Women, Gender and Development Reader

2nd edition

Edited by Lynne Duggan, Laurie Nisonoff, Nalini Visvanathan, Nan Wiegersma

Third World women were long the undervalued and ignored actors in the development process but are now recognized as playing a critical role. This book is a comprehensive reader presenting the best of the now vast body of literature that has grown up alongside this acknowledgement.

Divided into five parts, this book incorporates readings from the leading experts and authorities in each field. The first part acts as an introduction to the field, examining the key theoretical debates and discourses surrounding women and development from a historical perspective, and outlining fundamental concepts such as class, ‘race’ and ethnicity, religion, reproduction, persistent inequalities, colonialism, modernization, economic exclusion and patriarchy.

Part two goes on to look at the household as a unit of analysis; exploring sexuality, single-parent families, agricultural production, and environmental relationships, while the third part locates women within the global economy, addressing issues such as industrialization, multi-national companies, free trade zones, the informal sector and the feminization of labour. Part four views the social transformation of women as a consequence of structural adjustment policies and intrusive state policies into women’s health, reproductive rights and sexuality. Next, the volume poses the fundamental questions around women and ideology: Do national liberation struggles contradict with feminist movements? What is the impact of religious fundamentalism? Are socialist development processes similar or dissimilar to capitalist processes? How has the transition to capitalism affected women? The final section of the book shows how women are organizing themselves for change.

Case studies drawn from all regions vividly illustrate the theoretical debates. A guide to further reading at the end of each chapter provides a foundation for any serious student of women in the development process.

Contents

• Part 1 – Historical Introduction and Theoretical Debates (S E M Charleton, Lourdes Beneria, Gita Sen, Eva M Rathgeber, Irene Tinker, Rosi Braidotti, Ewa Charkiewicz, Sabine Häusler, Saskia Wieringa, C Mohanty, Aihwa Ong, Lourdes Beneria, Deniz Kandiyoti)
• Part 2 – Households and Families (Sylvia Chant, Gita Sen, Rita Gallin, Diane Wolf, Jeanne Koopman, Vandana Shiva, Bina Agarwal)
• Part 3 – Women in the Global Economy (Diane Elson, Ruth Pearson, Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, Linda Y C Lim, Lourdes Arizpe, Aili Mari Tripp)
• Part 4 – International Women in Social Transformation (Carmen Deana Deere, Takyiwaa Manuh, Marlyn Dalsimer, Laurie Nisonoff, Betsy Hartmann, Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Wendy Lee, Delia Aguilar, Haleh Afshar, Homa Hoodfar, Lourdes Beneria, Muriel Nazzari, Mieke Meurs)
• Part 5 – Women Organizing Themselves for Change (Kate Young, Ida Susser, Seung-kyung Kim, Kalima Rose)

About the Authors

Lynn Duggan is an economist who has written articles on free trade and social policy, family policy in East and West Germany, and reproductive rights in the Philippines. She has taught at Fitchburg State Collee and Michigan State University, USA, and is currently consulting for unions and teaching Labor Studies at Indiana University Northwest

Laurie Nisonoff, Professor of Economics, has taught economics, economic history and women’s studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, since 1974. She is an editor of the Review of Radical Political Economics, and served as the co-ordinator of the RRPE 6th Special Issue on Women, ‘Women in the International Economy’. She has published alone and with Marilyn Dalsimer on women in China, and on the labour process.

Nalini Visvanathan is active in the international women’s health movement, a member of the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment and a contributing author to the 1998 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. A native of India, she teaches courses on women, health and development at the School for International Training, Vermont, USA.

Nan Wiegersma is Professor of Economics at Fitchburg State College, Fitchburg, Massachusetts. She worked for the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service in 1969-1973 on the Southeast Asia Desk, and she was UN representative on a World Food Programme mission to Vietnam in 1987. She has published numerous articles about land tenure, gender and development in journals, and a book, Vietnam: Peasant Land, Peasant Revolution (Macmillan Press and St. Martins, 1988). She was a Fulbright Fellow in Nicaragua in 1991, studying women’s work in export processing zones.