UNIT THREE

FEMINISM, FEMINIST THEORIES AND DEVELOPMENT

3.1 Gender Reform Feminisms
The feminisms of the 1960s and 1970s were the beginning of the second wave of feminism. They are
liberal feminism, Marxist and socialist feminisms, and development feminism. The roots of liberal
feminism were 18th and 19th century liberal political philosophy that developed the idea of
individual rights while Marxist and Socialist feminisms were fundamentally established on the
Marx's 19th century critiques of capitalism and his concept of class consciousness in class analysis.
Development feminism was essentially linked to the 20 th century anti-colonial politics and ideas of
national development.

3.1.1 Liberal Feminism

Theoretically, liberal feminism claims that gender differences are not based in biology, and
therefore, women and men are not all that different. Liberalists hold that “… their common humanity
supersedes their pro-creative differentiation”. They claim that women and men should not be treated
differently under the law because they are not fundamentally different. For example, women should
have the same rights as men and the same educational and work opportunities. This liberal feminism
notion of equality before the law was reflected in the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. It states, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or any state on account of sex.” Politically, liberal feminists formed somewhat bureaucratic
organizations, which invited men members. Their activist focus has been concerned with visible
sources of gender discrimination, such as gendered job markets and inequitable wage scales, and
with getting women into positions of authority in the professions, government, and cultural institutions.

Liberal feminist politics took important weapons of the civil rights movement= anti-discrimination
legislation and affirmative action, and used them to fight gender inequality, especially in the job
market. Affirmative action calls for aggressively seeking out qualified people to redress the gender
and ethnic imbalance in work places. That means encouraging men to train for such jobs as nursing,
teaching, and secretary, and women for fields like engineering, construction, and police work. With
a diverse pool of qualified applicants, employers can be legally mandated to hire enough different

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workers to achieve a reasonable balance in their workforce, and to pay them the same and also give
an equal chance to advance in their careers.

The main contribution of liberal feminism is showing how much modern society discriminates
against women. In the United States, it was successful in breaking down many barriers to women's
entry into formerly male-dominated jobs and professions, helped to equalize wage scales, and got
abortion and other reproductive rights legalized. But liberal feminism could not overcome the
prevailing belief that women and men are intrinsically different. It was somewhat more successful in
proving that even if women are different from men, they are not inferior.

3.1.2 Marxist and Socialist Feminisms

Marx's analysis of the social structure of capitalism was supposed to apply to people of any social
characteristics. If you owned the means of production, you were a member of the capitalist class; if
you sold your labor for a wage, you were a member of the working class for the capitalists. That
would be true of women as well, except that until the end of the 19th century, married women in
capitalist countries were not allowed to own property in their own name; their profits from any
businesses they ran and their wages belonged to their husband. Although Marx recognized that
workers and capitalists had wives who worked in the home and took care of the children, he had no
place for housewives in his analysis of capitalism.

It was Marxist feminism that put housewives into the structure of capitalism, and not Karl Marx.
Housewives are vital to capitalism, indeed to any industrial economy, because their unpaid work in
the home maintains bosses and workers and reproduces the next generation of bosses and workers
(and their future wives as well). Furthermore, if a bourgeois husband (one who owns means of
production, or just a member of industry owning class) falls on hard times, his wife can do genteel
(refined or proper) work in the home, such as dressmaking, to earn extra money, or take a temporary
or part-time job, usually white collar. And when a worker's wages fall below the level needed to feed
his family, as it often does, his wife can go out to work for wages in factories or shops or other
people's homes, or turn the home into a small factory and put everyone, sometimes including the
children, to work.

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The housewife's labor, paid and unpaid, is for her family. Marxist and socialist feminisms
severely criticize the family as a source of women's oppression and exploitation. If a woman works
for her family in the home, she has to be supported, and so she is economically dependent on the
"man of the house," like her children. If she works outside the home, she is still expected to fulfill
her domestic duties, and so she ends up working twice as hard as a man, and usually for a lot less pay.

This source of gender inequality has been somewhat redressed in countries that give all mothers
paid leave before and after the birth of a child and that provide affordable child care. But those
solutions put the burden of children totally on the mother, and encourage men to either consciously
or unconsciously exit out of family responsibilities altogether. To counteract that trend, feminists in
the government of Norway allocated a certain portion of paid-child-care-leave to fathers
specifically. Women in the former communist countries had what liberal feminism in capitalist
economies always wanted for women, that is, full-time jobs with state-supported maternity leave and
child-care services. But Marxist and socialist feminists claim that the welfare state can be
paternalistic, substituting public patriarchy for private patriarchy. They argue that male-dominated
government policies put the state's interests before those of women. When the economy needs
workers, the state may pay for child-care leave, and with a down-turn in the economy, the state
reduces the benefits. Similarly, when the state needs women to have more children, it cuts back on
abortions and contraceptive services. Women's status as a reserve army of labor and as a child
producer is thus no different under socialism than under capitalism. The solution of women's
economic dependence on men thus cannot simply be waged work, especially if jobs continue to be
gender-segregated and women's work is paid less than men's.

Socialist feminism had a different solution to the gendered workforce than liberal feminism's
program of affirmative action. In examining the reasons why women and men workers' salaries are
so discrepant, proponents of comparable worth found that wage scales are not set by the market for
labor, by what a worker is worth to an employer, or by the worker's education or other credentials.
Salaries are set by conventional "worth," which is rooted in gender and ethnic and other forms of
discrimination. Comparable worth programs compare jobs in traditional women's occupations, such
as secretary, with traditional men's jobs, such as automobile mechanic. They give a point values for
qualifications needed, skills used, extent of responsibility and authority over other workers, and
dangerousness. Salaries are then equalized for jobs with a similar number of points (which represent

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the "worth" of the job). Although comparable worth programs do not do away with gendered job
segregation, feminist proponents argue that raising the salaries of women who do the traditional
women's jobs could give the majority of women economic resources that would make them less
dependent on marriage or state benefits as a means of survival.

