LECTURE TWO

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT (GAD)

FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT

Lecture Outline

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Objectives
2.3 The concept of Gender and Development
2.4 Historical Development of Gender and Development
2.5 Gender and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and gender and Sustainable
development Goals (SDGs)
2.6 Importance of Gender Issues in Development
2.7 Summary

2.8 References

2.1 Introduction

This chapter introduces the historical background of gender and with focus on Women in
Development (WID) and Gender and Development (GAD) and empowerment. We also try
to understand the concept of gender and development. The lecture also talks of concepts of
gender and development and the factors that gave rise to their emergence. It also provides an
explanation of the pre-colonial experience of so-called Third World people, especially with
respect to gender relations and the experiences of women and men in social, political, and
economic life. The discussion challenges simplistic characterizations and generalizations of
pre-colonial societies and points to their rich diversity and difference. It also provides a
framework for considering alternative ways of perceiving human social and cultural
development and organizing social, economic, and political life. It also provides information
that challenges traditional monolithic assumptions about women and the sexual division of
labor.
2.2 Objectives

Objectives By the end of this lecture, you should be able to;

1. highlight the concept of Gender and Development

2. Understand the Historical Development of Gender and

Development
3. Relate Gender and the Millennium Development Goals and
gender and Sustainable development goals
2.7 Discuss the historical background of gender in relation WID and
GAD

2.3 What is Gender and Development?

The lecturer begins by understanding what Gender and Development (GAD) is:

Early Approaches:

Early approaches to women in development recognized that development had ignored the
important role played by women in their communities and, as a result, largely excluded them
from the design and implementation of development programs. The women in development
(WID) approach recognize that more efficient and effective development requires the active
participation of women as well as men. Seeking to remedy women’s exclusion from the
development process, the WID approach focuses mainly upon women.

Since the mid 1980s there has been a growing consensus that sustainable development
requires an understanding of both women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities within the
community and their relationship to each other. Improving the status of women is no longer
seen as just a women’s issue but as a goal that requires the active participation of men and
women. This has come to be known as the gender and development (GAD) approach. The
GAD approach, through gender analysis, seeks to understand the roles, responsibilities,
resources and priorities of women and men within a specific context, examining the social,
economic and environmental factors which influence their roles and decision-making
capacity.
Take note

Gender and Development is an analytical approach which considers both women’s

and men’s roles and responsibilities within the community and their relationship to each other in
order to ensure that women’s and men’s concerns and needs are addressed in design and
implementation of activities. It is thus put emphasis on what men and women doing as crucial in
the community set up. Gender analysis helps in establishing more sustainable and effective
development. We shall discuss more on gender analysis.

 Gender and Development is an analytical approach which considers both women’s

and men’s roles and responsibilities within the community

 and their relationship to each other in order to ensure that women’s and men’s concerns
and needs are addressed in design and implementation of activities.
 It is thus put emphasis on what men and women doing as crucial in the community set up.
 Gender analysis helps in establishing more sustainable and effective development. We
shall discuss more on gender analysis.

2 .4 Historical of Gender and Development

 The seeds of the women and development concept were planted during the 1950s and
1960s.
 During this time, 50 countries were freed from colonialism, and the women who had
participated in independence movements acted on their convictions that they must
join with men in building these new nations.
 By the 1950s and 1960s, women of these newly independent countries began taking
their delegations to the United Nations (though in small numbers) and were able to
challenge the legalistic agenda of CSW by raising development-oriented issues.

 By 1970, when the United Nations General Assembly reviewed the results of the First
Development Decade of the 1960s, three factors that would eventually converge to
foster the various approaches to women’s development had become evident:

 It was found that the industrialization strategies of the 1960s had been ineffective and
had, in fact, worsened the lives of the poor and the women in Third World countries.

 The Second Development Decade was therefore designed to address this and “bring
about sustainable” improvement in the well-being of individuals and bestow benefits
on all.

 In 1970, Boserup, an agricultural economist, used research data from Africa, Asia,
the Caribbean, and Latin America to highlight women’s central positions in the
economic life of these societies
 She described the disruptive effects of colonialism and modernization on the sexual
division of labor through the introduction of the international market economy.
 Among other things, this process drew men away from production based on family
labor and gave them near-exclusive access to economic and other resources.
 Boserup concluded that the economic survival and development of the Third World
would depend heavily on efforts to reverse this trend and to more fully integrate
women into the development process.
  The feminist movement reemerged in Western countries around 1968, alongside
other social movements for civil rights.

 Although the movement’s energies were, for the most part, directed internally, some
Western women used their position to pressure their government’s foreign-aid offices
to ensure that grants to recipient countries supported women as well as men.
 The central point of the original women and development approach was that both
women and men must be lifted from poverty and both women and men must
contribute and benefit
to and benefit from development efforts. International Women’s Year was declared by the
United Nations in 1975, and the celebration of this at the First International Women’s
Conference in Mexico City marked the globalization of the movement. This unique
intergovernmental conference and the nongovernmental International Women’s Tribune
Centre (IWTC), a networking and communications institution, brought together women from
nearly all countries of the world under the theme Equality, Development and Peace and
extended its work during the United Nations Decade for Women, 1976–85..

