Gender in the developing world

Gender in the developing world

1. Women in the West enjoy opportunities with regard to education, health, access to jobs and legal rights that suggest greater equality with men that is experience by women in the developing world.

   • However patriarchal control in the developing world can be all consuming and exert control that can threat women's lives in different ways. Leonard argues that 'the conditions of under-development eg dependency are experience by a greater extent to men
   • Women in LEDC have less work to do due to lack of technology- washing machines
     • Culturally- Patriarchy is more dominant in LEDC's
     • Global women make up the fifth world- developed world- still a glass ceiling?

2. Explanations for the position of women in developing countries

   • Mordernisation theory
     • 1. Blames internal cultural factors for female sub-ordination
       • Van der Gaag
     • 2. Believed that the creation of jobs by multinational companies would encourage female economic independence from men
       • Development
     • Cultures and religious value ascribe status on the basis of gender. This in some cases mean males are accorded patriarchal control and dominance over a range of female activities. Feminists place emphasis on an ending to cultural practices within development- dismisses cultural behaviour as being the product of ignorance. Some Muslim women however argue that Islam values empowers them- for example wearing the burkha ensures that women can control how men perceive their bodies.
   • The marginalization thesis
     • 1. This perspective on development suggests that the introduction of capitalism in developing societies has led to women being excluded from economic life and dependent upon men.
     • Dependency theory and colonial powers
       • Imposition of western values about males and females
         • Abbot and Wallace describe how western notions of femininity and the family have been imposed upon other models of gender
         • Colonialism- introduce forms of inequality- reaffirmed ascribed roles- Leonard argues C-powers introduce a money economy based on wage labour and cash crops into Africa and Asia
           • However there is evidence that colonialism challenged aspects of gender roles that were harmful to women- British made female circumcision illegal
   • The exploitation thesis
     • Marxist- feminist position- Believe modernisation is about imposing an exploitive global system of capitalism on developing societies.
       • TNC's
         • Exploit women- Low pay- paid lower that men- 10% of those in developed societies

3. Solutions to gender inequalities in the developing world

   • Marxist feminist approaches
     • Argue that socialism is committed dismantling patriarch regimes in the developing world. Molyneux's study of societies that were both Marxist-Leninist and Islamic found that such regimes were willing to challenge traditions such as childmarriage
   • Radical feminist approaches
     • 1. International feminist movement has not always understood the nature of the developing world- radical feminist insistence that men were the enemy failed to address women in developing nations saw as their main problem- neo-colonial exploitation. Women's sub-ordination only formed part of this.
     • Feminists argued that they had to join men to fight oppression in the developed world-. Whilst in the developing world were focused on acquiring the reproductive rights that women in the west took for granted.
       • Women in the developing world were at risk of violence for even daring to campaign- Other factors were also just as important

4. The future?

   • Van der Gaag identifies threats to the progress of women- Brutal facts remain
     • Increasing militarization of the world- affects of war and victims of rape- refuges in Africa- values are primarily male in military societies
   • Plus side- expansion of both education and family planning does constitute progress- Adamson argues that there is now a generation of women in the developing who see education as the norm- demand input into political decision making- pass down.
   • Lack of improvements on health- Holmes- unless addressed will never reach the goals

5. Woman are globally worse off than men- Includes all indicators such as the 'gender development index- education access