It can vary by culture, within culture, it’s social (not biological). It’s learned, acquired. People’s understandings of gender are socially constructed. We in the West often think in terms of masculinity and femininity. But even those are social and cultural constructs. Children learn what those concepts mean, media try to influence the public to associate them with consumption, there is pressure exerted upon boys and girls, men and women, to ‘learn’ gender roles.

In terms of power, not all understandings of gender are accorded equal weight. Gender differences are reflected in roles and responsibilities, expectations, access to and control over resources, constraints or limitations, opportunities, needs, perceptions, access to institutions, political views, etc., which are held by both women and men. Understandings of gender can and do change over time, obviously, if you pay attention to history. A change of government can change gender relations (consider the Taliban in Afghanistan, women in post-Fundamentalist Iran, in post-Saddam Iraq, or under the Bush Administration).

Gendered institutions

What are ‘gendered’ institutions? Spheres of public and private life, access to which is affected by gender. In other words, they’re less accessible based on whether you’re a man or woman. Can you think of any ‘gendered’ institutions, in the U.S. or elsewhere? Military; sports (this may be less so now with title IX–but does title IX make it all equal?); education (any experiences in grade school with how boys and girls might be treated differently by teachers, administrators?); health care; politics; business (what % of CEOs in the Fortune 500 are female? In 2014, about 4%–an increase of 33% since 2011!); academe; law enforcement; religion; factory work; farming; the family, etc. And we’re talking about the U.S.! You can imagine how institutions might be gendered in other countries, where women’s participation in education, government, and public life in general can be extremely limited. Imagine an illiterate woman trying to get a small loan from a bank. Or ride the public transit system, make change, seek title for land at the county seat, make a transaction in the market, deal with the police, the court system, local religious leaders, village chiefs, their husbands . . . . and, as long as we’re discussing gendered institutions, we might as well throw in . . . . development, as it’s been practiced.

It’s a fair assumption to make that women as a group have less access to power than men, all else being equal (given similar positions). At the same time, some women are more equal than others . . . (in other words, there are differences among women, just as there are differences between men and women). Hence it’s risky to assume that all women are equally disadvantaged. There will be individual women with more privileges and status than some individual men (thinking of poverty here, but it could be ethnicity, race, geographic region, rural vs urban, etc.).

Gender bias can be thought of as asymmetry that is ill-founded or unjustified (Elson 1995). Author Diane Elson calls it ‘male bias,’ suggesting that the gender term masks what is really at work–bias that favors males. Sociologist Allan Johnson writes about ‘privilege systems‘–a similar, more structural concept. In other words, privileges don’t accrue equally to everyone, and membership in some social or ascribed group (like gender, race) may confer or deny privileges to the majority of that group. To the ‘privileged,’ these privileges may just seem like they’re part of the natural order of things–they’re ‘invisible.’ People enjoying them may be raised to believe they have somehow earned these privileges. If you know your baseball, it was once said about a former US president that ‘he was born on third base, but grew up believing he had hit a triple.’

Some are aware of gender bias, others aren’t. Those who experience it may be more likely to be aware, but not all are–in any society. This is very powerful stuff–when the privilege systems are so ingrained that many can’t even imagine alternatives. And it’s structural–while society is populated with individuals, those individuals come and go much more fluidly than these more rigid privilege systems can change.

So, how is social life ‘gendered?’

A complex question, but below are two important ways for understanding development:

1. Division of labor–men and women tend to do different work, tend to be socialized early on in life about what kinds of work are appropriate by gender. While this happens in many ways even in the States, in third world countries it is often much more rigid.
2. “Unity of the household“–this is largely a myth, but a powerful one. But think about it–if measures at the societal level are of limited utility in understanding how individuals of different groups are faring, wouldn’t households be more accurate? Probably, but even household measures may be misleading, and one big reason is because of gender differences. If the household is the social category we use to make resources available, are we assuming that resources given to the household, and thus the benefits from those resources, are distributed equally?
   1. Households are not necessarily unified–there is the potential for conflict, economic/political inequalities, differences in opportunities. We all probably have personal experience with this.
   2. There are power differences. Think of patriarchal authority. Who makes important decisions in the household? Who controls land, resources? Who decides how income should be spent? Who decides how many children to have?
   3. Culture, religion (bridewealth/dowry; proscriptions against working; productive/reproductive roles–these may differ from one culture to another, with different effects on women–we’ll read more about this later in the course)
   4. Women’s other economic, household burdens, the ‘double-day’ syndrome–women work the farm, and do the domestic chores as well, along with childcare, etc. (this happens everywhere-domestic labor is undervalued, and women tend to do most of it, which limits their productive potentials in terms of income, agriculture, etc. Women are ‘time poor’–they don’t have much extra time to devote to development projects, for instance)
   5. Development biases-based on statistical invisibility, colonial prejudices, etc. Boserup talks about colonial prejudices. Women are in many cases ‘statistically invisible,’ because so much of their work is unpaid, informal, subsistence, volunteer, and/or domestic. No one is counting it, it isn’t reflected in GNP, and therefore when it comes time to value women’s contributions to the economy, they often seem to be ‘invisible.’

Causes of male, gender bias

Attitudes, actions

• ‘gender neutral’ terms aren’t always neutral (‘worker,’ ‘farmer,’ women as helpers on farm). When I was in Africa, men would describe what they farmed as ‘balo‘ (life, subsistence, household grain), and what the women farmed as ‘fenw fitiniw‘ (translated, the ‘little stuff’). They defined subsistence as the work men performed. Some typical stereotypes:
  • ‘agriculture is a male-dominated occupation’ (affects agricultural development projects)
  • ‘women are nimble-fingered’ (good sweatshop workers)
  • ‘women’s place is in the home’. These may seem like clichés here in the States, but in many places in the world, they are powerful social norms.

