W. Graeme Donovan, WMST 245: Mid-Term Exam Study Guide Page 1
West Virginia University
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Women’s Studies Center
WMST 245: WOMEN IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
MID-TERM EXAM STUDY GUIDE
1. GENDER EQUALITY & WHY IT MATTERS
1. What is gender? Gender is a social category. It is established by social means. It is not a
biological category, although biology is usually the starting point. It happens as our parents (or
other people of authority) give us positive feedback for appropriate behavior, negative feedback
for inappropriate behavior. It happens when we are little children, and we see how our parents
behave, and copy them. It happens as our parents teach us knowledge, skills, social
expectations, and give us instruction and punishment. It happens as our parents ask us to do
different chores and jobs as we are growing up – and allocate those chores and jobs differently
to boys and girls. And it also happens as parents give attention, food, health care, and
education, differently to boys and girls. It is reinforced by society.
2. Almost everywhere, girls come through this socialization process with markedly different
roles from boys, and a markedly different set of resources (almost always lesser) with which to
lead productive lives. The differences between girls and boys get bigger as they get older. And
we’re not talking just about monetary resources – we’re talking about girls coming out into the
world with lower education, poorer nutrition and health, lower status, lower self-esteem, and
less experience in making decisions.
3. There are five areas in which we want to see equality for girls and women:
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Equality under the law
Equality of access to human capital
Equality of access to productive resources and services
Equality of opportunity
Equality of voice
4. Gender equality matters for two reasons:
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It matters for all the individual women involved. We want women and men to have
equal opportunities to lead fulfilling and productive lives.
It matters for our economies and societies, and for economic development. If women
and men are not equal, we’re losing out on economic growth and development that we
could otherwise have, for the whole of society, and especially for children.
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5. Development is about achieving freedom from poverty, deprivation, hunger, ill health,
discrimination, tyranny, powerlessness, ignorance, and other things people fear. The most
important job of international development is forging tools to understand poverty and
eradicate it.
6. To get rid of poverty, we must focus on rural areas because that’s where most of the world’s
poor live. Almost half of the world’s total labor force works on farms. In rich industrial
nations like the U.S.A., this proportion is as low as 2 percent, but in poor countries like Ethiopia
it may be as high as 80 percent. The average for the whole world is just below 50 percent.
2. “GENDERCIDE” & VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
7. Throughout the world, when they are born, females generally can expect to live longer than
males unless there are social factors discriminating against them. Males are more physically
fragile than females, and at every stage of life, they die in greater numbers. More males are
conceived than females, but more males die before birth, when the ratio of males to females
averages about 1.05 to 1. The biological advantage of females continues throughout life. That
includes the childbearing years, when women are subjected to enormous stresses on their
bodies as they go through pregnancy, childbirth, and child nurturing. Even during those times
of stress, males die at higher rates than do females, in the absence of discrimination.
8. Although women’s life expectancies at birth are higher than men’s in all regions, they remain
very low in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Discrimination against girls and women is one
of the reasons for this.
9. When we examine the populations and sex ratios country by country, we soon realize that
there are fewer women in the world than there should be. Some writers have talked about
“missing women.” This refers to differences between regions in sex ratios that can’t be
explained by the biological differences between males and females. Drèze and Sen estimated
that there were at least 105 million women “missing” from the world. They thought the main
reason was sex discrimination in food and health care, along with other deprivations based
on gender.
10.There is another reason for missing females. That is sex discrimination before birth. This is
especially marked in China and India. It arises from a prejudice against female children,
combined with the availability (since the 1980s) of the technology for ultrasound scanning to
determine the sex of a child in utero, followed by selective abortion. When carried out over a
period of years, the population gets biased towards males, and experts expect this to lead to
social problems in the longer run.
11. In class we looked at many of these relationships as they are reflected in population
pyramids for India, Malawi, the USA, Sweden, China, Qatar, Eritrea, and the World. A
population pyramid shows age groups on the vertical axis (usually in five-year intervals), and
on the horizontal axis numbers of males and numbers of females in the population. Here is an
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example for India in 2005 (for other examples see the class webpage at Section 1, under the link
labeled “Population Ratios.”)
Population Pyramid for India - 2005
12. For a country experiencing rapid population growth, the population pyramid has a wide
base and a narrow top and looks like a triangle. For a country experiencing slow population
growth, the population pyramid looks more like a square, broad all the way up, with
insignificant narrowing at the top. We also discussed how world population in the past century
grew at an accelerating rate for most of the century, then began to slow late in the century and is
projected to keep slowing, following the classical “sigmoid curve” of population growth (see
diagram below). Population will continue to increase through at least the next fifty years, but
may eventually stabilize and level off. Food supply followed the same sigmoid curve.
