Feminist Economics 9(2 – 3), 2003, 301 – 317

THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM:

OPERATIONALIZING SEN’S IDEAS ON
CAPABILITIES

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

ABSTRACT
Amartya Sen’s ideas constitute the core principles of a development approach
that has evolved in the Human Development Reports. This approach is a ‘‘para-
digm’’ based on the concept of well-being that can help define public policy, but
does not embody a set of prescriptions. The current movement from an age of
development planning to an age of globalization has meant an increasing atten-
tion to agency aspects of development. While earlier Human Development Re-
ports emphasized measures such as the provision of public services, recent ones
have focused more on people’s political empowerment. This paper reflects on
Sen’s work in light of this shift in emphasis. Gender analysis has been central to
the development of the new agency-driven paradigm, and gender equity is a core
concern. A gender perspective has also helped highlight important aspects of this
paradigm, such as the role of collective agency in promoting development.
K EY W O R D S
Amartya Sen, human development, capabilities, human rights, gender,
democratic governance

INTRODUCTION

The recognition of equal rights for women along with men, and the
determination to combat discrimination on the basis of gender are
achievements equal in importance to the abolition of slavery, the elim-
ination of colonialism and the establishment of equal rights for racial
and ethnic minorities.
(United Nations Development Programme 1995)

The Human Development Reports (HDRs), published annually for UNDP

since 1990, have used Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a conceptual
framework in their analyses of contemporary development challenges.
Over time these reports have developed a distinct development
paradigm – the human development approach – that now informs policy

Feminist Economics ISSN 1354-5701 print/ISSN 1466-4372 online # 2003 IAFFE

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/1354570022000077980
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choices in many areas, such as poverty reduction, sustainable develop-

ment, gender inequalities, governance, and globalization. What, then, are
the policy implications of Sen’s work on capabilities, development,
freedom, and human rights?
Sen’s ideas provide the core principles of a development approach whose
flexible framework allows policy-makers to analyze diverse challenges that
poor people and poor countries face, rather than imposing a rigid orthodoxy
with a set of policy prescriptions. This paper identifies the key elements of
Sen’s paradigm as they have been applied to diverse policy questions. It shows
how the emphasis has evolved over the years from the provision of public
services to political empowerment and how gender issues have been central
to this paradigm shift. Not only is gender equity a core concern, but also
gender analysis has shaped some important aspects of this paradigm, such as
the role of collective agency in promoting development.
In the discussion below, I will first outline the central features of the
human development approach and how it differs from other paradigms
such as the basic needs and human rights approaches, including their
attitude towards gender. Then I will highlight some of the gender
dimensions more specifically.

I. SEN AND THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORTS

The first Human Development Report launched by Mahbub ul Haq in 1990
had an explicit purpose: ‘‘to shift the focus of development economics from
national income accounting to people centered policies’’ (Mahbub ul Haq
1995). The report is not just any report that the UNDP might commission
on a given development theme, nor is it a status report for monitoring
development. It has a much broader ambition, namely setting out a
comprehensive approach to development, including an agenda of policy
priorities, tools of analysis and measurement, and a coherent conceptual
framework. As Richard Jolly (2003) notes:
[The] Human Development (HD) approach embodies a robust para-
digm, which may be contrasted with the neoliberal (NL) paradigm of
the Washington consensus. There are points of overlap, but also impor-
tant points of difference in objectives, assumptions, constraints and in
the main areas for policy and in the indicators for assessing results.
To launch the HDRs, Haq brought together a group of fellow development
economists and friends, among them Paul Streeten and Frances Stewart,
who had worked with him on the basic needs approach; Gus Ranis and Keith
Griffin, his collaborators in Pakistan; and others, such as Sudhir Anand and
Meghnad Desai, who had creative expertise in quantitative methods. Dozens
more who shared his vision also contributed (Haq 1995). But it was Sen’s
work on capabilities and functionings that provided the strong conceptual
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foundation for the new paradigm. His approach defined human develop-
ment as the process of enlarging a person’s ‘‘functionings and capabilities to
function, the range of things that a person could do and be in her life,’’
expressed in the HDRs as expanding ‘‘choices’’ (Amartya Sen 1989).1
Sen would continue to influence the evolution of the human develop-
ment approach, refining and broadening the basic concepts and
measurement tools as new areas of policy challenges were tackled, from
sustainable development (United Nations Development Programme 1994) to
gender equality (United Nations Development Programme 1995), poverty
(United Nations Development Programme 1997), consumption and sustainable
development (United Nations Development Programme 1998), human rights
(United Nations Development Programme 2000), and democracy (United Nations
Development Programme 2002). In turn, the HDRs have paralleled Sen’s own
work on freedom, participation, and agency, incorporating more explicit
references to human rights and freedoms. With Anand, Sen also played a
critical role in developing the measurement tools of human development,
starting with the Human Development Index (HDI) and going on to cover
issues such as gender equality – the Gender-Related Development Index
(GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) were developed in
1995 – and the measurement of poverty in human lives rather than incomes
through the Human Poverty Index (HPI), published in the 1997 HDR.
Thus, while Sen helped develop the initial conceptual framework and
measurement tools used in the HDRs, the reports carried Sen’s work even
further as they explored the policy implications of this development
approach in areas that are of major contemporary significance.2

II. THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT APPROACH: KEY

ELEMENTS
Sen’s theory of development as an expansion of capabilities is the starting
point for the human development approach: the idea that the purpose of
development is to improve human lives by expanding the range of things
that a person can be and do, such as to be healthy and well nourished, to be
knowledgeable, and to participate in community life. Seen from this
viewpoint, development is about removing the obstacles to what a person
can do in life, obstacles such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to
resources, or lack of civil and political freedoms.
It is important to emphasize that the human development approach
contains two central theses about people and development, and to
distinguish between them. They are what Sen calls the ‘‘evaluative aspect’’
and the ‘‘agency aspect’’ (Amartya Sen 2002). The first is concerned with
evaluating improvements in human lives as an explicit development
objective and using human achievements as key indicators of progress.
This contrasts with paradigms that focus on economic performance. The
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second is concerned with what human beings can do to achieve such

improvements, particularly through policy and political changes. The
human development approach is commonly associated with the evaluative
aspect. The agency aspect is less widely appreciated.
To understand these key elements of the human development approach
and their relevance for development policy and strategy, it helps to
compare it with other approaches that have influenced public policy
debates, such as the dominant neoliberal paradigm and a predecessor to
the human development approach, the basic needs approach.3

Explicit philosophical foundations and conceptual roots

As Martha Nussbaum (2000) points out, all public policy formulation
unavoidably reflects normative positions and so should be subjected to
critical philosophical reasoning. An important feature of the human
development approach is that it has an explicit basis in philosophical
reasoning. Sen has written extensively about the conceptual roots of
capabilities in the longstanding intellectual traditions of philosophy,
political economy, and economics, dating back to Aristotle and including
the works of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, among others. Both Sen’s
own work (e.g., Sen 1989) and the HDRs (United Nations Development
Programme 1990, 1996) trace these connections.
Not only do the philosophical underpinnings of neoliberalism and the
basic needs approach differ from those of the HDA, but they are also less
explicit. Although all three approaches are ultimately concerned with
human well-being, they give this concept different meanings. Neoliberalism
defines well-being as utility maximization. Sen sets out the limitations of this
approach (Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams 1982), among which the
most significant is the neglect of rights, freedoms, and human agency. The
basic needs approach places people at the center of development, but the
emphasis on specifying ‘‘basic needs’’ in terms of supplying services and
commodities points to a commodities basis rather than a capabilities basis
in defining human well-being. Although many of the proponents of the
basic needs approach, such as Streeten, emphasized people’s participation
and political constraints, the absence of a strong and explicit philosophical
foundation left the approach open to translation into policy that focused
mainly on meeting people’s material needs, or ‘‘count, cost, and deliver,’’
rather than on the human rights, freedoms, and agency emphasized in the
human development approach.