3.1.3 Development Feminism

Development feminism has done extensive gender analysis of the global economy. They argue that
the gendered division of labor in developing countries is the outcome of a long history of
colonialism. Under colonialism, women's traditional contributions to food production were
undermined in favor of exportable crops, such as coffee, and the extraction of raw materials, such as
minerals. Men workers were favored in this work, but they were paid barely enough for their own
subsistence. Women family members had to provide food for themselves and their children, but with
good land confiscated for plantations, they also lived at a bare survival level. As a result, they argue,
women workers in developing countries (Central and Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa)
were paid less than men workers, whether they work in factories or at home. To survive in rural
communities, women grow food, keep house, and earn money any way they can to supplement what
their migrating husbands send t1.hem.

Development feminism made an important theoretical contribution in equating women's status with
control of economic resources. In some societies, women control significant economic resources and
so have a high status. In contrast, in societies with patriarchal family structures where anything
women produce, including children, belongs to the husband, women and girls have a low value.
Development feminism's theory is that in any society, if the food women produce is the main way
the group is fed, and women also control the distribution of any surplus they produce, women have
power and prestige. If men provide most of the food and distribute the surplus, women's status is
low. Whether women or men produce most of the food depends on the kind of technology used.
Thus, the mode of production and the kinship rules that control the distribution of any surplus is the
significant determinants of the relative status of women and men in any society. In addition to
gendered economic analyses, development feminism addresses the political issue of women's rights
versus national and cultural traditions. At the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Forum held in Beijing in 1995, the popular slogan was "human rights are women's rights and

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women's rights are human rights." The Platform for Action document that came out of the UN
Conference condemned particular cultural practices that are oppressive to women. Such practices
include: infanticide, dowry, child-marriage (early marriage), and female genital mutilation. The 187
governments that signed onto the Beijing Platform for Action agreed to abolish these practices.

However, since they are integral parts of cultural and tribal traditions, to give them up at a time
could be seen as kowtowing to Western ideas. The development feminist perspective, so critical of
colonialism and yet so supportive of women's rights, has found this issue difficult to resolve.
Western ideas of individualism and economic independence are double-faced. On the one hand,
these ideas support the rights of girls and women to an education that will allow them to be
economically independent. They are also the source of a concept of universal human rights that can
be used to fight subordinating and sometimes physically hurtful tribal practices, such as genital
mutilation. On the other hand, Western ideas may weaken communal enterprises and traditional
reciprocal food production and shared child care. Indigenous women's own solution to this dilemma
is community organizing around their productive and reproductive roles as mothers so that what
benefits them economically and physically is in the service of their families, not themselves alone.
However, this same community organizing and family service can support the continuance of
cultural practices like female genital mutilation, which Western development feminists want to see
eradicated. The decision to not interfere with traditional cultural practices that are physically harmful
to girls, and at the same time, that works for their education and better health care are a particularly
problematic dilemma for development feminism.

3.2 Gender Resistant Feminisms

As gender reform feminisms made their way into the public consciousness in the 1970s and women
entered formerly all-men workplaces and schools, they became more and more aware of constant
and everyday put-downs, from bosses and colleagues at work, professors and students in the
classroom, fellow organizers in political movements, and worst of all, from boyfriends and husbands
at home. These "micro-inequities" of everyday life, being ignored and interrupted, not getting credit
for competence or good performance, being passed over for jobs that involve taking charge,
crystallize into a pattern that insidiously wears women down. Out of this awareness that ‘sisters had
no place in any brotherhood’ came the gender resistant feminisms of the 1970's. They are radical
feminism, lesbian feminism, psychoanalytical feminism, and standpoint feminism.

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3.2.1 Radical Feminism
Radical feminism had its start in small, leaderless, women-only consciousness-raising groups, where
the topics of intense discussion came out of women's daily lives- from housework, serving men's
emotional and sexual needs, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause. From these
discussions came a theory of gender inequality that went beyond discrimination, to oppression, and a
gender politics of resistance to the dominant gender order. Radical feminism's theoretical watchword
is patriarchy, or men's pervasive oppression and exploitation of women, which can be found
wherever women and men are in contact with each other, in private as well as in public. Radical
feminism argues that patriarchy is very hard to eradicate because its root- the belief that women are
different and inferior- is deeply embedded in most men's consciousness. It can best be resisted,
radical feminists argued, by forming non-hierarchical, supportive, woman-only spaces where women
can think and act and create free of constant sexist put-downs, sexual harassment, and the threat of
rape and violence. Stimulating possibilities of creating woman-oriented health care facilities, safe
residences for battered women, counseling and legal services for survivors of rape, a woman's
culture, and even a woman's religion and ethics forged the bonds of “sisterhood” and the rationale
for separation from men. Radical feminism turns male-dominated culture on its head. It puts down
all the characteristics that are valued in male-dominated societies - objectivity, distance, control,
coolness, aggressiveness, and competitiveness -and blames them for wars, poverty, rape, battering,
child abuse, and incest. It praises what women do feed and nurture, cooperate and reciprocate, and
attend to bodies, minds, and psyches. The important values, radical feminism argues, are intimacy,
persuasion, warmth, caring, and sharing -- the characteristics that women develop in their hands on,
everyday experiences with their own and their children's bodies and with the work of daily living.
Men could develop these characteristics, too, if they "mothered," but since few do, they are much
more prevalent in women. Radical feminism claims that most men have the potential to use physical
violence against women, including rape and murder. They point to the commonness of date rape and
wife beating, of murders of ex-wives and former girlfriends. The commercial side of this systemic
misogyny, or women-hating, is the way women are depicted as sex objects in the mass media and as
pieces of meat in pornography, and the global exploitation of girls and young women in prostitution.
Even more insidious, they argue, sexual exploitation is the common downside of romantic