“Sigmoid curve” of population growth and food supply – total population/total food on the vertical axis; time on
the horizontal axis.
13. In addition to discrimination before birth and during their lives, tragically, there is a high
incidence of other violence against women during their lives. This includes slavery, sex
trafficking, sexual violence, and physical domestic abuse and violence. In addition to the direct
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negative impacts on girls and women, for all children exposed to domestic violence, there are
long-term effects on their lives – they are 2-3 times more likely to suffer from cancer, a stroke, or
cardiovascular problems, and five to ten times more likely to use alcohol or illegal drugs than
those who were not exposed to domestic violence as kids. Furthermore, boys who witness
domestic violence against their mothers or sisters are more likely to themselves perpetrate
violence against females when they reach adulthood.
3. WOMEN’S ACCESS TO RESOURCES – EDUCATION & HEALTH
14. Throughout the last century, one of the biggest deprivations for women, one of the biggest
things holding them back, was their access to education, compared with men. You wouldn’t
see this as strongly today in many developing countries, as you would’ve seen it not many
years ago. They’ve caught up a lot in the past 2-3 decades.
15. In 1960, in low-income countries, excluding China and India, 50 percent of males and 24
percent of females were enrolled in primary school. The adult literacy rate was 23 percent.
In 2004, the lowest achieving countries were almost all in Sub-Saharan Africa – in that region as
a whole 70 percent of males and 65 percent of females were enrolled in primary school. In 2009,
the adult literacy rate was 61 percent. Obviously there has been tremendous progress in:
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Increasing the overall enrollment rate
Increasing the female enrollment rate much faster than the overall average
16. Education is one of the most important Millennium Development Goals. It’s also one of
the most ambitious – by 2015, the goal is: ensure every child is getting an elementary school
education – all boys, and all girls. The latest figures we have are for 2009. They show that for
the world as a whole, we’ve made enormous progress – the ratio of girls to boys’ enrollments in
primary and secondary school had risen to 96 percent. It was only 50 percent in 1960.
17. But we must be careful not to be too optimistic because of this figure that is an average for
the whole world. For the low-income countries the ratio of girls to boys’ enrollments is closer to
90 percent. And only two thirds (65 percent) of children finish primary school. In some of the
poorest countries, like Afghanistan and Somalia, the ratio of girls to boys’ enrollments is closer
to 50 percent, and only one third of children complete primary school.
18. We also need to keep in mind other important factors in education for girls:
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The quality of education in the low income countries is low - children in low-income
countries learn a lot less than in high-income countries. Some reasons are absentee teachers,
poor teaching facilities, and lack of resources.
Some of the main things that keep girls out of school are distance to school (population
density) (Pakistan & Afghanistan), safety concerns, linguistic differences, hunger and
malnutrition, seasonal work, poverty (Burkina Faso), violence (Jamaica), high costs of
schooling (Turkey). Barriers to female education arise in households, markets, and
institutions.
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Education differences between males and females contribute substantially to productivity
gaps and wage gaps between men and women, because there is a direct relationship
between education and earnings.
Education helps women do better for themselves in other areas of their lives – for example,
educated women get more prenatal care, have fewer children, and have lower smoking
rates. Lower maternal mortality rates increase returns to investments in female education.
Education helps women do better for their children - educated mothers reduce infant
mortality, get higher birth weights, and more of their children are vaccinated. The children
of educated women study more and have higher test scores.
There is still “stream divergence” in secondary and tertiary education – women tend to
study different subjects than men – to overcome this needs many barriers to be lifted
simultaneously in households, market, and institutions, and complex policies to achieve
this. (See table 3.1, p. 115, WDR). Male dominated subjects are: agriculture, engineering,
manufacturing, construction, science, and services. Female dominated subjects are:
education, health & welfare, arts and humanities. Subjects with more or less equal
representation are: social sciences, business, and law.
19. In 1992, a study by Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe showed that families in the U.S.A.
spent more than $13,000 per child that year on feeding, housing, clothing, childcare, education
and health of their children. In more than 50 low-income countries taken together, we estimate
that less than $400 per child is spent per year on similar categories for children in those
countries. Clearly poverty itself is the main reason for deprivation in education in the lowincome countries.