Evaluative aspects
The human development approach is unique in its emphasis on assessing
development by how well it expands the capabilities of all people. Thus,
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economic growth is only a means and not an end in itself. Furthermore, the
concern with the well-being of all people emphasizes equity as a major
policy objective, requiring monitoring not only through national averages,
but also via measures of deprivation and distribution.
The establishment of measurement tools for evaluating human achieve-
ments was central to introducing human development as an alternative
paradigm and to gaining the attention of policy-makers. Haq was convinced
that a simple combined measure of human development was essential for
convincing the public, academics, and policy-makers that they should
evaluate development by advances in human well-being and not only by
advances in the economy. Although Sen initially opposed this idea, he went
on to help Haq develop the Human Development Index (HDI), a
composite index of achievements in human development. Sen was
concerned by the difficulties of capturing the full complexity of human
capabilities in a single index. But he was persuaded by Haq’s insistence that
only a single number could shift the attention of policy-makers from
material output to human well-being as a real measure of progress (United
Nations Development Programme 1999).
The HDI had a significant policy impact when first formulated and
continues to command policy attention. HDI estimates of countries, as well
as the ‘‘disaggregated HDIs’’ for different regions or ethnic groups within
countries, had the intended effect of focusing greater attention on basic
human capabilities, especially those included in the HDI (the capability to
survive and be healthy, to be knowledgeable, and to enjoy a decent
standard of living). The HDI ranking of countries provoked policy-makers
to examine how each country fared in this regard and to ask why some
countries and regions, such as Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, or the state of Kerala
in India, managed to achieve much higher levels of ‘‘human development’’
in comparison to countries with similar income levels. The comparison of a
country’s HDI rank with its GDP per capita rank became, in this regard,
more critical than the HDI itself as a measure of a country’s human
development.
Two decisions made in devising the HDI were particularly important: one
concerned the choice of capabilities to be included, and the other had to
do with the focus on national averages rather than disparities.
One of the most difficult tasks in applying the capabilities approach to
development policy is deciding which capabilities are most important.4 The
range of human capabilities is infinite and the value that individuals assign
to each one can vary from person to person. Even if some capabilities
deserve greater public attention than others, the relative importance of
capabilities can vary with social context – from one community or country to
another, and from one point of time to another. Thus ‘‘the task of
specification must relate to the underlying motivation of the exercise as well
as dealing with the social values involved’’ (Sen 1989).
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HDRs have used two criteria in deciding which capabilities are most
important: first, they must be universally valued by people across the world;
and second, they must be basic, meaning their lack would foreclose many
other capabilities. But the human development approach has deliberately
remained open-ended in the choice of capabilities, letting them vary over
time and place. This approach contrasts with that of the basic needs
approach, which listed the important human needs without an explicit
explanation justifying the selection and without providing a rationale for
who should be making the list. It also contrasts with other work using the
capability approach, such as Nussbaum’s efforts to finalize a list of essential
capabilities (Nussbaum 2000).5 But the HDRs have argued that the
capabilities given priority within public policy will change over time and
from one community to another. As an exercise in the global evaluation of
development, the HDRs had to focus simply on those capabilities that are
universally valued and ‘‘basic’’ (i.e., capabilities on which many choices in
life depended), reflected in the three HDI capabilities: to be knowledge-
able, to survive, and to enjoy a decent standard of living.
A second significant question that arose in devising the HDI was whether it
should reflect equity. Conceptualized as a measure of average achievements,
HDI does not take into account the distribution of achievements, which
leaves out equity, an essential outcome by which to evaluate progress.
Gender disparities were a central feature of the concern with equity, along
with other disparities such as those of class, ethnicity, or rural/urban
residence. Some argued that to combine a distribution measure with an
average achievement measure would be like adding apples and oranges.
Moreover, there are many forms of disparities, predicated on gender,
ethnicity, race, and so on, and the importance and relevance of particular
forms of disparities can differ from one country to another.
Given these difficulties, HDI remains a measure of average achievement
and its strength lies in its simplicity: a simple measure is more under-
standable to the policy-maker and the public, sending a clear message
about what makes the measure go up or down (Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Kate
Raworth, and A. K. Shiva Kumar 2003). But from the beginning, attempts
were also made to develop supplementary measures that adjust the HDI by
gender disparity, showing that even if two countries have the same average
achievement in terms of HDI, this average may hide differences with
respect to gender disparity. To make this point initially, HDRs disaggre-
gated HDIs for women and men. Later, an index of human development
that incorporated gender disparity was developed. The Gender-Related
Development Index (GDI) adjusts the HDI for gender disparity and
penalizes countries accordingly (United Nations Development Programme 1995
and subsequent issues). The 1995 HDR, which marked the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing, concluded that ‘‘human development is
endangered unless it is engendered.’’
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Unfortunately, the human development approach has often been

