Gender
Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones
Introduction
- There is a consensus among Feminist theorists, all the major NGOs and Governments themselves that: ‘Sexual inequality is a major obstacle to development’
- Working women exert the greatest influence on reducing poverty and the birth rate. Feminists highlight how women can be the main victims of underdevelopment
Introduction: Cohen and Kennedy
The impact of SAPs by the WB and IMF hit women the hardest especially those in rural areas and heading households as single parents as they force governments to reduce spending on things like welfare and food subsidies
Modernisation Theory
- Current the place of women as down to the patriarchal control subordinate values in traditional cultures.
- The liberation of women being crucial to development because they makeup 50% of the population and so have great economic potential, and because they are women become mothers and create over-population.
- Liberating women into more than baby makers we can limit the population and improve the workforce.
- Boserup: Greater educational opportunities as a way to break the cycle of early childbearing. Enforce female liberation by creating equal health, education and family planning opportunities and promote western values through media.
- A positive correlation between the creation of jobs by TNCs and improving women’s position
Modernisation Theory Example
- In China, boy babies are celebrated but having a girl baby is commiserated / WuDun: highlights in Asia at 60-100 million women are missing in the current population, due to female infanticide and fetched/Chinese government admits that country currently has 40 million extra males and it will increase to 55 million in 2020
- Extreme from: (Trafficking of Women) WuDunn= estimated 800,000 women trafficked across international borders today /Traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control for the purpose of commercial sex or labour/End up as sex workers, unprotected, have to meet quotas and give money to traffickers/Worth 150 billion a year and Home Office estimates that in 2013 there were 13,000 victims of slavery
Marxist Feminism (Exploitation Thesis)
-Capitalism needs a patriarchal system to exist, because women play a part as the unpaid workforce, doing housework and raising the next generation of workers.
-Form a large cheap labour force for big corporations
=Francis found 85% of workers on low wages in poor conditions were F. 90% of workers in EPZ’s for TNC’s are F and suffer low pay (10% less than males but do 50% more work).
Marxist Feminism: Elson and Pearson
- ‘women’s material subordination as a gender’ because they will accept low pay and harsh conditions because there is no alternative or the work is only temporary until they get married and bare children.
- Formed a thesis to empathise how the spread of global capitalism is involved the systematic exploitation of women.
- TNCs relocate to EPZs to exploit a majority young female workforce. TNCs help impose the exploitative system of global capitalism on women in developing countries
Marxist Feminism: Leonard
-Argues that TNCs aim is to exploit over training, providing equal pay or job security/notes that the development of farming cash crops has led to men being employed over women
=Worldwide, women earn 69% of male wages. There is no country where women earn the same as men
=90% of the 27m workers in highly exploitative export processing zones are women, most of them between the ages of 16 and 25
Radical Feminism (Marginalisation Thesis)
- Female inequality was a passive process of systematic failures to include women through the involvement of capitalism in developing nations.
- Men are allowed into the public sphere of work while women were forced into the private sphere of domestic work.
- Argues that the introduction of cash crops attracted males who then left their wives to subsist without them.
- Wealth trickling down from the men to the women doesn’t work.
- Patriarchal bias in Aid to LDCs, with most of the trained by gov to provide agricultural, were men, 3.4% women, despite women being more likely to be in agriculture.
Millennium Development Goals and Gender Development
- Women’s issues used to be neglected in development policy
- Gender is now incorporated into the development plans of the UN, World Bank, and many NGO operations.
- Women’s issues formed the basis of two Millennium Development Goals:
(3) : promote gender equality and empower women, and (5): improve maternal health.
Women and Work
-Neo-liberal policies of IMF and WB pushing more women into the workforce: Underpaid women form large proportions of workforces/TNCs employ women as they can pay them less
-Women in the developing world undertake almost all of the domestic tasks. Stems from women’s lack of power, owing to the combined factors of patriarchy and poverty.
-Shown as mothers in order to justify not sending them to school. Reinforcing men’s control
-The new global market for services done by women thanks to globalisation
=Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2002) millions of women leave LDCs to work as nannies, maids and sex workers in DCs. Which creates a ‘care deficit’ in the LDCs, as their own families are neglected.
Women and Education
-793 million illiterate people in the world, 2/3 are F
-Barriers are economic (pay for education so send boys and trade girls for doweries) and cultural (Bias rooted in tradition to value boys)
-Girls that attend secondary school are healthier, have smaller families, earn higher wages and less at risk for HIV. Allows women to command more equality inside and outside the home.
-Reduces poverty long-term. Female workers and teach children so ending cycle of illiteracy.
=Kristof and WuDunn state that fertility rates tend to fall sharply with greater empowerment of women through education.
Women lack Reproductive Rights
-Have no control over fertility
-Men control access to and use of contraception
or abortion
-Decision about whether to have children, when
to have and how many is taken by men
=In Latin America it is known as ‘machismo’
-Men’s status is reflected in the number of children they have. Girls as young as 12 can be sold off as brides and then have children while a child themselves
-Little sexual freedom, and lack choices about when they have sex, whom they have it with, or under what conditions and with what outcomes.
Women and Health
- )Aids and HIV: Estimated 36.7 m people (2016) were living with HIV. 14.8 m are women. YW at risk with 59% of new infections being aged 15-24. 76% of all pregnant women living with HIV accessed treatment to prevent HIV transmission to their babies. Women are often discouraged/disallowed from discussing sexual matters. Women marry/have sexual relations with older men, who have been sexually active and therefore potentially infected
- ) Female Genital Mutilation: Between 100 and 140 million/2 million girls are at risk of FGM/Complications include severe pain, shock. Haemorrhage and infection can cause death. Long-term consequences include cysts and abscesses, painful sexual intercourse and difficulties with childbirth/Psychosexual and psychological health: Genital mutilation may leave a lasting mark on the life and mind of the woman who has undergone it. In the longer term, women may suffer feelings of incompleteness, anxiety and depression.
Solutions to Disparity
- Kofi A Annan: “There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls”
- Girls’ education has multiplier effects in other areas
- Quality education keeps children in school and makes them less vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
- For every year of schooling, wages for women as well as for men increase by a worldwide average of about 10%
- Countries with higher primary enrolment and smaller schooling gaps between boys and girls are usually more democratic
- Investments in girls’ education – particularly those directed to the quality of education – also benefit boys. The reverse is not always the case.