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heterosexual love, which itself is oppressive to women. The threat of violence and rape, radical
feminism theorizes, is the way patriarchy controls all women.
Radical feminism's political battlefield has been protection of rape victims and battered women, and
condemnation of pornography, prostitution, sexual harassment, and sexual coercion. Since all men
derive power from their dominant social status, any sexual relationship between women and men is
intrinsically unequal. Consent by women to heterosexual intercourse is, by this definition, always
coerced unless it is explicitly agreed to by a fully aware, autonomous woman. This viewpoint led to
an expansion of the parameters of rape, and to making date rape visible and legally actionable. The
radical feminist political remedies-women-only consciousness-raising groups and alternative
organizations- were vital in allowing women the "breathing space" to formulate important theories of
gender inequality, to develop women's studies programs in colleges and universities, to form communities,
and to produce knowledge, culture, religion, ethics, and health care from a woman's point of view.
But they alienated many working-class women, especially those of disadvantaged ethnic groups,
who felt that their men were just as oppressed as they were by the dominant society or classes.
Radical feminism's critique of heterosexuality and its valorization of mothering produced a schism
(division) among feminists, offending many of those who were in heterosexual relationships or who
didn't want children. Its praise of women's emotionality and nurturing capabilities and condemnation
of men's violent sexuality and aggressiveness has been seen as essentialist -rooted in deep-seated and
seemingly intractable differences between two global categories of people. This concentration on
universal gender oppression has led to accusations that radical feminism neglects ethnic and social
class differences among men and among women, and that it downplays other sources of oppression.
By pitting women against men, radical feminism alienates women of color and working-class
women, who feel torn between their feminist and their ethnic and class loyalties.

3.2.2 Lesbian Feminism

Lesbian feminism takes the radical feminist pessimistic view of men to its logical conclusion. If
heterosexual relationships are intrinsically exploitative because of men's social, physical, and sexual
power over women, why bother with men at all? Women are more loving, nurturing, sharing, and
understanding. Men like having women friends to talk about their problems with, but women can
only unburden to other women. "Why not goes all the way?" asked lesbian feminism. Stop sleeping
with the "enemy," and turn to other women for sexual love as well as for intellectual companionship

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and emotional support. One theoretical lesbian feminism concept is that of the lesbian continuum,
where a lesbian can be any independent, woman identified woman. This lesbian metaphor
transforms love between women into an identity, a community, and a culture. Lesbian imagery is not
a mirror opposite of men's sexuality and relationships, but a new language, a new voice. Lesbian
feminism praises women's sexuality and bodies, mother-daughter love, and the cultural community
of women, not just sexual and emotional relationships between women. “Bi-sexual” women who
have sexual relations with both women and men, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes serially,
disturb the gender and sexual dichotomies that are the basis for lesbian feminism. Their presence has
been severely resisted in many lesbian communities, but they have become a contradiction not yet
resolved in lesbian feminism.

3.2.3 Psychoanalytic Feminism

Another important gender resistant feminism of the 1970s and 1980s came out of feminist re-
readings of Freud and the French feminist engagement with Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault. Freud's
theory of personality development centers on the Oedipus complex- the detachment from the
mother. Psychoanalytic feminism claims that the source of men's domination of women is men's
unconscious two-sided need for women's emotionality and rejection of them as potential castrators.
Women submit to men because of their unconscious desires for emotional connectedness. These
gendered personalities are the outcome of the Oedipus complex- the separation from the mother.
Because women are the primary parents, infants bond with them. Boys, however, have to separate
from their mothers and identify with their fathers in order to establish their masculinity. They
develop strong ego boundaries and a capacity for the independent action, objectivity, and rational
thinking so valued in most cultures. Women are a threat to their independence and masculine
sexuality. Girls continue to identify with their mothers, and so they grow up with fluid ego
boundaries that make them sensitive, empathic, emotional. It is these qualities that make them
potentially good mothers, and keep them open to men's emotional needs. But because the men in
their lives have developed personalities that make them emotionally guarded, women want to have
children to bond with. Thus, psychological gendering of children is continually reproduced.

To develop nurturing capabilities in men, and to break the cycle of the reproduction of gendered
personality structures, psychoanalytic feminisms recommend shared-parenting, after men are

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taught how to parent. French psychoanalytic feminism focuses on the ways that cultural productions
(novels, drama, art, opera, music, movies) reflect and represent the masculine unconscious,
especially fear of castration. In French feminist psychoanalytic theory, patriarchal culture is the
sublimation of men's suppressed infantile desire for the mother and fear of the loss of the phallus,
the symbol of masculine difference. Since women don't have a phallus to lose and are not different
from their mothers, they can't participate in the creation of the culture. Women's wish for a phallus
and repressed sexual desire for their fathers is sublimated into wanting to give birth to a son; men's
repressed sexual desire for their mother and fear of the father's castration are sublimated into cultural
creations. What women represent in phallic culture is the sexual desire and emotionality men must
repress in order to become like their fathers, men who are controlled and controlling. No matter what
role women play in cultural productions, the male gaze sees them as desired or despised sexualized
objects. Phallic cultural productions, according to psychoanalytic feminism, are full of aggression,
competition, and domination, with an underlying misogynist subtext of fear of castration – of
becoming a woman. To resist and to counter with woman centeredness, French feminism called for
women to write from their biographical experiences and their bodies, about menstruation,
pregnancy, childbirth, and sexuality. That way, women can resist their suppression by the dominant
phallic culture. However, urging women to produce woman-centered art and literature locks them
into a categorically female sensibility and emphasizes their difference from men and the dominant
culture even more. Women's emotional and erotic power is unleashed and made visible in women's
cultural productions, but they are separated from men's culture, which is still dominant.