misconstrued as being narrowly limited to the three capabilities included
in the HDI, or even more narrowly to their indicators (literacy and
schooling, life expectancy, and adjusted income). This, in turn, has led
many to conclude that the human development approach has little to offer
that is different from the basic needs approach or the concept of human
resource development.
But the intent of the human development approach was never to limit
itself to the narrow definitions of the HDI. The concept of human
development is much more complex and broader than its measure; it is
about people being able to live in freedom and dignity, and being able to
exercise choices to pursue a full and creative life. Development priorities
are therefore about removing restrictions. Illiteracy, ill health, and a lack of
command over resources restrict choices, but so do many other conditions
such as social and political oppression that restrict one’s participation in the
life of a community, or the exercise of autonomy in making decisions about
one’s own life. Ironically, the very success of the HDI has contributed to this
narrow interpretation of the human development approach, and the
absence of indicators for freedom in the HDI and in the HDR statistical
tables contributes to a widespread misperception of human development as
equivalent to social development combined with equitable economic
growth. The human development concept has been trapped inside its
reduced measure (Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 2003).
Over the years, however, other human capabilities have received greater
attention, especially those linked to freedom from social and political
oppression. Gender issues have played a central role in highlighting these
issues. The 1995 HDR on gender thus went far beyond education, health,
and income outcomes to emphasize the importance of women’s equal
participation in political and professional life, their autonomy in decision-
making, and the unequal sharing of unpaid work with men. The GEM was
developed as a measure of ‘‘gender empowerment,’’ and more recent
HDRs have explored the role of human rights and human rights
instruments (United Nations Development Programme 2000) and the role of
democratic political institutions (United Nations Development Programme
2002) in human development. These reports have asserted that enjoying
political and civil freedoms and participating in community decision-
making processes are as important as being literate and enjoying good
health. Even the definition of human development has changed subtly, with
a stronger and unambiguous emphasis on civil and political freedoms. In
1990 the HDR stated:
Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. The
most critical of these wide-ranging choices are to live a long and healthy
life, to be educated and to have access to resources needed for a decent

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standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaran-

teed human rights and personal self-respect [my emphasis].6

In 2001 it stated:
The most basic capabilities for human development are to lead long
and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources
needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the
life of the community.
And in emphasizing the freedom to choose, the 1995 HDR specifically
recognized the injustice of gender inequality:
Human development is a process of enlarging the choices of all peo-
ple, not just for one part of society. Such a process becomes unjust
and discriminatory if most women are excluded from its benefits.
(United Nations Development Programme 1995)
The policy implication of this evolution in the prioritizing of capabilities is a
corresponding shift in focus from social and economic policies to political
institutions and processes. Political reforms have become important aspects
of the human development policy agenda. This contrasts with the
neoliberal and basic needs approaches. The neoliberal approach empha-
sizes institutional efficiency – either in the market or in the provision of
public services. These concerns dominate the current debates on ‘‘good’’
governance, while the human development approach is concerned with
governance for social justice, a governance that enlarges the participation,
power, and influence of the people, especially those who are disadvantaged,
such as women, ethnic minorities, and the poor. From this viewpoint, a
measure that reflects disparities, such as the GDI or the disaggregated HDIs
developed in national human development reports that show huge
differences in human development by region or ethnic group, is
particularly powerful.

