Basic Concepts of Gender Studies

1. Introduction. This Unit introduces you to the basic concepts

associated with Gender and Development. Wide ranges of concepts are
discussed in this unit in order to familiarize you with those concepts and
they will be used frequently in the subsequent units of this course. After
studying this Unit you will be able:

• Define the basic concepts with regard to gender and development;

• Explain the differences among the basic concepts; and
• Analyze the trends in the evolution of gender and development

2. What is Gender Studies? According to Ann Oakley (1972: 18),

Gender is a matter of culture; it refers to the societal classification into
Masculine and Feminine. In other words, gender refers to a specific
cultural meaning system that attaches to being a male or a female. Gender
is a sexualized identity of individuals in relation to the customs, traditions,
ways of life and the like. It is the social and cultural construction of roles,
tasks, attitudes, values and qualities of males and females. The formation
of gender differs from one culture to the other, as it is a culture specific
aspect. The community or society as a whole contributes to the definition
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of gender. Often, our society influences us about the ways in which we
expect males and females to behave and live in a certain way.

3. Background. Conventional indicators of ‘development’ are

economic growth’, rise in national and per capita income and GDP, rapid
pace of urbanisation, high mobility of labour and capital, expansion of
industrial base, agrarian growth and growth of foreign trade. This thinking
has been challenged by gender economists as these indicators have not
taken into consideration just distribution of resources, opportunities and
material wellbeing to majority of human beings, especially women. This
resulted in the development of the Women in Development Approach
which signifies awareness about marginalization of women in society in
general and in the economy in particular. Towards Equality Report,
Government of India, published in 1974 and The UN Charter on Equality,
Development and Peace adopted in 1975 were influenced by this
approach.

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It is also worthwhile to note here that the Women and Development
approach that believes in integration of women in the mainstream through
education, health and economic development of women is a guiding force
for National Perspective Plan (1988-2000), GOI.

Women and Development Approach is committed to bending the existing

power structure in favour of women through empowerment of women in the
apex bodies of decision making. Convention on Elimination of (All Forms
of) Discrimination Against women (CEDAW) espouses this approach.

The four global Women’s Conferences (Mexico 1975, Copenhagen 1980,

Nairobi 1985 and Beijing 1995) were instrumental in bringing women’s
issues at the center-stage in country after country by raising awareness,
spreading ideas, creating important alliances and increasing confidence.
These conferences also provided the mandate for CEDAW (the
Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women) which was in turn responsible for the creation of UNIFEM (the UN
Development Fund for Women) and INSTRAW (the UN International
Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women). In
addition , MDGs – gender inclusive 2000, INSTRAWUN, visibility of women
in statistics and indicators (1988), GDI and GEM by the United Nations as
well as development radars developed by various countries including India.

Inter -district, Inter-state and cross country comparisons of women’s

empowerment are obtained from Gender Development Index (GDI). GDI
owes its origin to its precursor, the HDI (Human Development Index), three
main components of which are per capita income, educational attainment
and life-expectancy which is a proxy for health attainment. Gender
disparities are measured keeping these three indicators into consideration.
An additional measure, gender empowerment measure (GEM) has been
formulated to take into account aspects relating to economic participation
and decision- making by women. The indicators used in GEM are share in

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income, share in parliamentary seats and an index that includes share in
administrative and managerial jobs and share in professional and technical
posts.

Gender is a multifaceted reality that is culturally constructed and socially

determined by the society. In other words, gender portrays culturally and
socially constructed roles, responsibilities, privileges, relations and
expectations of women and men. Because these are socially constructed,
they can change over time and differ from one place to another. Gender
refers to behavioral differences between males and females that are
culturally based and socially learned (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218).

Sometimes, gender is referred mistakenly only to women although it deals

with the distinctive social construction of both men and women. The basic
difference between men and women is the principle of biological
reproduction in which this biological difference overshadows the other
qualitative variations and achievements. Juliet C.W. Mitchel opined that the
concept of gender was introduced in the early 1970s to distinguish the
acquisition of social attributes from biological ones, for which ‘sex’ was
reserved. In her view, gender is now an inclusive term that ultimately has
come to include even biology. Mitchel believed that gender did not have a
history or a psychology in which gender has come to replace women, as in
‘Gender Studies’ versus ‘Women’s Studies’, at exactly that point where the
intimate association between women and procreation is tending to wither
away. She argued that to think of women is to think of women and children;
to think of gender is to think of men and women but it is also to think of
women and women or men and men.

