GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT

Gender and Development

Gender and Development

Part 1: Historical Review Of Gender and Development

In 2003, UNESCO estimated that girls and women, worldwide, comprised two-thirds of the one billion people with little or no education (UNESCO, 2004). Poverty, global inequality and gender discrimination scar the political, economic and social landscape of too much of the world and powerfully shape the academic, activist and policy literature on gender and development. This chapter first outlines some changing features of gender inequalities in access to schooling in developing countries as measured by official statistics and then contrasts the ways in which different disciplinary assumptions about gender and development have engaged with the picture this presents and the policy challenges in this field ( Johnson, 1996, pp: 111).

The historical review on gender and development has been shaped by, and helped shape responses to, global inequality in education as sketched above. Table 1 summarizes heuristically four approaches to thinking and action concerning gender education, development and equality since approximately 1970. While, in practice, there are considerable overlaps between the four approaches, I have separated them analytically to highlight some of their key differences ( Johnson, 1996, pp: 121).

The WID (women in development) approach stresses expansion of schooling for girls and women to secure efficient economic growth or good governance. Here gender is understood descriptively in terms of biological categories. WID generates clear policy directives on including women, for example employing more women teachers to reassure parents regarding girls' safety at school. Partly because of its clarity, but partly also because it evades the difficult question of power, WID has had most influence on the policies of governments, intergovernment organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (Brody, 1985, pp: 106).

The GAD (gender and development) approach considers gender as a process, part of complex and changing social relations. Influential for more than 20 years among women's organizations concerned with development, GAD has only slowly made an impact on the thinking of some governments and education NGOs. Because GAD is alert to nuance in the reproduction and transformation of gendered relations, it is less easily translatable into simple policy demands. However, GAD approaches have had some impact on education practice, particularly with regard to how teachers view work in a gendered classroom, how women's organizations link education demands within wider demands for empowerment, and the ways in which gender equality advocates work in institutions (Brody, 1985, pp: 116).

Post-structuralist approaches question the stability of definitions of gender, paying particular attention to the fluidity of gendered identification and shifting forms of action. Some writers look at how discourses - that is, particular formations of ideas regarding what is natural, or how things should be - are spoken in policies and practices concerning gender in schools. For example, a discourse assuming that gendered behaviour is natural speaks through policies which assume a deficit in girls' capacity to do science and maths. This approach has not influenced government or international policies directly, but post-structuralism has influenced academic critique and pointed to the need to ...