Agency aspects
The opening lines of the very first 1990 HDR stated: ‘‘People are the real
wealth of a nation’’ (United Nations Development Programme 1990). People are
not simply beneficiaries of economic and social progress in a society, but
are active agents of change. The human development approach shares with
other approaches the idea that investing in people’s education and health
is a powerful means to achieve overall economic and social progress in
societies. But it goes much further in at least two ways: first in its concern
with the role of human agency for changing policy, social commitment, and
norms that require collective action, and second in its concern with human
rights.
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Human beings can be agents of change through both individual action

and collective action. Individual action shapes development through
activities such as the upbringing of children. Collective action is an
important force that can pressure changes in policies and bring about
political change. Strategies for human development initially emphasized
investing in education and health, and promoting equitable economic
growth – the three dimensions of the HDI. These mobilize the individual
agency of people and strengthen their productive capacity for their own
private interest. But to these must be added a third pillar – expanding
participation through democratic institutions within stronger democratic
governance. Indeed, collective action, especially in the form of social
movements, has been the essential motor behind progress in achieving
major policy shifts necessary for human development, such as the
recognition of gender equality, the need to protect the environment, or
the promotion and protection of a comprehensive set of human rights.
The concept of human capital or human resource development is
typically about individual agency for material production. For example, a
healthy worker is more productive than an ill worker, an educated mother
is more likely to have healthy children, and so on. But the idea of agency in
human development is also about demanding rights in decision-making.
This can be individual in form: for example, the ownership of personal
assets would empower women to demand their rights within the household.
But it is also about collective agency in the public sphere and in a political
process. People aiming to influence public decisions, whether for access to
schooling, for the right to vote, or for decent working conditions, can rarely
be effective on their own. A good deal of evidence shows that effectiveness
requires a process of forming associations, making alliances, and generating
public debates. Democratic governance through political institutions that
expand the power and voice of people, and ensure the accountability of
decision-makers, is an important condition for promoting human develop-
ment.
In this context, examining development through the lens of gender has
been especially important in bringing out the importance of collective
agency in the human development approach. The 1995 HDR (p. 1)
proclaimed: ‘‘One of the defining movements of the 20th century has been
the relentless struggle for gender equality, led mostly by women, but
supported by growing numbers of men. . . . Moving toward gender equality
is not a technocratic goal – it is a political process’’ (United Nations
Development Programme 1995). In subsequently devising measures for the
gender dimensions of human development, the HDR 1995 developed both
an evaluative measure (GDI), which assesses achievement in human
development with gender equity, and an agency measure (GEM). The GEM
measures the extent to which women have influence in decision-making, in
politics, in professional life, and in organizations. The GEM has been used
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widely in advocating women’s empowerment, for example, in debates over

reserving seats in parliament for women.
The recognition and promotion of human rights, and the legal
frameworks that guarantee these rights, are important in the human
development approach, not only for their intrinsic value, but also for their
instrumental value in promoting agency, both individual and collective. A
human right is a claim on society that carries obligations for others to
promote, protect, and respect that right (United Nations Development
Programme 2000). These obligations require the accountability of the ‘‘duty
bearers,’’ enforceable by law. This provides a powerful basis for public
policy that can facilitate human agency. The legal guarantee of a freedom
of speech and association is critical for people to bring issues up for public
debate, whether they are demands for priority attention to health facilities
or for holding corrupt officials to account.

A comparison of approaches
The differences between the human development approach, the neoliberal
alternative, and the human development approach’s precursor, the basic
needs approach, are summarized in Table 1.