Research (that may drive development projects, activities)

• • Theory may be based on gender biased research (data, information on women’s activities hard to collect, perceived as inconsequential)–economists may not adequately account for gender differences for instance if they’re only looking at aggregate level measures like GNP, or even household-level measures.
  • Who are the researchers? In country, they may more likely be men, or at least using methodologies that don’t incorporate gender concerns.
  • Household-level studies . . . there is little value placed on the domestic sector, though women’s daily work load includes many drudgerous and time-consuming activities–this is economic activity, even if it isn’t very productive (in other words, if we could release women from 1-2 hrs a day of pounding grain or drawing water from the well, what could they do with that extra time?).
  • Data collection–are we identifying and getting information from women? Are they around for surveys, other data collection methods? Think back to the idea of statistical invisibility. A lack of grassroots input will lead to distortions in how development-related resources are distributed. Why? Who will get the resources? Who designs the projects?

• Statistical invisibility–a critical concept that follows from the previous bullet point. Women’s contributions to family income are often statistically invisible or unpaid. It takes data collection and research to make women’s contributions more visible to development planners. Often times expensive data collection for which there is no money. Who’s trying to quantify women’s household economic activity? And if it isn’t quantified, the argument can be made that it isn’t that important (not that this doesn’t happen in most every culture …).

Policy

• Scale and capital–large scale, capital-intensive projects are often favored in development (e.g., think of the hydroelectric dam projects). These are often biased against women–Why? Are they as able to take wage labor? Think about their economic and domestic responsibilities–who can leave the household to work for pay? Who has the highest levels of formal education?
• Labor–women’s unpaid domestic, reproductive contributions constitute a ‘double day’ –where’s the time for ‘development’ projects?
• Greater awareness of the ‘gendered’ nature of development is needed
• There is a lack of political participation, voice for many women
• So essentially, how can gender-sensitive development projects be designed without adequate input from or understanding of women and women’s situations?

History

• Europeans, colonial legacy
  • Cultural ignorance (missions, not anthropologists … even where they saw women doing most work, they sought to improve upon it)
  • Patriarchal cultures (men were colonizers, their view of farming was as a male-dominated enterprise)
  • Privatization of property-men more favored-institutions were gendered, many societies patrilineal, men had more time, resources to pursue titling, etc. Privatization of property favors men’s agricultural activities.
  • Extension services–Boserup’s chapter on women’s loss of status under European rule highlights many ways that men’s interests were favored, how the colonial governments made some gross assumptions, came themselves from societies where men were the household heads, and transformed howhousehold labor was divided in many places of the world.

What reinforces gender bias?

What is the structure of opportunity, and does it vary by gender? Do women have opportunities independent of men, or only through men? (widowed, women-headed households, ability to get credit, etc.)

• Household division of labor–women and the ‘double day’ that many women experience
• Household decision making authority–in a patriarchal society, in a patriarchal household, who decides how resources are allocated?
• Development policies that promote technology transfer—
  • in agriculture, these are generally intended to increase productivity (that is, amount of crop produced on a given parcel of land), may not respond to women’s limitations resulting from their ‘double day’
  • men are targeted (extension, or outreach, by and targeting males)
  • men may be more ‘worldly,’ easier to reach; more likely have some formal education, have traveled.
  • higher status with agricultural extension officers (for instance) creates higher status, greater economic importance within the household;
  • women end up being the low-tech workers, with lower rates of productivity, because few people are working on technologies to reduce their drudgery
  • from Boserup: ‘by their discriminatory policy in education and training the Europeans created a productivity gap between male and femal farmers, and subsequently this gap seemed to justify their prejudice against female farmers.’
• Access to child care–women may be ‘locked in’ –in many ways in many societies, women’s reproductive roles are valued and recognized by men and powerful decision makers more than their productive roles. Even though in the household they may get help from daughters with child care (or later, help from daughters-in-law with household work), it is symptomatic of the limits women face. They often end up organizing groups among themselves to take care of this limitation.
• Institution of marriage–gets back to women’s reproductive roles–what kind of status would you expect for a woman of 25 years with no husband and no children, in a society where women reach marrying age at 15 years? How does marriage affect women’s structure of opportunity, in the U.S. or elsewhere? Now this is changing in many societies, as populations begin moving from rural to urban areas, and more formal education tends to be accompanied by delayed marriage and childbirth.
• Officialdom (women’s roles in informal economies are often neglected, ignored–they are statistically invisible, and this often works, intentionally or not, against them)

What are some of the impacts of gender bias?

• Distortion of resource allocation–women’s real contributions to the economy aren’t reflected in official statistics that may be used to formulate, justify policies (that is, their importance to the economy is underestimated). They are underrepresented as a result.
• Lack of direct political representation–who speaks on women’s behalf (reinforces invisibility)?
• As Boserup says, the reinforcement of colonial and other prejudices-men become what they were assumed to be-superior in some respect, based on the imposition of cultural values from other societies.
• Increased impoverishment among women. Yes, development has made women in many parts of the world worse off.

Sources:

• Diane Elson. 1995. Male Bias in the Development Process. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
• Ester Boserup. 1970. Woman’s role in economic development. London: Earthscan Publications. (Chapter 3, ‘Loss of status under European rule’)