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p. 9 of 20 BACK | NEXT Executive summary Introduction Gender and development issues in the Asian and Pacific region Overview of Bank policy and operations on WID (1985-1996) The need for a revised policy on gender and development From WID to GAD Experience of the World Bank and other agencies Experience of DMC governments International agenda for women The Bank’s revised policy on gender and development

Policy on Gender and Development : The need for a revised policy on gender and development

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From WID to GAD

40. ADB’s experience is similar to that of other international development agencies. Formal policy approaches aiming to incorporate women into development activities began in the early 1970s, and over the past 30 years evolved on the basis of experience, review, and reformulation of strategies and objectives through several stages from welfare-oriented, equity, antipoverty, and mainstreaming approaches. By the 1980s, WID was accepted and adopted internationally as a strategic emphasis aiming to achieve women’s integration in all aspects of the development process.

41. International acceptance of the need to overtly place women on the development agenda was accompanied by the formulation of WID policies and the institutionalization of various mechanisms, among both development agencies and recipients of international development assistance, to address the concerns, needs, and contributions of women. This led to a plethora of WID programs and projects aimed to improve the condition of women and to deliver development to women²⁵.

42. Agency and independent reviews by the early 1990s of these WID projects, approaches, and institutional mechanisms drew virtually unanimous conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of the WID approach. Reviews of the underresourced and often marginalized government women’s units indicated they were unable to effectively influence national policies or to bring about the gender equity that was envisaged at their establishment. Targeted and segregated women-only projects operated to further marginalize and isolate women from the mainstream of development. Relegating the responsibility for improving the status of women (50% of the population) to one department rather than to all sectoral ministries simply ghettoized women. Treating women as a unified and special category divorced from other social relations, including economic and social processes, would not accommodate or accurately reflect the various groups of women or the different voices of women. More importantly, the reviews and evaluations revealed that such approaches had not succeeded in significantly narrowing the gap between women and men. Women-only projects were often poorly conceived and funded, and sometimes added to women’s already heavy workloads with few compensatory benefits.

43. These reviews, analyses, and conclusions led to significant rethinking of the WID approach. It became evident that projects focusing exclusively on women implied that the problem, and hence the solution, could be confined to women. For example, population programs that exclusively targeted women were often unsuccessful, since their male partners, whose consent was integral to project success, were not targeted. Contraceptive acceptance often required the explicit consent of men. It became obvious that, unless men were sensitized to the dangers of repeated and frequent pregnancies, improvements in women’s health and reductions in fertility rates could not be achieved. Such approaches failed to recognize the critical role of men in decisions regarding women’s lives. Likewise, education projects that targeted only girls by building schools exclusively for them did not always achieve the desired results because men were not sensitized to the benefits to be achieved from educating girls, or the sociocultural environment was not adequately assessed.

44. Relying on women as the analytical category for addressing gender inequalities meant a focus on women in isolation from the rest of their lives and from the relations through which such inequalities were perpetuated and reproduced. This led to the major shift from women as the key focus of analysis to a focus on gender relations²⁶, i.e., the social relations between men and women that generate and perpetuate gender inequalities.

45. The rethinking of the WID approach also led to a move away from assessing the adverse impact of development on women to examining the adverse impact of women’s exclusion on development. “Women need development” was replaced by “development needs women.” Social justice and equity arguments were complemented with arguments of economic efficiency. The marginalization and isolation of women from the mainstream of the development process came to be seen as economically inefficient and hampering economic growth. Hence, welfare-oriented and equity approaches were increasingly replaced and complemented with main- streaming and efficiency approaches.

46. However, there were two highly influential criticisms of the economic efficiency approach from leading women’s advocates. These criticisms pointed out that (i) mainstreaming women into development does not question the nature of the development itself, which may be contrary to women’s interests and concerns; and (ii) taking account of and supporting women’s actual roles in production does not challenge the often inequitable basis by which these roles are allocated within society. These criticisms have led to a new strategic emphasis on women’s empowerment within the development process. It aims to support measures that empower women to contribute to setting development agenda, and to challenge socioeconomic systems that place them at a relative disadvantage to men.