Margaret Mead’s (1935) study of the three societies in the New Guinea
Islands, though contestable on several grounds, contributed significantly to
the shaping of the concept of gender in the latter half of the 20th century.
The functionalist notion of ‘sex-role’ was also a crude precursor of the

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concept of gender. It suggested that men and women are socialized into
sex-specific roles, namely ‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’. These roles
were regarded as the basis of a complementary relation between men and
women, which along with the sexual division of labour, contributed to a
stable social order. Scholars have questioned the focus of this
conceptualization upon ‘individual’ men and women who are socialized into
sex-specific roles. They suggest that gender is something more than roles
performed by men and women just as economies are something more than
jobs performed by individuals (Lorber 1984). Critics have also pointed out
that socialization is always a precarious achievement and that agency,
interpretation and negotiation are a part and parcel of how gender
identities are actually constituted.

4. Goal & Object. After reading this unit, you will be able to:

 Understand what is the meaning of gender;

 Explain the difference between sex and gender;

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  Comprehend some of the key concepts of gender studies
which encourage critical thinking.

5. GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT, GENDER PLANNING, GENDER

BUDGETING AND GENDER AUDITING.

a. Gender and Development. GAD, which shares elements with

the empowerment approach, gained popularity in the 1980s and
attempts to address the loopholes of WID. It is rooted in
postdevelopment theory and post-structuralist critiques in feminism.
GAD does not consider women as a uniform group. It maintains that
women’s situation should be seen in the context of the socio-
economic, racial and other factors that shape a particular society. It
points to the importance of understanding the relationship between
women and men and how society influences their respective roles.

Development to be meaningful will have to take all these factors into

consideration. This approach rejects the dichotomy between the
public and the private. It focuses attention on the oppression of
women in the family, within the private sphere of the household. It
emphasizes the state’s role in providing social services to promote
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women’s emancipation. Women are seen as agents of change rather
than passive recipients of development.

The focus is on strengthening women’s legal rights. It also talks in

terms of upsetting the existing power relations in society. Gender is
an issue that cuts across all economic, social and political processes.
The GAD approach attempts to identify both the practical gender
needs of women as well as the strategic gender needs that are
closely related.

The problem with GAD is that it is easy in the name of gender, to

disguise and even side track real issues that affect women. Gender
can rise above the personal, which means the personal can remain
behind the scene, despite all the efforts that go into the analysis of
‘social construction of gender’.

Most often, however, GAD is seen as just a new label for the same
old women’s programmes which do not address power relations in
society or women’s oppression. Though it is popular among funding
agencies and NGOs and has the potential to be different, it has
become institutionalized like WID.

b. Gender Planning Gender planning is the recognition of

existing gender inequalities in the society and helps to formulate the
policies to mitigate gender inequalities in the society. It aims to
improve the status and conditions of women by formulating
appropriate policies and programmes. The existing planning
approach treats all as equal and it will make a plan for all without
considering the inequalities existing in the society. Gender planning
helps to expose, analyze and resolve the inequalities existing in
social, economic, culture, legal and family structures and serves to
initiate processes of change to address inequalities in such
structures and processes.
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c. Gender Budgeting A budget is one of the most important
instruments which reflect the economic policy of the government. It
can also be a powerful tool in transforming the economy at different
levels of State, District or Grassroots level of village Panchayats. It
reflects the choices that the government chooses in order to achieve
the economic and developmental goals. Of late, gender budgeting
has emerged as a new process. This ensures the care for women’s
needs and priorities in the total budget. This has become an effective
mechanism to bring about gender equity. A Gender Responsive
Budget is a budget that acknowledges the gender patterns in the
society and allocates money to implement policies and programmes
that changes these patterns in a way that moves towards a more
gender-equal society. Gender budget initiatives are exercises that
aim to move the country in the direction of a gender-responsive
budget.

d. Gender Auditing Gender auditing is the analysis of the system

and process of finance of any government. Gender auditing implies
auditing the income and expenditure of governments from a gender
perspective and also analyzing the development process including
the process of legislation, guidelines, taxes and social development
projects. It understands that policies have a differential impact on
men and women by recognizing the roles and responsibilities of men
in the society form the basis for gender auditing. Gender auditing is
one aspect of social auditing.

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6. Conclusion. Femininity and masculinity have been the central
representation for understanding gender. Femininity and masculinity
signifies the social outcomes of being female or male and their respective
characteristics. Some feminists assert that biological differences get
heightened through social descriptions of femininity and masculinity. As
Judith Butler opined, any theorization about gender introduces the idea of
performance of gender in terms of masculinity and femininity. Therefore,
performance of gender becomes instinctive as gender gets internalized
through the socialization process within the dominant discourses of
patriarchy. Gender is performed at different levels within the family,
kinship, class, tribe and caste. We socially enter into our gendered
categories of femininity and masculinity from the day we are born. Today,
social categorization of femininity and masculinity are blurring. There is a
constant shift in the conceptualization of men and women as controlled by
complete biological or social forces.