Diane Elson – Male bias in the development process: an overview
Elson sees the need to move from a women focus to approaches emphasising
gender relations. Gender relations refer to the gender dimension of the social
relations structuring the lives of individual men and women. A gender approach has a
greater flexibility, this emphasis on gender relations tends to permit greater
awareness of the different ways that different women experience gender.
Male Bias
By male bias she means a bias that operates in favour of men as a gender, and
against women as a gender. Bias is asymmetry that is ill-founded or unjustified.
Male bias in development outcomes
Part of the problem of male bias is that it tends to hamper women from acquiring
those characteristics which are well-rewarded in the market; and that it tends to
hamper social scientists from understanding the limitations of notions of male and
female endowments of aptitudes or talents. Another part of the problem of male bias
is that it tends to hamper women from forming well-defined notions of what they
want; women submerge their own interests beneath those of men and children.
Instead of judging bias against endowments and preferences, it can be judged
against rights and capabilities. However, even in countries with strong equal rights,
women struggle to get what they are entitled to. In so far as women enjoy fewer and
more circumscribed capabilities than do men, then there is male bias in development
outcomes. There are several different biases within society, what perhaps is unique
about male bias is that those who are disadvantaged by it live daily in intimate
relationships with those who are advantaged by it. Women and men gain from cooperating with one another in joint living arrangements in so far as this increases the
capabilities of the household as a whole, but the division of the fruits of co-operation
is a source of conflict. Even if women are at disadvantage they are worse off without
this co-operation, in terms of capabilities. Male bias is contradictory in that while it
preserves the subordination of women as a gender to men, it also has costs for
society considered as a whole. Without the male bias there might be an increase of
productivity, but the share of the men might fall, which can explain why they don’t
work to change it.
The proximate causes of male bias in development outcomes
Conscious and unconscious male bias in thought and action is frequently buttressed
by economic and social structures which make such practices seem rational, even to
those who are disadvantaged by them. Deprived groups may be habituated to
inequality, may be unaware of possibilities for social change and may be willing to
accept the legitimacy of the established order. A problem is the use of “neutral” terms
like farmer or worker. These terms are still often associated with men. The picture of
farmers as men disadvantages women farmers and hinders attempts to improve
agricultural productivity. When there is an implicit assumption that farmers are men, it
is not surprising if new agricultural technology and inputs flow mainly to men.
Governments still fail to collect comprehensive, reliable and unbiased statistics on
the contribution women make to agricultural production. When supposed gender
neutrality masks male bias, this serves to obscure the distribution of costs and
benefits of development processes between men and women. It also serves to
obscure the barriers that gender asymmetries constitute to the successful realisation
of many development policy objectives. What is needed is a gender-aware
conceptualisation in the first place. Otherwise, male bias will remain even though
women are present.
The underlying supports of male bias
Underlying individual and collective acts are structural factors that circumscribe and
shape these acts. Overcoming male bias is not simply a matter of persuasion,
argument and changes in viewpoint in everyday attitudes, in theoretical reasoning
and in the policy process. It also requires changes in the deep structures of
economic and social life, and collective action not simply individual action.
Testing male bias
…refers to different cases…
The conceptual framework underpinning structural adjustment programs in effect
relies on the availability of unlimited supplies of female labour. But male bias
prevents this being immediately apparent to the designers of such programs.
Women’s labour cannot stretch to cover all the deficiencies left by reduced public
expenditure and cannot absorb all the shocks of adjustment. Overcoming male bias
in SAP requires a gender-aware reconceptualization of economic processes. But it
also requires the redirection of resources.