2.4 In-text Question

Explain the term gender development. And development in your own understanding.
Discuss how gender influence

In recent years gender equality has become the focus of the GAD approach, a focus which is
reflected in the Platform for Action of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held
in Beijing. The Platform for Action places particular emphasis on twelve critical areas of
concern:

• enabling women to overcome poverty

• ensuring women’s equal access to quality education and training
• ensuring women’s equal access to health care
• eliminating violence against women
 • protecting women from armed and other conflicts
• promoting women’s economic self-reliance
• promoting women’s participation in decision-making
• integrating gender equality dimensions into policy and planning
• promoting women’s human rights
• enhancing the media’s role in promoting gender equality
• integrating women in the ecologically sustainable development process
• eliminating all forms of discrimination against the girl child
2.5 Gender and Millennium Development Goals (MDGS)

In September 2000, the United Nations Millennium Summit of 192 governments and at least
23 international organizations made a joint commitment to halve world poverty by the year
2015. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed out of the eight chapters
of the United Nations Millennium Declaration signed in September 2000. There are eight
goals with 21 targets, and a series of measurable indicators for each target. The goals aimed
at stimulating real progress by 2015 in tackling the most pressing issues facing developing
countries – poverty, hunger, inadequate education, gender inequality, child and maternal
mortality, HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation.

In most developing countries, gender inequality was a major obstacle to meeting the MDG
targets. According to UNDP (2009), achieving the goals was impossible without closing the
gaps between women and men in terms of capacities, access to resources and opportunities,
and vulnerability to violence and conflicts.

MDG 3 was ‘to promote equality and empower women’. The goal had one target: ‘to
eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005 and to all
levels of education no later than 2015’. Four indicators are used to measure progress towards
the goal:

• the ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education

• the ratio of literate women to men in the 15 to 24 year old age group
• the share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector and
• the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments
The existence of a separate goal on gender equality is the result of decades of advocacy,
research and coalition-building by the international women’s movement as we have seen in
the historical development. Its very existence demonstrates that the global community has
accepted the centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the development
paradigm.

Gender and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)

According to International Institute for Sustainable Development (2018),globally, women

make an average of 23 per cent less than men, and women take home one tenth of the global
income, while accounting for two thirds of global working hours. Moreover, only 22.8 per
cent of all national parliamentarians were women as of June 2016, a slow increase from 11.3
per cent in
1995. The 2030 Agenda outlines ambitious priorities for sustainability for the next 13 years.
Women’s rights and gender are to be addressed if Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
are to be realized.

Women’s and gender issues are captured as a stand-alone SDG, #5 on Gender Equality, as
well as in a number of areas important for women. SDG 5 focuses on critical issues such as
ending all forms of discrimination (5.1), eliminating all forms of violence against all women
and girls (5.2); eliminating all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage
and female genital mutilation (5.3); and also valuing unpaid care and domestic work (5.4).

These are important steps, but in order to effectively work towards achieving gender equity,
we must integrate gender across all the SDGs, and include gender considerations in all
sustainable development work.

It is the role of all national and sub national governments in every country to make sure that
the SDGs are implemented.
2.6 Importance of Gender Issues in Development

In order to achieve any meaningful development deliberate efforts have to be made to

address gender issues. Large gender disparities in basic human rights in resources and
economic opportunities, and in political voice are evident in Kenya. Since the mid 1980s
there has been a growing consensus that sustainable development requires an understanding
of both women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities within the community and their
relations to each other. This has come to be known as the Gender and Development (GAD)
approach as we have discussed above.
The main objective of GAD is mainstreaming women’s needs and perspectives into all
activities. Mainstreaming acknowledges that all development operations have a gender
impact and do not automatically benefit men and women equally. Thus it is necessary to
adopt GAD approach for development programs to benefit men and women, boys and girls
for sustainable development.
Gender inequalities hinder development. What types of policies and strategies promote
gender equality and foster more effective development. Policymakers have a number of
policy instruments to promote gender equality and development effectiveness. But effective
action requires also that policymakers take account of local realities when designing and
implementing development policies and programs. There can be no one-size-fits-all formula
for promoting gender equality. Identifying what works requires consultations with
stakeholders both women and men on key issues and actions. Therefore to enhance
development effectiveness, gender issues much be an integral part of policy analysis, design
and implementation.
Engendering Development provides policy makers, development specialists, and civil
society members many valuable lessons and tools for integrating gender into development
work. This helps policymakers and members of the development community to realize their
commitment to sustainable development.
Gender equality means women and men have equal opportunities to realize their individual
potential, to contribute to their country’s economic and social development and to benefit
equally from their participation in society.
2.7 Take note

Gender inequality restricts a country’s economic growth. Removing inequalities gives societies
a better chance to develop. When women and men have relative equality, economies grow faster,
children’s health improves and there is less corruption.

Male" and "female" are sex categories, while "masculine" and "feminine" are gender categories.

Development results cannot be maximized without attending to the different needs, interests,
priorities and roles of women, men, boys and girls and the relations between them.
Development programs cannot succeed without the participation and cooperation of all
members of the community (Reinharz, 1992: 6)
Summary 2.8

In this lecture, we look at the historical development of Gender to the present and the
existence of a separate goal on gender equality is the result of decades of advocacy, research and
coalition-building by the international women’s movement as we have seen in the historical
development. Its very existence demonstrates that the global community has accepted the
centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the development paradigm. an
approach that looks at women as an integral part of the family, community and the larger society.
Through gender analysis techniques, the roles and rights of both women and men are studied to
help planners and project managers design how development interventions may be made more
effectively
2.9 References

Code, L. (1991) .What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of
Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Harding, S. (1998). Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and
Epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Harding, S. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s
Lives. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
International Institute for Sustainable Development(December 2018).https://iisd.org/
Nelson, L. H. (1990). Who Knows: From Quine to a Feminist Empiricism.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1993). Breaking Out Again: Feminist Ontology and Epistemology.
London: Routledge.