20. “Over the past forty years life expectancy has improved more than during the entire
previous span of human history.” [For developing countries from 40 in 1950 to 63 in 1990, to 66
in 1999]. “In 1950 twenty-eight of every 100 children died before their fifth birthday; by 1990
the number had fallen to ten.” [It’s one in the higher income countries!!] We’ve eliminated
smallpox (which killed 5 million a year in the 1950s), and are well on our way to eliminating
polio. We have fewer unhealthy workers and sick or absent school children, as a result of:
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Increased incomes
Improved education
Increased public health services
Technological progress (especially in medicines and vaccines)
21. But there are tremendous remaining problems:
 Child mortality rates are seventeen time as high in low income developing countries as
in higher income [under five mortality rate in 2009 119 per 1,000 in low income
countries, 7 in high income countries]
 Maternal mortality rates are almost forty times as high in low income developing
countries as in higher income countries [maternal mortality ratio in 2008 per 100,000 live
births: 590 in low income countries, 15 in high income countries]
 Global burden of disease five times as high in Sub-Saharan Africa as in high-income
countries (as measured by DALYs – Disability Adjusted Life Years).
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There are serious new health challenges – AIDS, malaria, tobacco related heart disease &
cancer, changing health problems of aging populations.
22. With equal care, women die at lower rates than men at every age. But in the low-income
countries, because women have lower access to health care than men, women are at a
significant health disadvantage – the gap between women and men is much lower in lowincome countries than in high-income countries. As a result there are significant excess deaths
for women. Conditions improved for women in much of the world over the past 25 years, but
in Sub-Saharan Africa, the situation worsened for women, in almost every country, and
especially in the countries with the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS.
23. As conditions improve for children, the focus on female mortality is shifting from childhood
to adulthood, and from South Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa. Excess deaths for women aged 15-49
years are driven by two main things – maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), "A maternal death is defined as the death of a woman
while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and
site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its
management but not from accidental or incidental causes."
24. Major causes of maternal mortality are: severe bleeding/hemorrhage (25%), infections
(13%), unsafe abortions (13%), eclampsia (12%), obstructed labor (8%), other direct causes (8%),
and indirect causes (20%). Indirect causes such as malaria, anemia, HIV/AIDS and
cardiovascular disease, complicate pregnancy or are aggravated by it. Maternal mortality rates
range from an average of 15 per 100,000 live births in high-income countries to an average of
650 per 100,000 live births in Sub-Saharan Africa, and reach over 1,400 in the worst countries.
Because women have many more pregnancies in the low-income countries, their lifetime risks
of maternal mortality are around 1 in 21 (in some countries as high as 1 in 16), compared with 1
in 6,400 in high-income countries. These problems can be fixed by women getting attention
from medical personnel throughout pregnancy, and especially during the birth process.
25. HIV/AIDS has increasingly become a women’s problem, especially for monogamous
women in Sub-Saharan Africa. They are emerging as the biggest single group of AIDS cases,
and as well they will have to care for all the others with AIDS. The transmission of HIV from
mother to child has also markedly increased. Women are at a special disadvantage in
protecting themselves against HIV because of power relations within sexual unions. Measures
to try to prevent infection in the first place, and massive increases in the expensive drugs to
treat the disease are the two main ways countries are fighting the epidemic.
4. WOMEN’S ACCESS TO RESOURCES – PROPERTY, TECHNOLOGY, FINANCE, INFRASTRUCTURE,
AND TIME
26. When we look at the economic statistics of any country, we don’t see as many women as
there should be in the official labor force. The work of most women does not show up in the
gross national income of a country. It isn’t officially valued. It is work they are doing in family
homes – caring for children, preparing food and cooking meals, cleaning the house, washing
clothes. This happens in both high-income and low-income countries. In high-income
countries, women make up the majority of the volunteers who work in charitable organizations.
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That, too, is unpaid, and unvalued. In the lower-income countries, women are walking
endlessly, carrying enormous loads of water and fuel-wood on their shoulders. None of this
backbreaking work is counted in the national income of their countries. The only work that is
officially counted is work that is paid for, the wages that are earned in jobs that are in the
market.
27. Even where women participate in the market economy in greater numbers, there are big
differences in what men and women earn from their work. We need to explain where these
differences come from. There isn’t a single, simple explanation. It’s a complicated picture. If we
look just at participation, women have made progress over the past 25 years. But in the market
labor force, women produce less than men, and their earnings are way less than earnings of
men. Why is that? It’s certainly not the case that women are worse farmers than men, worse
business-persons, worse entrepreneurs, worse workers. In a nutshell:
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Women have tighter time constraints than men.
Women receive less education and poorer health care than men – women’s human
capital is lower than men’s.
Women have lower access than men to productive resources – land, tools, production
inputs, capital.
Women have lower access than men to finance.
Women have lower access than men to technical knowledge.
Women work longer hours than men in total, but in the market economy have to take
more part time jobs because of their time constraints from domestic work.
Women and men work in different kinds of jobs.