III. POLICIES FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: A FIVE-POINT

AGENDA
The ideals of human development have great appeal to many policy-makers
and practitioners, such as parliamentarians, ministers, government officials,
and the staff of donor agencies or NGOs. Having bought into the values,
they invariably ask, ‘‘So what do we do? What policy priorities do we follow?’’
The human development approach is not a recipe of policy prescriptions
with a set of ‘‘destinations’’ and a list of ingredients on how to get there. It
claims to be instead a ‘‘robust paradigm’’ that can be used over time and
across countries as development challenges and priorities shift. None-
theless, in the context of the current challenges that face most countries
today, five elements of a general human development agenda can be
proposed. They constitute what might be called a ‘‘New York consensus,’’ as
these points are reflected in many UN agreements:

1 Priority to ‘‘social development’’ with the goals of expanding

education and health opportunities.
2 Economic growth that generates resources for human development
in its many dimensions.
3 Political and social reforms for democratic governance that secures
human rights so that people can live in freedom and dignity, with
greater collective agency, participation, and autonomy.
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 Table 1 The human development approach, the neoliberal alternative, and the basic needs antecedent: comparing key features
Human development Neoliberalism Basic needs
Philosophical underpinnings
Normative assumptions Explicit Implicit Not fully specified
Concept of well-being Functionings and capabilities Utility Meeting basic needs
Evaluative aspect
Leading criterion for evaluating Human capabilities, equality of Economic well-being, economic Poverty reduction in terms of
development progress outcomes, fairness and justice in growth, efficiency income, access to basic social
institutional arrangements services
Measurement tools favored Human outcomes, deprivational Economic activity and condition, Access to material means,
and distributional measures averages and aggregate measures derivational measures
Agency aspect
People in development as ends Ends: beneficiaries; means: agents Means: human resources for Ends: beneficiaries
and/or means economic activity

311
Mobilizing agency Individual action and collective Individual action Concern with political will and
action political base
‘‘Development strategy’’
Key operational goals Expanding people’s choices Economic growth Expanding basic social services
(social, economic, political)
Distribution of benefits and costs Emphasis on equality and on the Concern with poverty Concern with poverty
human rights of all individuals
THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

Links between development and Human rights and freedoms have No explicit connection. Current No explicit connection
human rights and freedoms intrinsic value and are search for a link between political
development objectives. Current and civil freedoms and economic
research on their instrumental growth
role through links to economic
and social progress
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4 Equity in the above three elements with a concern for all individuals,
with special attention to the downtrodden and the poor whose
interests are often neglected in public policy, as well as the removal of
discrimination against women.
5 Policy and institutional reforms at the global level that create an
economic environment more conducive for poor countries to access
global markets, technology, and information.

This five-point agenda contains a mix of old and new priorities. Social
development continues to be important, given that illiteracy is still high,
and basic health and survival is far from guaranteed in most developing
countries. Economic growth also continues to receive attention, since low
growth in developing countries is a major obstacle to human
development: over sixty countries ended the decade of 1990 – 2000
poorer than at its beginning. At the same time, the human development
approach has seen a notable evolution. In the early 1990s, the HDRs
emphasized public expenditure allocations in health and education;
today priorities in those areas are on service quality, efficiency, and
equity of delivery (for which governance reforms are often a precondi-
tion), as well as on the level of resources – in education, today’s
competitive global markets require higher levels than basic primary
schooling. Institutional reforms that enable the poor to monitor the use
of local development funds also are playing a significant role in ensuring
the equitable and efficient delivery of basic services. Most importantly,
the HDRs have placed an increasing focus on social and political
institutions that would ‘‘empower’’ the poor and disadvantaged groups
(such as women) so that they have more voice in public policy-making
and can fight for their interests. Gender equity in particular (as outlined
in the next section) has received prominent attention in this ‘‘New York
consensus.’’ Finally, it is increasingly apparent that the global environ-
ment matters, raising such issues as access to global markets, dealing
with the spread of global diseases, the creation of global public goods,
and so on. It is imperative that global policies and institutions cease
favoring only the rich countries. A critical question now is whether
global institutions be restructured or created to function on democratic
principles mandating the inclusion and participation of all countries and
all people.
The changes in the human development approach over time
highlight its openness to accommodating new concerns and taking up
new policy challenges. Evolving significantly over the last decade, a
period that has seen dramatic changes in the world as globalization has
sped forward, the HDRs have reflected these changing circumstances.
They have shifted emphases in the policy priorities of the human
development agenda from public investments to incentives, from
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economic measures to democratic politics, from education and health

