Gender Role In Development Essay

For many years now the global community has been concerned with bridging the gap between the more developed countries and the less developed countries. To bridge the development gaps many different policies have been implemented in hopes of elevating the less developed countries to a higher level. Despite the best efforts of the global community, the policies that aim to promote development have not been completely successful. Among the problems found with this generic one-size fits all approach to development is the trend of treating development as gender-neutral is quite common. The role that gender plays in development are not considered when the global community, namely the World Bank and The International Monetary Fund or IMF, create policies

These policies are constructed by the macro-economic concept of looking at the economy as a whole rather than the individual (Elson, 1). This approach is inherently imbued with “male-bias” that results in “unfair distribution of the burdens of the burdens of stabilization and structural adjustments that are necessary for a country to develop (Elson, 1). Development policies fail to acknowledge that gender plays a large role when it comes to development since the policies that are implemented affect men and women very differently. This rather generic approach treats development as being gender-neutral when in fact it is not. Failing to acknowledge the rather large influence that gender has on the development process is a costly mistake that global institutions keep making in their development

In order to correct this mistake policy makers like the World Bank and the IMF need to supplement their current development measures, which are largely macro-level, with micro-level studies that specifically focus on how the implemented structural adjustments are affecting men and women of various income levels (Kabeer). By supplementing the current measures, misleading results that may point to successful policy implementation can be avoided. One example of such a false measure of development is in the case of Zambia where health per capita expenditure decreased by sixteen percent between 1983 and 1985 (Kabeer). On paper the numbers pointed to an increase in health care efficiency and the policy, implementation could be called successful. Upon closer examination through a micro-level study found that while the health care costs went down the costs of the individual for health care went up. The cost for the individual largely fell upon women who saw an increase in unpaid labor that they now had to undertake in order to provide health care to their households, which takes the time away that, could be used to participate in paid labor. Furthermore, when conducting micro-level studies special attention should be paid to any structural discrimination towards women that could potentially inhibit development. This false perception of success at the cost of