28. The gender gap in access to productive resources shows up especially strongly in farming.
Studies in six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa show that female farmers, on average, have lower
productivity than male farmers. But the studies also show clearly the reason for these gaps. It’s
simply because women are denied access to the productive resources – the farm inputs - that
men have that make their farming more productive.
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Women lack access to land.
Women lack access to high quality seeds.
Women lack access to fertilizer.
Women lack access to agricultural chemicals – pesticides and herbicides.
Women lack access to credit, with which to buy agricultural inputs.
Women lack access to extension advice about how to use new technologies.
When women have the right inputs, they produce equally with men, or sometimes even better.
29. One of the ways farmers get technical knowledge to improve their farming is through
agricultural extension services. Women farmers very often don’t have ready access to such
services because:
 Most agricultural extension agents are males – they talk mainly to male farmers;
 Where female extension agents exist they may not be as mobile as male agents and may
not have access to vehicles, motorcycles, etc.;
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Female extension agents are often appointed only to teach “home economics” rather
than mainstream farming operations;
Women farmers may not be literate, and may lack access to media;
Women farmers need technologies for food cropping rather than cash crops;
Extension agents may not be aware of the very tight time constraints of women;
Extension agents may not work enough with groups of farmers, when farming groups
would suit women better;
Women farmers are often completely overlooked by agricultural extensions services;
special efforts are needed in extension management to ensure this doesn’t happen, and
to send women farmer’s needs up the line to agricultural research that is designing new
and better technologies.
30. Sometimes governments pass legislation that is not gender-neutral, which restricts women.
Examples are:
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Women not able to work outside the home, or operate a bank account without
permission of their fathers or husbands;
Laws restricting the hours that women may work or the industries they may work in;
Different regulations on parental leave and retirement for men and women that
employers see as raising the costs of hiring women to the point where there are fewer
employment opportunities.
31. Sometimes governments pass legislation to protect workers that ends up discriminating
against women, even though it is meant to be gender-neutral. Examples are:
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Lack of access to employment insurance, retirement and health benefits, and other types
of worker compensation by domestic workers, most of whom are women;
Even though legislation may forbid discrimination, many jobs are perceived as
“women’s jobs” or “men’s jobs.”
Stereotypes leading to appointment of male managers and supervisors, who then recruit
and mentor mainly males as their workers.
32. Investments in infrastructure can help women a lot:
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Roads give greater mobility, cut travel time, decrease transport costs, make new
perishable products possible, increase flows of ideas and new techniques, help social
networking, add to commerce, help with access to education and health services.
Clean water supply nearer to home reduces women’s time in fetching water, and
improves health and nutrition by being free from diseases, and by cutting down the
amount of heavy lifting and carrying by girls and women.
Electricity helps with water pumping, refrigeration, mills, schools (audio-visuals),
hospitals and clinics (refrigeration, sterilization), small businesses (sewing machines,
lathes and other wood-working tools, metal working, etc. etc.), offices (communications,
computers) cooking and lights.
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Communications infrastructure (especially cell ‘phones) saves women travel time,
allows them to create new enterprises, and provides them with income earning
opportunities.
5. WOMEN’S VOICE AND THEIR ENGAGEMENT IN POLITICS
33. It is important for women to be empowered. The World Development Report calls this
“promoting women’s agency.” Agency is the ability to make effective choices. The WDR says,
“Girls and boys, and later women and men, have unequal capacity to exercise agency.”
34. All of the following are expressions of agency, or outcomes of agency:
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Ability to earn and control income;
Ability to move freely;
Ability to decide whom to marry, and when;
Ability to decide how many children to have;
Ability to decide when to leave a marriage;
Freedom from the risk of violence;
Ability to have a voice in society;
Ability to take part in collective action and associations;
Ability to influence policy.
35. Women’s agency matters both for them and their children:
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The simple decision to marry later is associated with greater education, greater earnings,
and choices that lead to better health or nutrition.
It really matters for children who have control of spending of income – their mother or
their father. So the welfare of children hangs in the balance of whether women get to
exercise that kind of agency, or not. When women control income, they tend to spend it
on improving their children’s education, health and nutrition. We see evidence of this
from many different countries.
It also really matters for children to grow up without domestic violence. It matters that
women stand up for themselves in cases of domestic violence – both for themselves and
for their children. Studies show men who witnessed domestic violence in childhood
were two to three times more likely than other men to perpetrate violence themselves.
When women gain collective agency, they can transform society. Everywhere women
have exercised collective agency, the things that matter to women get changed – child
mortality, maternity leave, child care, violence against women, more equal family laws,
more services for women and children.
