Introduction

She has always been there.

Between

Trauma and healing
Destruction and birth
Memories and new adventures
The antiquated and the modern

She is the instigator of what must be said.
The driving force behind the “little” things that must be done.
The quiet revolution at the heart of a nation moving forward.
Without her, it would all crumble.

The decade following the mid-1970s was a period of important milestones in the changing status of women. In 1970, the publication of Woman’s Role in Economic Development by a Danish feminist economist named Ester Boserup was an important catalyst for this period of great change. Boserup’s pioneering work “drew attention to women’s contribution to agricultural and industrial development, and highlighted how development policies and processes, from colonial times onwards, had been biased against women.”[1]  Scholars Nazneen Kanji, Su Fei Tan, and Camilla Toulmin assert that “[h]er work inspired the UN Decade for Women (1976–1986) and heralded an era of research and enquiry on gender issues.”[2] In 1972, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) proposed that 1975 be designated the International Women’s Year, a recommendation that was endorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The purpose of this declaration was “to draw attention to women’s equality with men and to their contributions to development and peace.”[3] Within this historic year, two important events took place: the World Conference of the International Women’s Year (19 June-2 July 1975) in Mexico City, Mexico, followed by the launch of the UN Decade for Women: Equality, Development, and Peace (1975–1985). At the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, the examination of women in development recognised the significance of extreme poverty as an impediment to personal development and “the enjoyment of basic rights.”[4] Letitia Shahani, the Secretary-General of the last of the Decade Conferences in Nairobi, Kenya (1985), spoke about the women’s coalitions and international network of women that emerged from those first meetings in Mexico City. Shahani argued, “[a] critical mass has evolved to enable the women’s movement to go forward on a more solid foundation. There is no more turning back.”[5] There were three objectives identified in connection with equality, peace, and development  from 1975 to 1985:

1. Full gender equality and the elimination of gender discrimination
2. The integration and full participation of women in development
3. An increased contribution by women towards strengthening world peace[6]

World Conferences on Women were a means by which important issues such as  understanding the nature of women’s work, the conditions of her workplace, and the significance of her contributions to the labour force.[7] The first United Nations World Conference on Women, which took place between 19 June and 2 July in Mexico City, was the capstone event of the International Women’s Year. This historic decade ended with the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women (15-26 July 1985) in Nairobi, Kenya. The conferences which occurred during this period created a “quiet revolution,” that would forever change the global status of women.[8] This blog post focuses on three paradigms which emerged during this period and defined the way women’s issues were addressed:  the Women in Development (WID) Approach (1970), the Women and Development (WAD) Approach (mid-1970s), and the Gender and Development (GAD) Approach (1980).

 World Conference of the International Women’s Year June 19, 1975

The 1975 Report of the World Conference International Women’s Year recommended:

that women assume a special role in urging Governments and non-governmental organizations to cooperate in the establishment of structures that will enable individuals and groups – including the voluntary organizations justly and with the regard for human dignity, to work to overcome the causes of poverty, of great economic disparity, and of those conditions resulting from poverty that threaten the dignity of women, men and children.[9]

This recommendation speaks to many of the objectives of the WID approach, which emerged from ground-breaking research concerning women’s role in economic development conducted by Boserup and other female scholars. The WID approach, adopted in 1975 at the first World Conference on Women held in Mexico, invited governments to create national infrastructure, such as ministries focused on women’s issues, the promotion and supervision of women’s advancement, and the creation of WID units. The goal of WID was the integration of women into economic development by supplying women with financial and other resources to facilitate their income-driven activities and the development of modernising technological tools that would increase women’s labour production. For example, in Ghana, Dr Akosua Darkwah explained that the creation of gari processing factories would lighten women’s load as they would no longer need to produce gari at home and could rely on more industrial methods of production. With these new methods, women could avoid pounding the raw materials at home themselves, as cassava and plantains would be pre-cooked and then taken to a secondary production site to be further processed. This method would save female fufu producers a significant amount of time and allow them to focus on productivity and other labour issues. Furthermore, in order to improve their income, the option of taking out loans was provided for female entrepreneurs through the WID approach.

