Gender and development

rdf:langString Gender and development

rdf:langString Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender, class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to development views a country's development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation control, and high employment – all of which aim to improve the ‘economic wellbeing’ of a country and the subsequent quality of life for its people. In terms of economic development, quality of life is defined as access to necessary rights and resources including but not limited to quality education, medical facilities, affordable housing, clean environments, and low crime rate. Gender and development considers many of these same factors; however, gender and development emphasizes efforts towards understanding how multifaceted these issues are in the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Accounting for this need, gender and development implements ethnographic research, research that studies a specific culture or group of people by physically immersing the researcher into the environment and daily routine of those being studied, in order to comprehensively understand how development policy and practices affect the everyday life of targeted groups or areas. The history of this field dates back to the 1950s, when studies of economic development first brought women into its discourse, focusing on women only as subjects of welfare policies – notably those centered on food aid and family planning. The focus of women in development increased throughout the decade, and by 1962, the United Nations General Assembly called for the Commission on the Status of Women to collaborate with the Secretary General and a number of other UN sectors to develop a longstanding program dedicated to women's advancement in developing countries. A decade later, feminist economist Ester Boserup’s pioneering book Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970) was published, radically shifting perspectives of development and contributing to the birth of what eventually became the gender and development field. Since Boserup's consider that development affects men and women differently, the study of gender's relation to development has gathered major interest amongst scholars and international policymakers. The field has undergone major theoretical shifts, beginning with Women in Development (WID), shifting to Women and Development (WAD), and finally becoming the contemporary Gender and Development (GAD). Each of these frameworks emerged as an evolution of its predecessor, aiming to encompass a broader range of topics and social science perspectives. In addition to these frameworks, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have implemented policies, programs, and research regarding gender and development, contributing a neoliberal and smart economics approach to the study. Examples of these policies and programs include Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), microfinance, outsourcing, and privatizing public enterprises, all of which direct focus towards economic growth and suggest that advancement towards gender equality will follow. These approaches have been challenged by alternative perspectives such as Marxism and ecofeminism, which respectively reject international capitalism and the gendered exploitation of the environment via science, technology, and capitalist production. Marxist perspectives of development advocate for the redistribution of wealth and power in efforts to reduce global labor exploitation and class inequalities, while ecofeminist perspectives confront industrial practices that accompany development, including deforestation, pollution, environmental degradation, and ecosystem destruction.