to political and civil liberties, and from economic and social policies to
participatory political institutions. They also recognize that people’s
capabilities to undertake collective action in today’s era of rapid
globalization will play an increasingly important role in shaping the
course of development.
It is not surprising that in 1990 advocacy for human development focused
on shifts in planning priorities and on state action: what the state could do
to expand capabilities in education and health constituted an important
pillar of a human development strategy, for both the intrinsic and the
instrumental values of education and health. Today, economic liberal-
ization and political democratization are dominant influences in most
countries, which shifts priorities for human development. Capabilities to
participate in social action have now become more important. In the same
way that economic entrepreneurship drives markets, social entrepreneur-
ship is expected to drive policy debates on issues that matter for people’s
well-being. A consensus is emerging on the importance of collective action
by actors other than the state, notably people and civil society groups, for
promoting development.
The political shifts of the 1980s and 1990s have also built greater
consensus about the intrinsic value of political freedoms and all human
rights, in principle, if not in practice.7 In 1990, the legacy of the Cold War
still divided the world on the importance of political freedom and public
participation. In today’s context of economic and political liberalization,
and growing global interdependence, political freedom, public participa-
tion, and collective agency have gained greater universal acceptance as
important human goals.

IV. GENDER EQUITY AND THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

APPROA CH
Gender equity has been a prominent aspect of equity concerns in public
policy. The gender dimension has led to widespread advocacy and focused
attention on equity in other than economic areas, such as education and
political participation. The women’s movement and studies by feminist
scholars have contributed to this expansion of the notion of equity.
The human development approach offers a capability-based approach to
gender equity in development that is a departure from traditions focused
on income and growth. The analytical framework for gender equity that it
provides encompasses the following aspects:

. the philosophical foundation of equality of capabilities and freedoms,

focusing on individuals as the objective of gender in development;
. the evaluative aspect of capability expansion;
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. the agency aspect of capability expansion;

. measurement tools of the above.

This framework contrasts with the gender equity agenda seen from a
growth-oriented development perspective. Compare, for example, the
different measures of gender equity. Other approaches measure women’s
‘‘poverty’’ by the income gaps between female-headed and male-headed
households. Women’s ‘‘poverty’’ in the human development approach
goes beyond the lack of income to deprivation in capabilities, such as lack
of education, health, and the channels to participate in economic life and
in decision-making (Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 1999). GDI accordingly provides
an evaluative measure of development that includes gender equity, while
GEM measures gender equity in women’s agency. The human development
approach also provides an alternative framework to those that justify
improving women’s health and education as ‘‘human resource develop-
ment,’’ instrumental to the well-being of others and to economic growth.
The capability-based framework for gender equity argues for parity rather
than equity.
Overall, the human development approach provides a more gender-
sensitive agenda to public policy than its alternatives. First, gender equity is
a central concern of the approach, which emphasizes the importance of
expanding the capabilities and functionings of all individuals. The fact that
discrimination continues to be widespread is a priority concern. Second,
the human development approach is sensitive to aspects of discrimination
that are particularly important in women’s lives, but are unrelated to
incomes and economic growth, such as lack of autonomy in decisions about
their lives and the ability to influence decision-making within the family,
community, and nation. Third, the human development approach has the
scope to delve into complex issues, such as the unequal sharing of unpaid
work, that constrain women’s life choices.
Gender analysis and the issues that feminists have raised have kept
the approach vibrant, contributing particularly to the development of
its agency aspects. Gender concerns have given the approach the power
and flexibility to encompass aspects of inequality that would otherwise
go unremarked. Its sensitivity to gender in turn has made it sensitive to
a range of potential inequities and unfreedoms that can affect all
people. The fact that progress in equal rights for women has come
about largely through the efforts of women has highlighted the
essential role of collective agency in human progress. Moreover, given
the constraints on women’s agency in almost all societies by political
institutions such as male-dominated political parties, social institutions
such as the family, and social norms such as women’s responsibilities
for care work, these issues and their underlying causes clearly must be
tackled head on.
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V. CONCLUSION
Over the last decade, the human development approach has evolved in
directions that pay more attention to the agency aspects of human
development – to political freedoms and institutions as well as political
processes. Advocating equal rights for women has been and will continue to
be an important factor underlying this evolution.
Many challenges remain in refining the conceptual underpinnings of the
human development approach, developing better measurement tools, and
above all making the approach useful for policy purposes. They include, for
example, more conceptual clarity about the role of groups and about
environmental sustainability, better measures of human development that
take account of political freedoms, and better measures of gender equality,
especially in the area of empowerment. Over the last decade, the human
development approach has evolved as a result of a rich academic debate.
The hope is this will continue into the next decade.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, United Nations Development Programme,

