the emphasis on “women’s projects”

• “mainstreaming” was seen as a way of promoting gender equity in all of the “organization’s pursuits”

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