36. Sometimes actions at the United Nations can be helpful in prodding countries to do better in
protecting women’s rights. One example is the UN Convention to Eliminate All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). It was passed by the General Assembly in 1979. So
far, 187 countries have ratified it, meaning that their legislatures have agreed to implement the
Convention in their countries. But countries often make written reservations when they sign on
to a Convention like this. And in the case of CEDAW, 29 of the ratifying countries have not
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fully endorsed Article 16, which eliminates discrimination in marriage and family relations, and
promotes equal rights in ownership, management, and disposition of property.
37. Formal laws protecting women’s rights are extremely important, and can have a chain of
benefits. Especially important are laws relating to the family – to inheritance, marriage,
divorce, reproductive rights, child custody, and use and disposition of property. Sometimes
these laws have their effect by making females more valuable. This increases their bargaining
power. When it comes to violence against women, laws are particularly deficient. Only half of
countries have legislation against sexual harassment. And laws are extremely weak covering
violence inside families. Family laws are the hardest and slowest to get in place.
38. Once the laws are in place, they have to be enforced to be effective. There are great
problems in this area:
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Women may not be aware of their rights or not able to afford to seek redress.
A functioning court system may be far away and out of reach.
The legal institutions may be weak and lacking in capacity.
Police forces and legal institutions may have the same prejudices as general society.
Men dominate the police forces and legal institutions, and women are extremely underrepresented.
There may be strong social stigmas against bringing claims.
Women may need male permission to bring a grievance (e.g. the Democratic Republic of
Congo)
As a result, many women do not make claims, especially in cases of domestic violence.
39. Social norms are extraordinarily strong and hard to change. They often prevent gains in
women’s agency. Both women and men buy into social norms. It’s astonishing how many
women in how many countries agree that it is acceptable for men to beat women for certain
actions, such as arguing with their husbands, even burning meals! Few women seek help from
available services in cases of domestic violence. They feel shame or guilt, they feel violence is
normal or justified, they fear the consequences of reporting it, or they feel a lack of support from
family or friends
40. We need to hear women’s voices where the decisions are being made about societies and
nations – in governments, parliaments, legislatures, legal bodies, professional associations, labor
movements, land boards, zoning and planning committees, village and county and city
councils. The first business is making sure women have the vote. But most countries and most
regions of the world have already achieved that. In most parts of the world, women do vote,
but their participation in formal political institutions is far below that of men in most countries.
41. Progress on participation of women in governments has been very slow, and generally
remains below the level needed for effective voice (about 30 percent and above). Often women
remain in lower ranking positions. They seldom make it into the real decision-making positions
in Cabinets, Central Committees, and Councils of Ministers. When women who do make it to
Ministerial levels they tend to serve in sectors that people often think of as “female” –
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education, health, and social welfare. They don’t so often hold portfolios of transportation,
finance, and economics.
42. We also want to see women’s participation increasing in the judiciary, in trade unions, on
the boards of companies, in universities, and in political parties, and once again, in decisionmaking positions in all of these organizations and institutions. To get the most out of
development, we must have the full participation of all human actors – women hold up half
the sky!
6. HOUSEHOLDS, GENDER, & DEVELOPMENT
43. Researchers have defined a “household” [HH] as “a group of people who live together, pool
their money, and eat at least one meal together each day.” All of the three elements in that
definition can be questioned, especially the assumption of pooling money. In fact, individual
members of a household often keep control of their own separate funds, and make their own
separate decisions, rather than pooling everything and making collective decisions.
44. Households are the basic units of production, reproduction, consumption and
social/ceremonial/political interaction in low-income rural areas. That means production of
farm and non-farm products, production of human capital, reproduction of human beings and
of gender roles. Households are the first place in children’s lives they receive gender
socialization.
45. The main forms of “human capital” that households produce are education, health,
nutrition, and skills. These are embodied in the human being, and are not separable, or saleable
in and of themselves, unlike physical capital such as tools and machines, buildings and
structures. Other parts of human capital are social attributes, beliefs and customs.
46. Households shape gender relations, transmit gender norms and roles to the next generation,
and determine opportunities available to household members based on gender as they impart
to children knowledge, skills, and social expectations; as they instruct them; and as they punish them for
inappropriate behavior. Children pick up these things also by observing and imitating their
parents, and others in the HH. And the process also happens as parents give attention, food,
health care, and education, differently to boys and girls. This sets up the girls and boys differently
to lead lives of differing productivity, and governs their participation in society. What happens
in the household either reinforces what is going on as well in society, or it counteracts the social
forces.
47. Households also have to make a lot of allocation decisions, among them:
Labor, Time, Food, Income, Working Tools, Wealth, Livestock, Health Care, Education. These
allocation decisions are negotiated among household members, but those who negotiate have
competing preferences and unequal bargaining power; this contrasts with the traditional view
by economists and policymakers that households have a unified set of preferences. When
assessing the wellbeing of a household and all its members, it is not just the level of resources
that is important, but also the distribution of resources.