304 East 45th St, New York, NY 10017, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is a personal contribution and is not intended to present
UNDP’s policy position. It reflects my experience in conceptualizing and
writing the annual HDRs as director of Human Development Reports 1995
to present. For many useful comments, I thank Paul Streeten, Moez Doraid,
Saraswathi Menon, David Stewart, Paul Segal, Sabina Alkire, contributors to
the NHDR network on-line review, the anonymous reviewers of the journal,
and the three guest editors of this volume (especially Bina Agarwal, who
provided detailed comments and editorial inputs). I also appreciate the
responses to my paper during the September 2002 All-Souls workshop at
Oxford on the theme of this volume.

NOTES
1
It is unclear why the term ‘‘choices’’ replaced ‘‘capabilities’’ in the HDRs. This
replacement can cause confusion, since ‘‘choice’’ is a common term that means
different things to different people.
2
Amartya Sen and Sudhir Anand provided the background papers for many (though not
all) of the conceptual chapters and measurement tools of the HDRs: in 1990 on human
development, concept and measurement (HDI) (Sen and Anand 1990); in 1994 on
sustainability and environment (Sen and Anand 1994a, 1994b); in 1995 on measuring
gender equality and human development (Sen and Anand 1995); in 1996 on

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defining human poverty and the human poverty measure (Sen and Anand 1997); in
1998 on consumption and human development (Sen and Anand 1998); and in 2000
on human rights and human development (Sen and Anand 2000). In 2002 (the
HDR on democracy), while Sen did not provide a written text, his writings on
democracy, freedom, and development provided the conceptual framework for the
report, and his careful reading and comments on draft texts had a decisive influence.
Sen’s role in the HDR, however, should not be misinterpreted: the reports should
not be attributed to Sen, although he has made decisive contributions.
3
Richard Jolly (2003) develops the contrasts between neoliberalism and the human
development approach.
4
The capabilities approach to development and its application in terms of human
development leaves open the final definition of valuable ends to social and individual
values. According to Sen (1989), ‘‘there are many ambiguities in the conceptual
framework of the capability approach,’’ and these ambiguities are in fact part of the
concept (see Sen 1989 for elaboration).
5
There is a rich debate in the literature on whether or not to explicitly identify a list of
the most important capabilities. See, for example, Nussbaum (2000) and Martha
Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (1993).
6
It is unclear whether ‘‘additional choices’’ meant these were less important than the
three others listed. By 2001 the HDR had removed this ambiguity.
7
In the third wave of democracy of the 1980s and 1990s, some eighty countries took
significant steps towards democratization. Progress has been uneven, however, and
some countries have reverted back to less democratic governance. Human rights
continue to be deplorable in many countries. Nonetheless, now more than ever
before there is a greater overall recognition of the principles of democracy, human
rights, and freedoms. This is reflected, for example, in the dramatic rise in the
ratification of major human rights instruments, in the number of countries
undertaking democratic reforms, and in the emphasis on democracy and human
rights in the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations adopted in September
2000 (United Nations Development Programme 2002).

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