Gender Equality and Human Development: The Instrumental Rationale

human development, aid, trade, security

Making rights work for the poor : Nijera Kori and the construction of "collective capabilities" in rural Bangladesh

Whilst there is a formal commitment to rights in Bangladesh, spelt out in its constitution, its legal framework and its ratification of various international conventions on rights, the reality for its citizens is one of violations as much as the observance of rights. For the poor, in particular, who rely for their survival on relationships which position them as dependent on more powerful patrons, there is little prospect of demanding justice. The NGO sector in Bangladesh has sought to compensate for various deficits which characterise the lives of poor and marginalised groups. However, few attempt to directly address the “rights deficit”. One of the few to do so exception is Nijera Kori whose strategy is to build the capacity of the poor to mobilise in defence of their rights and in pursuit of justice. Its focus therefore is on “collective” rather than individual capabilities. The paper concludes by drawing out what Nijera Kori’s experience tells us about processes of social change and its challenge to the linear logic that characterises donor agency approaches to accountability

Gender equality, the MDGs and the SDGs: achievements, lessons and concerns

Following the formal announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals, Naila Kabeer reflects on lessons from the Millennium Development Goals through a feminist lens, which she argues were weakened by their very narrow interpretation of women’s empowerment. She writes that much more is needed to dismantle the more resilient structures of inequality, and while the SDGs offer some grounds for cautious optimism, there is a continued lack of emphasis on rights

Re-visioning "the social" : towards a citizen-centred social policy for the poor in poor countries

This paper begins by reviewing the different meanings given to the concept of “the social” within the development policy discourse over the past half century in order to delineate the domain of “social policy” in the context of developing countries. This review suggests that the “social” dimensions of public policy relate to those aspects which bear on how societies reproduce themselves at different levels: at the microlevel of individuals and their capabilities; at the meso level of institutions and social relations; and at the macro level of the societal structures of production and reproduction. Institutions are critical within this understanding of “social policy” because they mediate the processes by which societies translate the resources at their disposal into the individual and societal outcomes which are of interest to policy-makers. The paper develops an analytical framework organised around the concepts of institutions and institutional access in order to explore the factors which help to explain the experience of different countries in their attempts to translate economic resources into social outcomes. The paper suggests that, while variations in performance reflect a range of historical, political and economic factors, ideological adherence to either state-centred or market-driven approaches to social need have in the past prevented consideration of policy options more tailored to the pattern of local need, particularly the needs of poor and excluded groups. In practice, social need has been met in diverse ways by diverse groups so that the reality on the ground has been one of welfare pluralism. Managing this pluralism from a citizen-centred perspective offers a promising route to a more inclusive social policy for the future. The paper concludes by considering what some of the elements of such an approach might be

The evolving politics of labor standards in Bangladesh: taking stock and looking forward

This chapter provides a brief history of three or more decades of national and international efforts to improve labor standards for the workers in the garment industry. It concludes by looking forward to what could be done in the future. The author draws on her own research in this field to structure the wider literature on this topic. This chapter argues that any account of achievements and failures in relation to these efforts has to be embedded in the wider context in which the Bangladesh industry emerged and grew because this helps us to understand why its working conditions continue to fall short of international conventions and national regulations. While it faces the difficulties faced by any underdeveloped country with a limited history of industrialization and an industrial working class, Bangladesh has featured particularly prominently in international efforts to promote labour standards in global value chains in the garment sector. It can therefore provide an important case study of the challenges encountered by these efforts when the apparent protectionism of powerful global actors encounter the apparent intransigence of locally powerful actors

Editorial: Tactics and Trade-Offs Revisiting the Links Between Gender and Poverty

Poverty has not always been analysed from a gender perspective. Prior to the feminist contributions to poverty analysis, the poor were either seen as composed entirely of men or else women's needs and interests were assumed to be identical to, and hence subsumable under, those of male household heads. Gender research and advocacy has challenged the gender-blindness of conventional poverty measurement, analysis and policy in a number of different ways. Early research singled out the female-headed households as a disproportionately represented category in the ranks of the poor (Buvinic and Youssef 1978; Kossoudji and Mueller 1983; Merrick and Schmink 1983). This particular link between gender and poverty was a relatively visible one in conventional poverty line measurement, since disaggregation by gender of head of household could easily be accommodated. Female heads of households as 'the poorest of the poor' consequently became - and have remained - a primary variable in the equation between gender and poverty

Three faces of agency in feminist economics: capabilities, empowerment and citizenship

This chapter reviews three interrelated ways in which agency has been conceptualized in feminist economics. First, it draws on the concept of capabilities and considers its contribution to the analysis of livelihoods. Second, the chapter draws on conceptualizations of empowerment which link capabilities directly to questions of power. Finally, it turns to ideas about citizenship to consider agency as collective action and how it might be mobilized to promote women's rights and gender justice. Patriarchal constraints have made the possibility of collective action to challenge economic injustice more challenging for women relative to men. Furthermore, the nature of this challenge varies between different groups of women, depending on where they are positioned in the economy and the possibilities for collective action associated with their position. In some circumstances, progress on basic capabilities may enhance individual empowerment; in other circumstances, the willingness to take collective action might lead to improvements in basic capabilities

Women’s empowerment and economic development: a feminist critique of story telling practices in ‘Randomista' economics

The 2019 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to three scholars on the grounds that their pioneering use of randomized control trials (RCTs) was innovative methodologically and contributed to development policy and the emergence of a new development economics. Using a critical feminist lens, this article challenges that conclusion by interrogating the storytelling practices deployed by “randomista” economists through a critical reading of a widely cited essay by Esther Duflo, one of the 2019 Nobel recipients, on the relationship between women’s empowerment and economic development. The paper argues that the limitations of randomista economics have given rise to a particular way of thinking characterized by piecemeal analysis, ad hoc resort to theory, indifference to history and context, and methodological fundamentalism. It concludes that the randomista argument that broad-based economic development alone – without focused attention to women’s rights – will lead to gender equality has not been borne out by recent data