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48. When it comes to sharing and allocating within a household, it really matters who gets the
income and other resources. Studies from 10 countries in six regions (S. Asia, E. Asia, S.
America, N. America, Europe, S. E. and W. Africa) show that when women control resources,
more resources go to family welfare, more is spent on children, and women’s well being and
status in the HH grow stronger. This happens in both the developed and the developing world.
Studies show that:
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Women spend more of the household budget on food
Women spend less of the household budget on alcohol and cigarettes
Women spend more on education, health and nutrition (Thomas 1997)
Women allocate more expenditure towards the next generation
More children survive and they have larger height for weight and height for age if
income increases are in the hands of women
Women’s borrowing has twice as large an impact as male borrowing on per capita HH
expenditure
Women’s borrowing gives HHs greater ability to smooth consumption over time than
men’s borrowing
Women’s borrowing has a large impact on children’s nutritional well-being
Women invest in human capital, men in physical capital
Women’s borrowing increases their control over non-land assets, and gives them a
greater role in HH decision-making
Women’s borrowing increases chances they will be able to sell assets without asking
husband permission.
49. Studies also show that households often discriminate in favor of boys and men. As a result
girls and women end up with lower levels of human capital than boys and men, in every
dimension that can be documented. Among reasons given for this discrimination are
perceptions (they may or may not be accurate perceptions) that:
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Men will earn more income than women, so boys should be better fed and educated
Men’s work needs more energy, so they should get more food
Male bodies are bigger and need more food
Sons are more likely to join the extended family in which they grow up, while daughters
will marry into some other extended family, so not so much should be invested in them.
50. The power of various members of the family is very important in shaping the arguments,
negotiations, decisions and outcomes in families. In these negotiations, knowledge is power,
earnings are power, assets are power, and social connections are power. In most of these areas,
because of discrimination, men have more assets and more power than women.
51. One of the reasons why parents have many children in the low-income countries is that
children are a form of social security there. Children provide support for their parents when
they get old, while in the richer countries this support comes from personal money savings,
pensions or government social security payments.
7. WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AND HOW DO WOMEN CONTRIBUTE?
W. Graeme Donovan, WMST 245: Mid-Term Exam Study Guide Page 13
52. For most people, development means becoming better off. But there are many ways to be
“better off.” We already mentioned improvements in health, more education, increases in
income, and above all achieving freedoms – from fear, hunger, deprivation, discrimination,
tyranny, powerlessness, loneliness, ignorance, pain, suffering, and ill-health.
53. We need to ask ourselves some questions about these matters:



Is it possible for an individual person to move from material poverty to wealth without
becoming free? YES
Is it possible for a society to be opulently wealthy, and for individuals within it still to be
hungry, deprived, ignorant, powerless, discriminated against? YES
Is it possible for people to be deprived of basic rights, freedoms, and access to
opportunities on the basis of their gender? YES
54. Sometimes we measure a country’s progress by the level of its income per capita. With more
income, we can buy more material goods, more of the means of survival, pleasure and
enjoyment. When we look at a wide range of countries, we see a wide range of incomes. Some
countries – like Switzerland – have very high incomes: its average was more than $70,000 in
2010. Other countries – like Sierra Leone – have very low incomes: its average was $340 in 2010.
[The USA averaged $47,140 in 2010] And generally speaking, if we compare the rich countries
and the poor countries, we see that the poor countries have much worse health care, nutrition,
and education, as well as fewer roads and bridges, less electricity, poorer sanitation and less
clean water, more farms and fewer factories, lower levels of telecommunications, less advanced
technologies, and sometimes – but not always – shakier governments, more civil strife and
warfare, and fewer human rights and freedoms.
55. One very important difference between poor countries and rich countries is the importance
of agriculture, or farming. In Ethiopia, in East Africa, more than 70 percent of the labor force is
working in agriculture, and it contributes almost half (around 48 percent) of the national
income. In the USA about 2 percent of the labor force is in agriculture, and it contributes only 1
percent of the national income. This is not surprising, really. The single most important
material good for all humans is food. If we don’t get enough to eat, nothing else is very
important. So the number one priority for us is always making sure we get enough food.
56. As we build up investments, and as we get better technologies, we’ll need fewer and fewer
people to produce our food, and therefore to work in agriculture. We can spend more of our
income on other things, and more of our efforts on making other things. Of course, agriculture
doesn’t just produce food – it also gives us fibers for our clothing – wool and cotton, and linen
from flax – and sometimes the raw material for houses – wood, and crop stalks. It also gives us
energy – animals to pull carts and plows, and carry heavy loads – and waste materials to burn
for fuel.