3.2.4 Standpoint Feminist

Radical, lesbian, and psychoanalytic feminist theories of women's oppression converge in standpoint
feminism, which turns from resistance to confrontation with the dominant sources of knowledge and
values. The main idea among all the gender resistant feminisms is that women and women's
perspectives should be central to knowledge, culture, and politics, not invisible or marginal.
Whoever sets the agendas for scientific research, whoever shapes the content of education, whoever
chooses the symbols that permeate cultural productions has hegemonic power. Hegemony is the
ideology that legitimates a society's unquestioned assumptions. In Western societies where the
justifications for many of the ideas about women and men largely come from science, as they
believe in scientific "facts" and rarely question their objectivity, Standpoint feminism emerges as a

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critique of mainstream science and social science, a methodology for feminist research, and an
analysis of the power that lies in producing knowledge. Simply put, standpoint feminism says that
women's "voices" are different from men's, and they must be heard if women are to challenge
hegemonic values. Men do not recognize that the knowledge they produce and the concepts they use
come out of their own experience. Rather, they claim that their scientific work is universal, general,
neutral, and objective. But women know that it is partial, particular, masculine, and subjective
because they see the world from a different angle, and they have been excluded from much of
science. The grounding for standpoint theory comes from Marxist and socialist feminist theory,
which applies Marx's concept of “class consciousness” to women, and psychoanalytic feminist
theory, which describes the gendering of the unconscious. Standpoint feminism argues that as
physical and social reproducers of children -out of bodies, emotions, thought, and sheer physical
labor, women are grounded in material reality in ways that men are not. Because they are closely
connected to their bodies and their emotions, women's unconscious as well as conscious view of the
world is unitary and concrete. If women produced knowledge, it would be much more in touch with
the everyday, material world, and with the connectedness among people. Although men could
certainly do research on and about women, and women on men, standpoint feminism argues that
women researchers are more sensitive to how women see problems and set priorities, and therefore
would be better able to design and conduct research from a woman's point of view.

Unquestionably, women do privilege to women's experience. But is all women's experience is not the
same. The "facts" produced from a woman's perspective are also just as biased as those produced
from a man's point of view. Donna Haraway (1998) says that all knowledge is situated, just as
standpoint feminism claims, but situations differ, and so do all perspectives.

3.3 Gender Revolution Feminisms

The 1980s and 1990s have seen the emergence of feminist theories that attack the dominant social
order through questioning the clearness of the categories that comprise its hierarchies. These
feminisms deconstruct the interlocking structures of power and privilege that make one group of
men dominant, and range everyone else in a complex ladder of increasing disadvantage.
They also analyze how cultural productions, especially in the mass media, justify and normalize
inequality and subordinating practices. These feminisms thus have the revolutionary potential of

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destabilizing the structure and values of the dominant social order. They are multi-ethnic feminism,
men’s feminism, social construction feminism, post-modern feminism and queer theory.

3.3.1 Multi-ethnic Feminism

Throughout the 20th century, social critics have argued that no one aspect of inequality is more
important than any other. Ethnicity, religion, social class, and gender comprise a complex
hierarchical stratification system in which upper-class, heterosexual, white men and women oppress
lower-class women and men of disadvantaged ethnicities and religions. In teasing out the multiple
strands of oppression and exploitation, multi-ethnic feminism has shown that gender, ethnicity,
religion, and social class are structurally intertwined relationships. Ethnicity, religion, social class,
and gender are the walls and windows of our lives, they structure what we experience, do, feel, see,
and ultimately believe about ourselves and others. As a writer points out in a comment on standpoint
theory ("Comment on Hekman's 'Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited': Where's
the Power?", 1997), these experiences are not individual, but belong to groups; thus they are a vital
source of both a world view and a sense of identity. The important point made by multi-ethnic
feminism is that the subordinate group is not marked just by gender or by ethnicity or religion, but is
in a social location in multiple systems of domination. Men are as oppressed as women, but men
and women of disadvantaged groups are often oppressed in different ways. For example, in the
United States, Black men are punished for their masculinity and Black women are seen as sexual
objects or mothers. Thus, group consciousness reflects all social statuses at once.

Multi-ethnic cultural feminism finds art in what women of every culture produce in everyday life:
quilts, folk songs, celebratory dances, festive food, decorated dishes, weaving and embroidery
(needlework) are all part of a vibrant women's culture. These women's modes of art and literature are
interactive and emotionally expressive. They are the equivalent of men's subversive cultural
productions, such as jazz and rap, and equally distinctive from the dominant group's way of talking
and thinking. A woman of a disadvantaged ethnic group may not feel loyalty or identity with "all
women." But she may also feel alienated from the men of her own group, if they are oppressive to
women because of a traditional patriarchal culture or because they are themselves subordinated by
men at the top of the pyramid.
3.3.2 Men's Feminism

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Men's feminism is a burgeoning field of study that applies feminist theories to the study of men and
masculinity. Men's feminism took on the task called for by feminists studying women in relationship
to men, that is, to treat men as well as women as a gender and to scrutinize masculinity as carefully
as femininity. A prime goal has been to develop a theory, not of masculinity, but of masculinities,
because of the diversity among men. They argue that there is no universal masculine characteristic
that is the same in every society. Nor, for that matter, in any one society, or in any one
organizational setting, as earlier studies of working-class men and racial stratification made very
clear. The main theory developed in men's feminism, which has been used to dissect the differences
between and within groups of middle-class and working class men of different ethnic groups and
sexual orientations, is a concept of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic or dominant men are those
who are economically successful, ethnically superior, and visibly heterosexual. Yet the
characteristics of masculinity, hegemonic or otherwise, are not the source of men's gender status.
Genders- men's and women's- are relational and embedded in the structure of the social order. The
object of analysis is thus not masculinity or femininity but their oppositional relationship. Neither
men nor women can be studied separately; the whole question of gender inequality involves a
relationship of “haves” and “have-nots”, of dominance and subordination, of advantage and
disadvantage.