Despite the ambitious goals of the women in development programs and the dramatic changes they brought about for women the world over, their proliferation in the global south quickly became controversial. One criticism of the WID approach is that it viewed women in isolation of their position relative to men. Another disadvantage of this approach was its narrow focus on women’s productive roles while ignoring their reproductive burdens and priorities such as a working mother’s need for schedule flexibility. Furthermore, the WID perspective disregarded intersectional factors such as gender, ethnicity, and class and regarded women as a heterogeneous group.  Another negative aspect of the WID approach was that the modernization component of the WID approach employed Western strategies which did not consider the value of indigenous knowledge. Finally, this approach viewed development as a governmental activity or a state solution instead of recognizing development’s vital role as a tool for women’s empowerment and that the state could sometimes impede female advancement.[10]

As for the legacy of the WID approach, there was a two-fold impact. First, its ability to start conversations and generate research and second, through the institutional machineries it created in state apparatuses and development agencies that began to commit to the mandate of women in development policies.[11]

Women and Development (WAD) Approach

In contrast to the WID approach, which was developed by women from Western countries in Europe and the United States, the Women and Development or WAD approach emerged from the rising voices of the global South from Africa, Latin America, and Asia in the mid-1970s. Whereas the WID approach ignored larger issues such as colonialism and global iterations of inequalities in the global South, the WAD approach attempted to remedy these deficiencies. The WAD perspective was more concerned by women’s relationship to development as opposed to their mere integration into it. Advocates of this approach argued that women have always been participants in the development processes however the global North exploited that participation for profit. Considering this history of colonial oppression, the WAD paradigm aimed for clear definitions of women’s roles and responsibilities, as well as an environment where her knowledge and know-how would be respected and valued. WAD approach advocates also demanded an increased share of resources, employment opportunities, and income.

An example of this approach in action was the Conference on Women and Development which took place on June 2-6, 1976, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The Wellesley Conference on Women and Development was a historical and trend-setting event in which women attempted “to transcend national, ideological and political boundaries. It was an attempt to escape male imposed division and create a powerful international movement.”[12] Yet the conference was criticized by female attendees from the global South. Nawal El Sadawi from Egypt, Fatima Mernissi from Morocco, and Mallica Vajarathon from Thailand summed up their concerns in the following way:

The organizers and panel convenors did not understand why third-world women felt humiliated and manipulated because they did not participate in the organizing and the design of the panel. The organizers thought that this was very irrelevant. They acted just like the men who organized meetings involving women’s issues, without getting the women involved at planning and policy decision-making. 

The organizers did not understand at all why the third-world women were uncomfortable from the first panels by their powerlessness to contribute in any meaningful way to the rigidly structured Conference. The well-meaning American organizers and panel convenors had and probably still have no idea how maternalistic and condescending they sounded, in both words and attitudes, when they read the papers or talked to the participants, telling them how to behave, how not to interrupt when paper deliverers were reading false data about developing countries For the American organizers, power was not the issue because they had it, and thought it normal for us not to participate.[1]

The organizers and panel convenors did not understand why third-world women felt humiliated and manipulated because they did not participate in the organizing and the design of the panel. The organizers thought that this was very irrelevant. They acted just like the men who organized meetings involving women’s issues, without getting the women involved at planning and policy decision-making. 

The organizers did not understand at all why the third-world women were uncomfortable from the first panels by their powerlessness to contribute in any meaningful way to the rigidly structured Conference. The well-meaning American organizers and panel convenors had and probably still have no idea how maternalistic and condescending they sounded, in both words and attitudes, when they read the papers or talked to the participants, telling them how to behave, how not to interrupt when paper deliverers were reading false data about developing countries For the American organizers, power was not the issue because they had it, and thought it normal for us not to participate.[13]

Unfortunately, in addition to challenges of power dynamics and agency inherent in the practice of WAD approach in settings such as the Wellesley Conference on Women and Development, this paradigm had other issues. The WAD approach also had several disadvantages such as its undervaluing differences among women such as race, class and ethnicity; prioritising power in international relations while dismissing important factors such as the relations between gender and class; downplaying patriarchal dynamics and the impact gender can have on power relations and development; and the absence of men in women’s projects and organizations.[14] Finally, Dr Darkwah argues the WAD approach “tended to focus its intervention strategies on the promotion of income-generating activities” while neglecting reproductive labour activities and issues in the domestic sphere.

Gender and Development (GAD)

The Gender and Development approach, which originated in the 1980s was created as an alternative to modernizing theory, where women were acknowledged as constituent parts of a group based on varying facts such as sex, class, age, and ethnicity. In this method, the partnership between men and women in development is recognized and their mutual contributions to “economic and political relations”.[15]  Scholars Hazel Reeves and Sally Baden argued that:

GAD emerged from a frustration with the lack of progress of WID policy, in changing women’s lives and in influencing the broader development agenda. GAD challenged the WID focus on women in isolation, seeing women’s ‘real’ problem as the imbalance of power between women and men. There are different interpretations of GAD, some of which focus primarily on the gender division of labour and gender roles focus on gender as a relation of power embedded in institutions …GAD approaches generally aim to meet both women’s practical gender needs and more strategic gender needs…, by challenging existing divisions of labour or power … [16]

