IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/13119.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Women in Development – Dissecting the Discourse

Author

Listed:
  • Vijayamohanan, Pillai N.
  • Asalatha, B. P.
  • Ponnuswamy, B.

Abstract

The concept of women’s development has now become an integral part of the development discourses and policy initiatives. This development has been informed by a remarkable though gradual shift in the perception about women, from the stature of victims and passive objects to that of independent agents. A significant impetus to raising such an informed platform came with the adoption of development issues within the UN system, in the background of increasing activism of development practitioners. The present paper critically traces the contours and its possible shades of this awakening that rises from the less ‘threatening’ planning for Women in Development (WID) to the more ‘confrontational’ gender planning with its aspiring goal of empowerment and emancipation. These movements have occasioned an increasing space for policy initiatives and interventions in favour of poor women in the Third World. There has been a gradual shift in orientation of these policy approaches towards women from ‘welfare’, to equity’ to anti-poverty’ to ‘efficiency’ and finally to ‘empowerment’. The policy reorientation reflects the changes in the basic economic approaches of the time, from modernization policies of accelerated growth, to basic needs strategies of growth with redistribution, to the recent so-called ‘compensatory measures’ for the neo-liberal illfare. The paper argues, inter alia, that the compensatory measures imply a substitution of the agency of civil society for that of the state in development process, the original agenda of the neo-liberalism.

Suggested Citation

  • Vijayamohanan, Pillai N. & Asalatha, B. P. & Ponnuswamy, B., 2009. "Women in Development – Dissecting the Discourse," MPRA Paper 13119, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:13119
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13119/1/MPRA_paper_13119.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alsop, Ruth & Heinsohn, Nina, 2005. "Measuring empowerment in practice: structuring analysis and framing indicators," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3510, The World Bank.
    2. Ruth Alsop, 2005. "Power, Rights, and Poverty : Concepts and Connections," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 7349.
    3. Ruth Alsop & Mette Bertelsen & Jeremy Holland, 2006. "Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6980.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    2. Maria Ana Lugo & Esfandiar Maasoumi, 2008. "Multidimensional Poverty Measures from an Information Theory Perspective," Working Papers 85, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. Klein, Elise, 2014. "Psychological Agency: Evidence from the Urban Fringe of Bamako," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 642-653.
    4. S. Sharaunga & M. Mudhara, 2016. "The impact of improved ‘water-use security’ on women’s reliance on agricultural incomes in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 8(6), pages 1039-1052, December.
    5. Stephen Baffour Adjei, 2015. "Assessing Women Empowerment in Africa," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 27(1), pages 58-80, March.
    6. Claudio Araujo & Catherine Araujo-Bonjean & Victor Beguerie, 2018. "Community mills and women's empowerment in Burkina Faso," CERDI Working papers halshs-01958755, HAL.
    7. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth Suseela & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes R. & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2012. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index:," IFPRI discussion papers 1240, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Sharaunga, Stanley & Mudhara, Maxwell, 2016. "Dimensions of Empowerment Influencing Women in KwaZulu-Natal to diversify away from agricultural-based livelihoods," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 55(1-2), May.
    9. Roy, Sanchari & Morton, Matthew & Bhattacharya, Shrayana, 2018. "Hidden human capital: Self-efficacy, aspirations and achievements of adolescent and young women in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 161-180.
    10. repec:ags:ijag24:346856 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. B. P., Asalatha, 2009. "Women’s Development and Development Discourse," MPRA Paper 43934, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2009.
    12. Hébert, Sophie T. & Lanctôt, Nadine & Turcotte, Mathilde, 2016. "“I didn't want to be moved there”: Young women remembering their perceived sense of Agency in the Context of placement instability," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 229-237.
    13. van den Bold, Mara & Quisumbing, Agnes R. & Gillespie, Stuart, 2013. "Women’s empowerment and nutrition: An evidence review:," IFPRI discussion papers 1294, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Sekabira, Haruna & Qaim, Matin, 2017. "Can mobile phones improve gender equality and nutrition? Panel data evidence from farm households in Uganda," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 95-103.
    15. Leonardo Letelier S. & Héctor Ormeño, 2018. "El mapa de la descentralización fiscal en Chile," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 21(3), pages 004-040, December.
    16. Nicola Banks, 2014. "Livelihoods Limitations: The Political Economy of Urban Poverty in Bangladesh," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 19914, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    17. Isabelle Guérin, 2017. "Du pouvoir, de l’argent et de l’amour ! Les ressorts cachés de l’ empowerment," Post-Print ird-01740274, HAL.
    18. Palash Kamruzzaman, 2020. "Exploring the Nexus Between Participation and Empowerment," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 5(1), pages 32-53, January.
    19. Ruth Alsop & Mette Bertelsen & Jeremy Holland, 2006. "Empowerment in Practice : From Analysis to Implementation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6980.
    20. Pratley, Pierre, 2016. "Associations between quantitative measures of women's empowerment and access to care and health status for mothers and their children: A systematic review of evidence from the developing world," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 119-131.
    21. Dickin, Sarah & Bisung, Elijah & Nansi, Juste & Charles, Katrina, 2021. "Empowerment in water, sanitation and hygiene index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Women; Gender; Development; Equity; Empowerment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:13119. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.