Men's feminism argues that gender inequality includes men's denigration of other men as well as
their exploitation of women. Low-level men workers around the world are oppressed by the
inequalities of the global economy, and young working class urban men's impoverished environment
and "taste for risk" has made them an endangered species. Men's feminism blames sports, the
military, fraternities, and other arenas of male-bonding for encouraging physical and sexual violence
and misogyny. It deplores the pressure on men to identify with but not be emotionally close to their
fathers and to be "cool" and unfeeling towards the women in their lives and distant from their own
children. But many men feminists have been critical of the men's movements that foster a search for
the primitive or "wild man" and of religiously oriented men's organizations that link responsibility to
family with patriarchal concepts of “manhood”. They argue that these movements seek to change
individual attitudes and do not address the structural conditions of gender inequality or the power
differences among men. The sources of gender inequality that men's feminism concentrates on are
embedded in the stratification systems of Western societies as well as in the homophobia of

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heterosexual men, who construct their masculinity as clearly opposite to that of homosexual men.
Thus, it is necessary for prominent men of all ethnic groups in politics, sports, and the mass media to
appear heterosexual.

Gender inequality is also embedded in men's jockeying for the leading positions in whatever arena
they find themselves, and excluding women as much as possible from competition. It is not an
accident that so much of the language of competition is the language of sports, because organized
sports are not only an immediate site of masculinity displays, but also a source for vicarious
competitiveness and for the creation of symbolic icons of masculine strength and beauty.
Unfortunately, these are also icons of physical and sexual violence. Men's feminism overlaps with
gay studies in analyzing the social dimensions of male homosexuality. Examining homosexuality
from a gender perspective shows that homosexual men are men, not a third gender, and partake of
the privileges and disadvantages and life styles of men of the same ethnic group and social class.
Nonetheless, because homosexual men do not have sexual relationships with women, an important
marker of “manhood” in Western society, they are considered not-quite men. Thus, like other men
who do not have the marks of hegemonic status (white, economically successful, heterosexual),
homosexual men are lower on the scale of privilege and power in Western society. Homosexual
men, however, do not subvert the gender order because they retain some of the "patriarchal
dividend" of male advantage. Men's feminism provides a needed corrective in bringing men into
gender research as a specific subject of study, but it does not offer any new theoretical perspective.
Rather, men's feminism is an amalgam of social construction, multi-ethnic, psychoanalytic, and
development feminism and gay studies. It is likely that men's feminism will eventually be absorbed
into more general feminist perspectives.

3.3.3 Social Construction Feminism

While multi-ethnic feminism focuses on the effects of location in a system of advantage and
disadvantage, and men's feminism on the hierarchical relationships of men to other men and to
women, social construction feminism looks at the structure of the gendered social order as a whole.
It sees gender as a “society-wide-institution” that is built into all the major social organizations of
society. As a social institution, gender determines the distribution of power, privileges, and
economic resources. Gendered norms and expectations get built into women's and men's sense of

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self as a certain kind of human being, and alternative ways of acting and arranging work and family
life are literally unthinkable. In social construction feminist theory, inequality is the core of gender
itself: Women and men are socially differentiated in order to justify treating them unequally. Thus,
although gender is intertwined with other unequal statuses, remedying the gendered part of these
structures of inequality may be the most difficult, because gendering is so pervasive. Indeed, it is this
pervasiveness that leads so many people to believe that gendering is biological, and therefore
"natural." Social construction feminism focuses on the processes that create gender differences and
also on what renders the construction of gender invisible. The common social processes that
encourage us to see gender differences and to ignore continuums are the gendered division of labor
in the home that allocates child care and housework to women; gender segregation and gender
typing of occupations so that women and men don't do the same kind of work; re-gendering (as
when an occupation goes from men's work to women's work and is justified both ways by "natural"
masculine and feminine characteristics); selective comparisons that ignore similarities, as in men's
and women's separate sports competitions; and containment, suppression, and erasure of gender-
inappropriate behaviors and appearances, such as aggressiveness in women and nurturance in men.
Social construction feminism argues that the dichotomies of male and female biological sex and
physiology are also produced and maintained by social processes. Genital and hormonal ambiguities
are ignored or overridden in the sex categorization of infants; and the gendering of sports and
physical labor ignores the overlaps in female and male stature and musculature. In the social
construction feminist perspective, the processes of gender differentiation, approval of accepted
gendered behavior and appearance, and disapproval of deviations from established norms are all
manifestations of power and social control. Religion, the law, and medicine reinforce the boundary
lines between women and men and suppress gender variation through moral censure and
stigmatization, such as labeling gender-inappropriate behavior sinful, illegal, and insane.