In contrast to the WAD approach, the GAD perspective considers women’s unpaid domestic labour (reproductive work) and outside the home (productive work) in its analysis of female contributions to workplace productivity and the gendered division of labour. The GAD paradigm also advocates for equal access to and control of resources by both men and women as well as the enjoyment of benefits acquired from development. Furthermore, the GAD approach places responsibility for social services, which support reproductive roles such as postnatal care, and care for the elderly and the sick, on the state. This approach also reminds women that as agents of change, they are responsible for mobilizing in order to have “a greater political impact.” [17]

The Voluntary Fund for the United Nations Decade for Women

Madame Rosalie Adassori, a social worker with the Upper Volta government, visiting women in Po, a small town near the Ghana border in the south of Upper Volta May 1, 1983.

Unfortunately, the development perspectives from WID/WAD/GAD approaches and the women-only projects and organizations which emerged from them did not have the transformational impact its proponents expected. Within these three paradigms the importance of race, class and ethnicity as distinguishing features of a diverse female population continued to be undervalued.  Additionally, the role of patriarchy and the impact of gender inequalities on women’s development were also downplayed. Although development agencies were committed to the GAD approach in theory, “in practice, the primary institutional perspective remain[ed] as WID and associated ‘antipoverty’ and ‘efficiency’ policies.”[18] The necessary integration of men into the process of achieving gender equality had not begun, leaving women vulnerable to a war with what they were capable of, who they were, and who they were allowed to be.

Footnotes

[1] Camilla Toulmin, Su Fei Tan, and Nazneen Kanji, “Introduction: Boserup Revisited,” introduction, in Woman’s Role in Economic Development (London: Allen & Unwin, 2007), v–xxiv, v.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “A Brief History of the Commission on the Status of Women,” UN Women – Headquarters, accessed March 13, 2024, https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/brief-history.

[4] “Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, 19 June-2 July 1975,” United Nations Digital Library, accessed March 13, 2024, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/586225.

[5] Letitia Shahani, “Statement on Agenda Item 92 before the Third Committee, General Assembly, 28, October 1985, unpublished, 3 and 13.; in Judith P Zinsser, “From Mexico to Copenhagen to Nairobi: The United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985,” Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (March 2002): 139–68, https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2002.0028, 140.

[6] https://www.un.org/en/conferences/women/mexico-city1975

[7] See also: Women Power: International Women’s Year Conference

[8] Judith P. Zinsser, “The United Nations Decade for Women: A Quiet Revolution,” The History Teacher 24, no. 1 (November 1990): 19–29, https://doi.org/10.2307/494202.

[9] “Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City, 19 June-2 July 1975,” United Nations Digital Library, accessed March 13, 2024, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/586225, 99.

[10] See also: Lucy Muyoyeta, Women, Gender and Development (Wicklow, Ireland: Women for Change, Zambia and 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World, with support from Development Cooperation Ireland and Concern, 2007).

[11] Carol Miller and Shahra Razavi, “From WID to GAD Conceptual Shifts in the Women and Development Discourse,” EconStor, February 1, 1995, https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/148819, 9.

[12]Mayang Taldo, “Women and Development: The Wellesley Conference,” Feminist Archives, accessed April 2, 2024, http://feministarchives.isiswomen.org/50-isis-international-bulletin/isis-international-bulletin-april-1977/654-women-and-development-the-wellesley-conference.

[13] Mayang Taldo, “Women and Development: The Wellesley Conference,” Feminist Archives, accessed April 2, 2024, http://feministarchives.isiswomen.org/50-isis-international-bulletin/isis-international-bulletin-april-1977/654-women-and-development-the-wellesley-conference.; See also: 1. Nawal El Sadawi, Fatima Mernissi, and Mallica Vajarathon, “A Critical View of the Wellesley Conference,” Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, , 4, no. 2 (Winter 1978): 101–8.

[14] UGRC 231: SESSION 2 – The WID, WAD, GAD Approaches to Development.

[15] UGRC 231: SESSION 2 – The WID, WAD, GAD Approaches to Development.; See also: Caroline O.N. Moser, Gender Planning and Development: Theory, Practice and Training(London: Routledge, 1993).

[16] Hazel Reeves and Sally Baden, Gender and Development: Concepts and Definitions: Prepared for the Department for International Development (DFID) for Its Gender Mainstreaming Intranet Resource (Brighton: Bridge (development gender), Institute of Development Studies, 2000), 1-40, 33.

[17] UGRC 231: SESSION 2 – The WID, WAD, GAD Approaches to Development.

[18] Ibid.