Over the past two decades issues regarding the integral involvement of women in the national development process have gained currency in the agendas of national and international development agencies. The realisation that development planning had marginalised women in more than one way has led governments, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and donor agencies to formulate strategies to address the issue. The aim of this Women In Development (WID) approach was to design actions and policies to integrate women fully into development, and to improve the status of women in all sectors at all levels. However, since the mid-1980s there has been a gradual shift in thinking about men and women in the development process. The emphasis now is on looking at the interdependent character of women's and men's position in society. The new approach also emphasises that the problems of women should not be perceived in terms of biology (sex) alone; rather, it tries to alter the focus of policy to a consideration of socially constructed relations between women and men (gender). Various groups (governments, donor agencies, NGOs) have invested time and resources towards incorporating a gender perspective in their agendas of development as also within institutions.It is difficult to generalise about the range of approaches to women and development that have evolved during recent years. 'Gender' has become the panacea for those working in the field. Yet very few analyses exist of the way in which 'gender' is being applied as a policy-making and planning tool. One way to assess these approaches is to look at the 'gender training' methodologies promoted by researchers and development agencies (UNDP 1994). Gender training has been referred to as a key strategy for opening up the 'minds and hearts' of development policymakers (Macdonald 1994). at UNIV OF TENNESSEE on June 5, 2016 ijg.sagepub.com Downloaded from 68The two training approaches through which gender is operationalised and widely used are the 'gender roles' and 'social relations' analyses. Both approaches use a gender disaggregated analysis of roles and access/control over resources. The gender roles framework developed by researchers at the Harvard Institute of International Development has become a popular approach within mainstream development institutions. This framework derives its insights and concerns from the early WID approach. It takes as its starting point the view that the household is neo l an undifferentiated grouping of people with common production and consumption functions. Emphasis is squarely placed on economic arguments for delivering resources to women.In contrast, the social relations analysis emphasises that gender relations refer specifically to those dimensions of social relations that create differences in the positioning of men and women in social processes. The problematic within this approach is not women's integration into development per se but the social structures, processes and relations that give rise to women's disadvantaged position in a g...
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