Social construction feminism also analyzes the historical and cultural context in which sexuality is
learned and enacted, or "scripted." What sexual behaviors are approved, tolerated, and tabooed
differs for women and men and varies for social groups over time and place. Sexuality, in this
perspective, is a product of learning, social pressures, and cultural values. Legal penalties, job loss,
and violence uphold the heterosexual social order, defeating individual attempts at resistance and
rebellion. Most people, however, voluntarily go along with their society's prescriptions for those of
their gender status, because the norms and expectations get built into their individual sense of worth

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and identity. Even transvestites (males who dress in women's clothes and females who dress in
men's clothes) and transsexuals (people who have sex-change surgery) try to pass as "normal" men
and women. So male “cross-dressers” tend to wear very feminine-looking clothing, and male
transsexuals use hormones to grow breasts.

In the social construction feminist view, long-lasting change of this deeply gendered social order
would have to mean a conscious re-ordering of the gendered division of labor in the family and at
work, and at the same time, undermining the taken-for-granted assumptions about the capabilities of
women and men that justify the status quo. Such change is unlikely to come about unless the
pervasiveness of the social institution of gender and its social construction are openly challenged.
Since the processes of gendering include making them invisible, where are we to start? Is that with
individual awareness and attitude change? Or is that with restructuring social institutions and
behavioral change? Certainly, both individuals and institutions need to be altered to achieve gender
equality, but it may be impossible to do both at once.

Social construction feminism is faced with a political dilemma. If political activities focus on getting
individuals to understand the constrictions of gender norms and expectations and encourage
resistance to them in every aspect of their lives, it would not necessarily change social structure. If
the focus is on getting work organizations and governments to structure for gender equality, it would
not necessarily change gendered norms for individuals. The dilemma is built into the theory of social
construction, individuals construct and maintain the norms and expectations and patterns of behavior
that become institutionalized, but existing institutions constrain the extent of allowable variation and
individual and group difference. Socially patterned individual actions and institutional structures
construct and reinforce each other. For this reason, social construction feminism recognizes that
there is always change, but it is usually slow.

3.3.4 Postmodern Feminism and Queer Theory

Post-modern feminism and queer theory go the furthest in challenging gender categories as dual,
oppositional, and fixed, arguing instead that sexuality and gender are shifting, fluid and multiple
categories. They critique a politics based on a universal category, woman, presenting instead a more
subversive view that undermines the solidity of a social order built on concepts of two sexes, two

15
sexualities, and two genders. Equality will come, they say, when there are so many recognized sexes,
sexualities, and genders that one can't be played against the other. Postmodern feminism and queer
theory examine the ways societies justify the beliefs about gender at any time (now and in the past)
with ideological "discourses" embedded in cultural representations or "texts." Not just art, literature,
and the mass media, but anything produced by a social group, including newspapers, political
pronouncements, and religious liturgy, is a "text." A text's "discourse" is what it says, what it doesn't
say, and what it hints at (sometimes called a "sub-text"). The historical and social context and the
material conditions under which a text is produced become part of the text's discourse. If a movie or
newspaper is produced in a time of conservative values or under a repressive political regime, its
"discourse" is going to be different from what is produced during times of openness or social change.
Who provides the money, who does the creative work, and who oversees the managerial side all
influence what a text conveys to its audience. The projected audience also shapes any text, although
the actual audience may read quite different meanings from those intended by the producers.
"Deconstruction" is the process of teasing out all of these aspects of a "text."

Queer theory goes beyond cultural productions to examine the discourses of gender and sexuality in
everyday life as texts ripe for deconstruction. In queer theory, gender and sexuality are
"performances", identities or selves we create as we act and interact with others. What we wear and
how we talk are signs and displays of gender and sexual orientation. What we do socially creates us
as women and men of a particular ethnic group, social class, occupation, religion, place of residence,
even if we try to create ourselves as individuals. queer theorists often find is that gender roles are
recreated in the same old way, a transvestite passing as a woman wears a demure dress, stockings,
and high-heeled shoes; a butch lesbian swaggers (boastfulness) in men's jeans and cowboy boots.
The bearded lady in a skirt still belongs in a circus, and is stared at openly on the street. Genders and
sexualities may be mixed up, but they are not erased. If social construction feminism puts too much
emphasis on institutions and structures, and not enough on individual actions, postmodern feminism
and queer theory have just the opposite problem. In queer theory, all the emphasis is on agency,
impression management, and presentation of the self in the guise and costume most likely to produce
or parody conformity. Social construction feminism argues that the gendered social order is
constantly re-stabilized by the individual action, but queer theory has shown how individuals can
consciously and purposefully create disorder and gender instability, opening the way to social
change. Social construction feminism can show where the structural contradictions and fault lines

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are, which would offer places for individuals, organizations, and social movements to pressure for
long-lasting restructuring and a more equal social order for all kinds of people.

UNIT FOUR

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THEORIES OF WOMEN’S ISSUE IN DEVELOPMENT AND PRACTICAL APPROACHES
TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMEN

4.1 Theories of Women’s Issues in Development

These models seek to explain how development affects women and why women and men are
affected by development differently. Under this section you will learn about these different models
(WID, WAD and GAD).

4.1.1 Women in Development (WID) and Women and Development (WAD)

By the 1970s it had become very clear that women were being left out of development. They were
not benefiting significantly from it and in some instances their existing status and position in society
was actually being made worse by development. The WID approach saw the problem as the
exclusion of women from development programmes and approaches. As a result, the solution was
seen as integrating women into such programmes. WID saw women as a group being treated as
lacking opportunity to participate in development. The main task, therefore, was to improve
women’s access to resources and their participation in development The WID approach argued for
the integration of women into development programmes and planning. This, it was argued, was the
best way to improve women’s position in society. There was, for instance, a major emphasis on
income-generating projects for women as a means of integration. Welfare oriented projects dealing
with small income-generating projects and activities mostly aimed at women’s reproductive role,
where nutrition education and family planning were a main feature. The WID approach, although it
had limitations, increased the visibility of women in development issues. WID was successful in
helping secure a prominent place for women’s issues at the United Nations (UN) and other
international development agencies.