47. The evaluation of past failures also led to the realization that the development process itself needs engendering. Hence, there is a need to refocus the strategic emphasis from a narrow WID approach to a more dynamic GAD approach. In the GAD approach, the strategic emphasis is widened to include women’s rights, women’s role as active participants and agents in development, and their role as actors with a specific agenda for development. Compare this with the earlier WID approaches that perceived women simply as reproducers (family planning), and passive recipients of resources (basic needs and services). Hence, welfare-oriented, “add women and stir” approaches that treated women as passive recipients of development were replaced by approaches that attempt to engender development, empower women, and perceive women as active agents in their own right.

48. The difference between WID and GAD is essentially based on the approach to assessing and dealing with women’s unequal position in society. GAD does not dislodge women as the central subject. Rather, while the WID approach focused exclusively on women to improve women’s unequal position, the GAD approach recognizes that improvements in women’s status require analysis of the relations between men and women, as well as the concurrence and cooperation of men. Emphasis is placed on the need to understand the ways in which unequal relations between women and men may contribute to the extent and forms of exclusion that women face in the development process. There is also an overt recognition that the participation and commitment of men is required to fundamentally alter the social and economic position of women. This recognition led to a shift from an exclusive focus on women to a GAD approach that also factors into the equation males and the broader sociocultural environment.

49. The gender and development approach sees gender as a crosscutting issue with relevance for and influencing all economic, social, and political processes. A gender-focused approach seeks to redress gender inequity through facilitating strategic, broad-based, and multifaceted solutions to gender inequality.

50. A strategic or agenda-setting approach analyzes and defines the structures that generate and maintain the gender disparities that place constraints on development. This entails a proactive approach to gender issues in project identification and design, and includes gender analysis and diagnosis in the definition of project beneficiaries. It aims to identify both the practical gender needs of women such as health care, water supply, education, laborsaving technologies, etc., and the strategic gender needs ensuring that the project assists women to increase their benefits and to overcome structural constraints. The strategic needs of women may include the right to land ownership, access to loans, or active participation in decision-making bodies such as water user associations. Practical and strategic gender needs are closely related, as one often leads to or is a prerequisite for achieving the other. For example, improving women’s access to income, which could be seen as a practical need, may not be possible unless the strategic need of accessing loans is first met. To achieve the goal of gender equality, it is considered vital to meet both practical and strategic gender needs.

51. Inherent in the GAD approach is gender mainstreaming, which is a means of addressing women’s concerns more holistically and effectively. It requires gender planning to be applied to all development operations and projects, and allows women to be factored into economic and development policy. The GAD approach utilizes gender analysis, which is the tool for analyzing the specific nature of gender differences by asking basic questions such as who does what, where, when, how often, with what resources and returns, and who controls what. Such questions enable an assessment of gender differentiations in activities, resource ownership, use, and control²⁷. On the basis of the information obtained through gender analysis, appropriate policy, project interventions, strategies, and mechanisms can be designed to assist in improving women’s inclusion, status, and productivity.

52. The GAD approach, however, does not mean that stand-alone women’s projects or projects with special components targeting women are to be abandoned altogether. Until there are no structural constraints and barriers restricting women’s participation, projects directed exclusively at women or projects with special components addressed at women are still required, especially in circumstances wherein cultural dictates necessitate segregation of the sexes, or in situations where women require special assistance to enable their full participation in mainstream projects. Gender mainstreaming is not to imply that women no longer require special attention in projects since their interests are “mainstreamed” and all project inputs are equally accessible to men and women.

53. Until women reach a stage when they can truly become equal partners with men in development, special attention to address women’s needs and concerns will be required. Projects that mainstream women need special design features to facilitate and promote the inclusion of women. Components have to be built into projects that are strategically designed to improve women’s access, equity, and benefits so as to lead to long-term improvements in their social and economic status. It is not an either/or proposition but entails a combination of approaches that include mainstreaming women into all projects, women-specific components, and separate projects and programs directed exclusively at women. A transition period is necessary during which the dual approach of mainstreaming, plus special projects and initiatives targeted directly at women, is required to facilitate women’s full and equal participation in development.

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