57. Agriculture is extremely important in poor countries. It’s a good place to start with
development. If we can make agriculture more productive, we can start to move people off the
farms into manufacturing and industrial production. We do that by breeding better plants and
animals that produce more, by feeding them better, and by caring for their health in better
W. Graeme Donovan, WMST 245: Mid-Term Exam Study Guide Page 14
ways. We use a lot more water, and fertilizer, and we need to find better ways to attack pests
and diseases. We invent better agricultural tools and technologies. What we’re interested in is
changing the structure of the economy, so that agriculture grows much larger, but becomes a
smaller proportion of the overall economy. When someone is poor they may spend 80 percent
of their income on food. We want to get to a place where our incomes are high enough that if
we spent only 20 percent of it on food, that will be more than enough for us.
58. One of the most important tasks facing any society is eradicating poverty. It’s a much bigger
task when most of a society is poor. The most important job of international development is
forging tools to understand poverty and eradicate it. This job is concentrated in rural areas,
because that’s where three quarters of the world’s poor live.
[About 1.2 billion people - one in six people in the world today - live on an income of less
than $1.25 per day]
59. In those rural areas is where we find most of the people who manage the world’s biological
resources – the soils, grass, trees and shrubs, crops and livestock; and all the weeds, pests and
diseases that accompany them. These people were once hunter-gatherers. Now they’re mostly
farmers. There are also some foresters, fisher-folk, and nomadic pastoralists. The rural
population also includes many people who do jobs in villages and small towns – they run small
stores and repair shops, hairdressing establishments, restaurants, hotels, coffee shops. But
farmers dominate the rural areas, and many of the farmers are women. Farmers are the main
guardians of biodiversity, and the main managers of the world’s environments. Because so
many farmers are women, that means they are important managers of the world’s
environments.
60. If we want to understand poverty and learn how to eradicate it, we must have many
disciplines working together. At a minimum this needs specialists in agricultural and forest
sciences, economics, education and health, engineering, political science, law, sociology and
anthropology, geography and history, and women’s studies. Women’s studies is also a complex
of disciplines (like the study of development itself),
61. Gender issues are much more than just women’s issues. They are development issues
because:


They can have significant effects on the health, productivity and well-being of
succeeding generations; and
A large proportion of the potential talents, skills and energy for development are
hamstrung by gender constraints. “Persistent gender inequalities impose significant
costs on societies – on their ability to grow, to reduce poverty, to govern effectively.”
[King and Mason, p. 33]
8. FOOD & NUTRITION – WOMEN AS FOOD PRODUCERS & GUARDIANS OF FOOD SECURITY &
NUTRITION.
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62. We had fewer than a billion people in the world in 1800, about 1.5 billion as we moved into
the 20th Century, and we came into the 21st with just over 6 billion.1 The driving forces have
been the steady improvements in controlling diseases, and in improving human nutrition.
To improve nutrition, and support a human population that has grown by more than six times
in the past 200 years, we’ve had to achieve huge increases in food production. We had to
provide basic nutrition for more than six times the population, and improve the nutrition of that
population over what it was 200 years ago. So the world achieved at least a six-fold increase in
food availability over the past 200 years, and probably quite a bit more. This very large and
speedy increase in food availability came from very rapid advances in the technologies of food
production.
63. Women play dominant roles in all three pillars of food security – production, economic
access to food, and family nutritional security (which depends on adequate nutritionally
valuable food, knowledge about what constitutes good nutrition, good health, clean water and
sanitation).
64. Women’s roles in the food economy are vital all over the world:




Women provide more than half the labor needed to produce the food eaten in the
developing world
Women provide more than three quarters the labor needed to produce the food eaten in
Sub-Saharan Africa
In Sub-Saharan Africa, women put in 90 percent of the work of providing water and
fuel-wood, 80 percent of the work of food storage and transport, 90 percent of the hoeing
and weeding, and 60 percent of the harvesting and marketing. Women are assigned by
society the role of “gatekeepers” for food security
This assignment of roles causes women to spend more time with children and therefore
to be more aware of their needs – certainly they spend more money on children’s needs
than men do; and women’s incomes may come in small, frequent amounts, making it
easier to spend on household subsistence.
65. During four critical phases of their life cycles, women need to pay close attention to their
own nutritional wellbeing.
Infancy/Childhood: If infant girls are stunted by lack of enough food, this will have severe
effects on work capacity, reproduction risks, difficult deliveries, lower baby birth rates and
weights; it is very important that girls get the full range of available vaccinations; girls face a
heavy burden of childhood work early in their lives, with an increased role in household
management, and physically demanding tasks from a young age.
