Introduction and Chapter 1

Every time I am presented with the opportunity to study a topic of my own choosing, I invariably choose to write about women. First, it was feminism in 1950's America, then it was legal representations of female converts in the 18th century Ottoman and Venetian legal accounts and now its women in development. Women's experiences of life is so different from a man's that we are justified in investigating how these differences manifest themselves. In Women and Gender Equity in Development Theory and Practice the editors Jane Jaquette and Gale Summerfield looks at institutions, resources and mobilization in terms of development and women, in a collection of articles written scholars and activists.

In their Introduction, the editors discuss the potential for institutions to create opportunities and barriers for women's development, increasing women's control of resources and women's mobilization and power. Within these topics, they pointed to various themes, including the role of the state, a broader definition of women's development not solely focused on the south, the role of globalization and the discrepancy between practice and theory.

I am looking forward to learning more about women's development in the North and how that is address because I do find the idea very interesting. So far in class we have talked about development as an state that has been reached in Northern countries. To a large extent, this is true, however, I find it troublesome to define a "developed state" as something that is static. Standards of development change over time (from focusing on economic growth to human development) and this should cause us to constantly re-evaluate whether or not Northern countries are maintaining these standards. For example, as the recent health care debate in the United States has demonstrated, the question of heath care for the entire population has not been decided, and efforts to provide universal heath care met with strong resistance. Obviously, the problems of Northern countries pale in comparison to the humanitarian problems in Southern countries, but by judging Northern countries by their standards of development we might be able to see how realistic some of the goals that we expect Southern states to reach are.

In the first chapter Women, Gender, and Development Jane Jaquette and Kathleen Staudt review the women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD) approaches to development. The authors argue that both models reflect general trends in feminist theory (WID was influenced by Northern feminism in the 1970s while GAD was a rise to the rise of postcolonial feminism). The authors believe that the re-structing of the international system that occurred after the September 11, may push aside or distort women's agendas, therefore, they hope that by presenting the debate between WID and GAD they might be able to "provoke creating thinking (19)."

Jaquette and Staudt devote a large part of the chapter investigating how shifts within the international system affect how women's role in development are perceived. They outline three major shifts in the international system, which have a profound impact on the way that women's issues are addressed. These shifts in the international system (coinciding with changes in American foreign policy) occurred during the 1970s, with the rise of dependency theory and the United Nations calling for a redistribution of resources from the North to the South, the 1980s, with the rejection of the Keynesian consensus and the rise of the Washington Consensus which was based on the neo-liberal economic model. These changes within the international system had profound impact on the way that the women agenda in development was conceived. For example, during the 1970s the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women focused on improving women's legal status, coinciding with the rise of dependency theory's influence. Eventually, agents of development saw that legal status alone does not guarantee social and economic equality.

The authors do not put forth a new theory for women's development, however, they highlight "four arenas of power that must be taken into account in any revitalized effort to address women's practical and strategic interests (40)." These arenas are bureaucracies, civil societies, states and markets. In class we have discussed civil society and the state. Jaquette and Staudt argued that the state has an important role in women's development because cultural-social norms in some Southern countries work against them by "implementing norms, disciplining norms, and making investment in public goods (44)." Going forward, I believe that increasing women's access to markets is crucial because when women have increased economic power they can influence the distribution of money with the household. For example, when women are in charge of family finances they devote a much greater percentage of money to nutrition and education than when men alone are responsible for household spending. With a simple change in the familial power relations there can be ripple effects for education and heath of children. With better heath and education human development becomes within reach than it would have been otherwise. Obviously, an education system must be in place for any of this to be possible.