The UN declared 1975 to 1985 the Decade for Women. One of the major achievements of the
decade was the establishment of women in development structures or machineries. Although the
WID approach made demands for women’s inclusion in development, it did not call for changes in
the overall social structure or economic system in which women were to be included. As such, WID
concentrated narrowly on the inequalities between men and women and ignored the social, cultural,
legal and economic factors that give rise to those inequalities in society. WID tended to focus on
women almost exclusively and assumed that women were outside the mainstream of development.
The strategies that were developed included adding women’s projects or project components,
increasing women’s income and productivity, and improving women’s ability to look after the
household.

The WID approach did not address the root causes of discrimination that prevented women’s full
participation in their societies. In the late 1970s, the WAD perspective was developed in reaction to
omissions in WID.

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4.1.2 Women and Development (WAD)
As a result of criticisms of the WID approach, the Women and Development (WAD) approach arose
in the latter part of the 1970s. Adopting a Marxist feminist approach, the main argument of WAD
was that women had always been part of the development processes. WAD asserts that women have
always been important economic actors. The work they do both inside and outside the household is
critical to the maintenance of society. However, this integration has only served to sustain global
inequalities. Therefore, the WID approach that placed emphasis on integrating women into
development was not correct.

The main focus of WAD is on the interaction between women and development processes rather
than purely on strategies to integrate women into development. WAD saw both women and men as
not benefiting from the global economic structures because of disadvantages due to class and the
way wealth is distributed. WAD therefore argued that the integration of women into development
was to their disadvantage and only made their inequality worse. WAD saw global inequalities as the
main problem facing poor countries and, therefore, the citizens of those countries.

WAD was very persuasive in raising the debate that women have a role not only in reproduction but
in production as well. For development to be meaningful for women both these roles have to be
acknowledged.

WAD has been criticized for assuming that the position of women will improve if and when
international structures become more equitable. In so doing, it sees women’s positions as primarily
within the structure of international and class inequalities. It therefore underplays the role of
patriarchy in undermining women’s development and does not adequately address the question of
social relations between men and women and their impact on development. It has been argued that,
although at a theoretical level WAD recognizes and focuses strongly on class, in practical project
design and implementation, it tends like WID to group women together irrespective of other
considerations such as class divisions.

WAD proponents argued that women were already integrated into development processes but on
unequal terms. They pointed out that development projects increase the demands on women without
increasing access to resources or decision-making power and, in effect, work against women’s
interests. WAD argued that class structures were more oppressive than gender and that poor,
marginalized women have more in common with men of their class than with women of another
class. The emergence of GAD in the 1980s marked a revolution in thinking about equitable,
sustainable development.

4.1.3. Gender and Development (GAD)

In the 1980s further reflections on the development experiences of women gave rise to Gender and
Development (GAD). GAD represented a coming together of many feminist ideas. It sought to bring

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together both the lessons learned from, and the limitations of, the WID and WAD approaches. GAD
looks at the impact of development on both women and men. It seeks to ensure that both women and
men participate in and benefit equally from development and so emphasizes equality of benefit and
control. It recognizes that women may be involved in development, but not necessarily benefit from
it. GAD is not concerned with women exclusively, but with the way in which gender relations allot
specific roles, responsibilities and expectations between men and women, often to the detriment of
women. Development, therefore, is about deep and important changes to relations dealing with
gender inequality within society. This approach also pays particular attention to the oppression of
women in the family or the ‘private sphere’ of women’s lives. As a result, we have seen projects
develop addressing issues such as violence against women.

GAD reflects the recognition that women are an integral part of every development strategy. GAD
includes three main concepts:
 Both men and women create and maintain society and shape the division of labor. However,
they benefit and suffer unequally. Therefore, greater focus must be placed on women because
they have been more disadvantaged.
 Women and men are socialized differently and often function in different spheres of the
community, although there is interdependence. As a result, they have different priorities and
perspectives. Because of gender roles, men can constrain or expand women’s options.
 Development affects men and women differently, and women and men will have a different
impact on projects. Both must be involved in identifying problems and solutions if the
interests of the community as a whole are to be furthered.

GAD focuses on the social or gender relations (i.e. the division of labour) between men and women
in societyand seeks to address issues of access and control over resources and power. The GAD
approach has also helped us understand that the gender division of labour gives “triple roles” to
women in society. The gender division of labour operates differently from one society and culture to
another and it is also dynamic. The way these roles are analysed and valued affects the way
development projects will make certain things a priority or not. Provision for child-care for instance
is not likely to be a priority among men planning for development but it is a crucial factor in
ensuring women may take advantage of development opportunities for their benefit. GAD goes
further than the other approaches in emphasising both the reproductive and productive role of
women and argues that it is the state’s responsibility to support the social reproduction role mostly
played by women of caring and nurturing of children. As such, it treats development as a complex
process that is influenced by political, social and economic factors rather than as a state or stage of
development. It therefore goes beyond seeing development as mainly economic well-being but also
that the social and mental wellbeing of a person is important.

Arising from the GAD analysis is the need for women to organise themselves into a more effective
political voice in order to strengthen their legal rights and increase the number of women in decision
making.