Adolescence: girls’ growth speeds up earlier than boy’s growth, and then slows before boys’
growth is finished; bones are growing in mass; girls often assume reproductive roles early in
their lives, sometimes before even their own bodies have finished growing.
1
6.795 billion, January 2010, US Census Bureau, International Data Base; probably over 7 billion now.
W. Graeme Donovan, WMST 245: Mid-Term Exam Study Guide Page 16
Reproductive years: women face extremely heavy, diverse labor and demanding roles; they
may skimp on eating because of time constraints; anemia is extremely common (in fact iron
deficiency is the single most common nutritional deficit in the world, affecting almost half the
world’s population); during these years, women are often exhausted from hard work, not
enough to eat, and anemia; it is important for women to protect their nutrition and health,
especially their pre-pregnancy nutritional status, weight gain during pregnancy, and adequate
diet during lactation. All of these are correlated with the likelihood of premature birth, with
birth weight of children, and their nourishment afterwards. And birth weight of children is the
single biggest determinant of neonatal and infant mortality. The micronutrient status of HIV
positive women may determine whether the infant is born HIV infected. Women’s nutritional
status can deteriorate rapidly when there are food shortages, especially if they are engaged in
heavy agricultural labor.
Later years: Marginalization; during the later years, women experience the cumulative effects
of deprivation; they face social marginalization (loneliness, isolation, depression, apathy,
debilitation, poverty); they experience poorer intestinal absorption of some nutrients (men do as
well); they face chronic diseases that have nutritional causes and consequences; one of the
common problems is osteoporosis (following menopause, a dramatic reduction in bone mass);
There are many things we don’t know about nutrition at this stage in women’s lives!
66. For those people (especially children) who do not get enough food, this may have severe
effects on their bodies: their size may be stunted; their strength may be reduced; they may have
sufficient energy only for a little work each day; severe under-nutrition in childhood can reduce
IQ permanently and reduce significantly the ability to learn throughout life; undernourishment
for teenage girls can delay the onset of menstruation [less fat = less estrogen = delayed
menarche]; undernourishment in pregnancy can lead to low birth weight, the most significant
possible strike against a newborn baby; and undernourishment increases maternal and infant
mortality. Besides undernourishment (not enough calories and protein), there are many
micronutrient, mineral and vitamin deficiencies that can cause problems ranging from mild to
extremely severe.
67. The “big three” deficiencies are: Iron (because almost half the world’s population suffers
from it, and it is especially troublesome to women during pregnancy); Iodine (because a serious
shortage for a developing fetus, or for a young child, can cause permanent brain damage, and
lower IQ); and Vitamin A (because it can damage eyesight, and if serious enough cause
blindness).
68. When people are sick their immune system usually kicks in, and to operate the immune
system needs substantial energy; if people take in the same amount of food as usual, they may
suffer from under-nutrition because some of the food energy is going to support the immune
system while it works hard against the invading disease organisms.
69. It is possible to have cycles of under-nutrition that pass through several generations. The
example given in class was taken from Ethiopia, where the various stages of the cycle are:
Stunted infant girls become small children and teenagers, with little or no education; they marry
young, and have their first pregnancy young, with inadequate nutrition during pregnancy
leading to under-weight babies; the young, uneducated mothers do not know enough about
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properly feeding their babies, so the infants are themselves stunted and have a high level of
sickness, continuing the cycle.
70. Over the past few decades, staple food prices in the world have trended downwards under
the influence of improving technology. We looked at a graph that showed this by plotting the
international price of wheat each year for the past 200 years. Food production has grown faster
than population over the past century, because the world has fed the huge increase in
population as well as reducing hunger somewhat. Growth in food production therefore also
can be depicted using a sigmoid curve, just like population growth, following it, but at a higher
level.
71. Improvements in nutrition have played an enormous role in economic development, as
illustrated by our discussion of research work by Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Fogel:
“The average efficiency of the human engine in Britain increased by about 53 percent between
1790 and 1980. The combined effect of the increase in dietary energy available for work, and of
the increased human efficiency in transforming dietary energy into work output, appears to
account for about 50 percent of the British economic growth since 1790.” (p. 388) The main
factors that contributed to this remarkable progress were improved health and nutrition, control
of infectious diseases, better sanitation, pasteurized milk, draining swamps (to get rid of disease
vectors like mosquitoes, and reduce bacterial infection), cleaning up slums etc. Some of this
resulted from huge social investments, especially 1870-1930, with long payoff periods, in
biomedical research, improved water supply, and development of effective quarantine systems.