Why study women, address their issues separately?

Women are poorer than men, some of this is likely result of gender-biased development

Types of poverty:

• Time poverty
• Human poverty
• Income poverty
• Poverty as a process (not who is poor, but how do people become poor?)
  • Sickness, death, divorce, calamity)
  • Life course differences (dependency, generational changes)
  • Household poverty as insufficient measure
  • Women's poverty is increasing over time

Gender-biased development: some driving forces

• Patriarchal culture, system of privilege
• Human capital deficit (education, job skills)
• Differential access to production factors (land, labor, capital)
• Differential access to institutions ('gendered' institutions)
• Time poverty-limits opportunities to participate
• Health care (a woman's most productive years are often her most fertile years … )
• Access to technology (widening 'technology gap')

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The professional response to gender bias, feminization of poverty

WID

• Scholars, advocates, practitioners (sounds neater than it is . . .)
• Addressed economic efficiency arguments
• Welfare of women-recipients of assistance
• Didn't challenge structures, status quo-addressed symptoms, economic concepts of development
• Microenterprise, income generation
• Marginalized women?

GAD

• Gender relations is the key, structural issues key barriers
• More complex understanding of issues
• Women as participants, not merely recipients
• Equity, justice (think of various levels, 'spheres')
• Political organization, 'mainstreaming' of development

Difficult to implement? Why?

What do women do to address this?

• Social capital-they often organize around scarce resources
• Social movements-often resource-based

What does 'development' do to address this?

• Grassroots participation (even data collection … )
• More robust information on which to base policy
• Appropriate technology (scale, benefit, use, sustainability, dependence all issues)
• Address reproductive burdens on women
• Address access to 'natural,' human, institutional capita