The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change, 2nd Edition

12 Interrogating Development: Feminism, Gender and Policy (1998)

Ruth Pearson and Cecile Jackson

Feminist Analysis versus Women and Development

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Even at the outset of interest in gender analysis of development, there were already different approaches to policy analysis and development. The positive approach of the international development agencies of the 1970s was largely aimed at integrating women into development, particularly influenced by Boserup’s pathbreaking book published in 1970 which articulated a concern that women had been left out of development – defined in terms of the programmes for development following post-war reconstruction. Women in Development then became the policy response to the concern that the fruits of development were not trickling down to women; the response was therefore that women should be factored into such programmes.

However, a critique was already developing amongst feminist academics in development. First, there was a critique of the notion that ‘development’ itself was unproblematic, the problem was to integrate women into policy and practice, parallel to the liberal feminist view that extending education and employment opportunities to women in Western states would eliminate gender discrimination and oppression (Bandarage, 1984). In the UK, the Subordination of Women collective, affectionately known as SOW, financed by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, provided the basis for much of the theoretical ...