Gender and Development

Gender and development is an approach in development studies and policy that examines how gender relations shape, and are shaped by, economic and social change, and that seeks to transform unequal power relations between women and men rather than simply adding women to existing programs. It emerged as a critique of the earlier Women in Development approach, which Ester Boserup’s study of women’s role in agriculture helped to launch and which focused on integrating women into economic growth. Scholars such as Caroline Moser, Naila Kabeer, and Kate Young developed gender analysis frameworks that distinguish practical from strategic gender needs and examine the social relations of development. Amartya Sen’s capability approach and his work on missing women highlighted gender inequality in wellbeing, and Martha Nussbaum proposed central capabilities. Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Spivak criticized Western representations of third world women, and Diane Elson analyzed the gendered effects of structural adjustment. Sylvia Chant has studied the feminization of poverty and critiqued its simplification. Gender mainstreaming became a global strategy after the 1995 Beijing conference. Gender and development remains central to research on poverty, empowerment, labor, health, and global inequality.