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GAD uses this model to explore and analyze the differences between the kinds of work performed
by women and men in particular social, cultural and economic circumstances. In order to identify
differences between female and male roles, responsibilities, opportunities and rewards, the approach
requires that three important questions are asked, explicitly or implicitly, at all stages of designing,
planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating an intervention:
• Who does what by gender with what resources?
• Who has access to the resources, benefits, and opportunities?
• Who does control the resources, benefits, and opportunities?
Dear learner, it is important to see the issues that should be included under each question.
Who Does What: This question identifies the different activities performed by the men and women
in the target population. For example, a rural development project aimed at cash-cropping might
result in the female population assuming the major burden of the agricultural work, because in such
a society women do most of the agricultural labor. Asking the question “Who does what?” can alert
project designers to the possibility that such a project could increase the women’s work.
Who Has Access (Ability to Use): This question asks how much each population group can use
existing resources, benefits, and opportunities or those which will be generated by the intervention.
These include land, money, credit, and education.
Who Controls (Determines the Outcome of the Resources): This question asks to what extent
different groups of women and men in the population can decide how to use the available resources.
Some groups may have access to resources but may not be able to use them. If these three questions
are not asked, the kinds of interventions which are developed may be based on incomplete and
incorrect assumptions and perceptions of the way things work in a particular society. For example,
planners may incorrectly assume that in a given setting the men are heads of households and chief
decision-makers, even though women play this role. This assumption may lead them to design
ineffective and inappropriate interventions. Analysis of the information provided by these questions
enables planners to find out how an intervention would impact different groups. If needed, corrective
measures can then be put in place to ensure that the project will meet the needs of all identified
groups equally.
The GAD approach to development is aimed at ensuring an equal distribution of opportunities,
resources, and benefits to different population groups served by a particular intervention. Applying
this approach can help project planners to identify important differences in female and male roles
and responsibilities and use this information to plan more effective policies, programs, and projects.
This approach is based on the Harvard Analytical Framework, one of the first gender analysis
models.
Below is a summary of the WID and GAD approaches to development.
Women in Development Gender and Development
The Approach An approach which seeks to integrate women into An approach which seeks to empower
the development process women and transform unequal relations
between women and men

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The Focus Women Relations between men and women
The Problem The exclusion of women from the the
Unequal relations of power (rich and
development process poor/women and men) that prevent
equitable development and women’s full
participation
The Goal More efficient, effective Development Equitable, sustainable development
Women and men sharing decision-making
and power
The Strategies Women’s projects Identify and address short-term needs
Women’s components determined by women and men to improve
Integrated projects their condition
Increase women’s productivity and income At the same time, address women’s and
Increase women’s ability to manage their men’s longer term interests
households

4.2 Practical Approaches to Women’s Development

4.2.1 The welfare approach

Until the early 1970s, development programmes addressed the needs of women almost entirely
within the context of their reproductive roles. The focus was on mother and child health, child-
care and nutrition. Population control - or family planning as it later came to be known - was a
major focus as well due to the link made between population growth and poverty. The focus was
clearly on meeting practical needs. It was also assumed that broad economic strategies oriented
towards modernisation and growth would trickle down to the poor and that poor women would
benefit as the general economic situation improved. But the assumptions that women’s position
would improve together with general improvements in the economy, or with the economic
positions of their husbands, began to be challenged as it became clear that women were in fact
losing out. Women, as a result, were being increasingly associated with backwardness and the
traditional while men were increasingly identified with the modern and progressive. Men were
assisted in this with economic development projects, such as the introduction of cash crops, and
new agricultural technologies that exclude women.

4.2.2 The equality approach

Feminist calls for gender equality were important in bringing about this approach, the main aim
of which was to eliminate discrimination. It emphasised the revaluing of women’s contribution
and share of benefits from development. The equity approach also dealt with both the productive

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and reproductive roles as a responsibility of government. The emphasis on revaluing women’s
contribution and share of benefits meant that the approach dealt with issues of policy and legal
measures as a means of bringing about equity. The equity approach, in contrast to the welfare
approach, saw women as active participants organising to bring about necessary changes.

4.2.3 Antipoverty approach

This approach focuses on both the productive and reproductive role of women with an emphasis
on satisfaction of basic needs and the productivity of women. A key operational strategy required
access to income generation and waged employment. The tendency with this approach was to
reinforce the basic needs and ignore the strategic needs of women.

4.2.4 The efficiency approach

The efficiency approach targets women as workers and is a product of the 1980s’ economic
reforms known as the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the International Monetary fund and
the World Bank. Its aim has been increased production and economic growth with an emphasis
on full use of human resources. Education and training are therefore key strategies. Advocates of
this approach argue that gender analysis makes good economic sense. This is because
understanding men’s and women’s roles and responsibilities as part of the planning of
development activities helps improve effectiveness and ensures that women, as well as men, can
play their part in national development.
The efficiency approach succeeded in bringing the concerns about women and gender into the
mainstream of development. However, this was done with a focus on what women could do for
development, rather than on what development could do for women.
But the economic reforms in effect undervalue paid work as they seek to restrict trade union
activity and freeze wages of workers. They also burden women due to restrictions on social
spending in areas such as health and education. Women are therefore spending much more time
in caring for the ill. In so burdening women the reforms hinder progress towards meeting
women’s strategic needs.

4.2.5 The empowerment approach

This is an approach closely associated with third world feminist and grassroots organisations. The
aim of the empowerment approach is to increase the self-reliance of women and to influence change
at the policy, legislative, societal, economic and other levels to their advantage. Its main point of
reference is the “triple roles” of women and it emphasises women’s access to decision-making. Its
main strategy is awareness-raising and situates women firmly as active participants in ensuring
change takes place. Building organizational skills and self-esteem is an important aspect of the
empowerment approach.

The empowerment approach has been instrumental in ensuring that opportunities are opened for
women to determine their own needs. However, empowerment has often been misunderstood to be

23
an end rather than a means. This has resulted in poor women becoming very knowledgeable about
issues while realising little change to their material situation, which is often dire.

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