Gender and Development
According
to the United Nations Development Programme is denoted by long and healthy
lives, been knowledgeable, having access to resources needed for a decent
standard of living and to participate in the life of the community.
The
food and agricultural organization defines gender as the relations between men
and women both perceptual and material. Gender roles are the social definition
of men and women and vary from one society to another society. Gender is not
determined biologically but rather it’s socially constructed. Social category
of gender has been and continues to be the most fundamental way in which
distinctions are made among the people. Society itself has an objective
existence and it thus strongly influences human behavior.
Gender
and development connotes the improvement in the welfare state and the relations
between men and women. There is no development where one gender and in
particular males are benefiting through exploitation of the other gender. Although
societal roles have historically been divided among the males and the females, but
based on the rules of natural justice; development should focus on the equal
participation of both genders in production resulting in cumulative and
quantitative increase in productivity which is accompanied by fair distribution
of the gains of production among the two genders.
Gender and exploitation – patriarchy
and capitalism
Societies
have historically been organized under specific modes such as feudalism, or
capitalism. Social change occurs because of structural change. Economic
structure itself contains dynamics that push history along. Such changes
justify, legitimize and propagated gender disparity over subsequent years. Gender
is a development issue especially with the advent of the private ownership of
production and the disbandment of the communal lifestyles.
In
hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, there was a sexual division of
labor with rigidly defined sets of responsibilities for women and men. Women in
pre-class societies were able to combine motherhood and productive labor. In fact
there was no strict demarcation between the reproductive and productive
spheres. This was so because women were central to production and there were
predetermined roles for both sexes in these pre-class societies, therefore systematic
inequality between the sexes was non-existent. Furthermore, reproduction and
production were not viewed in the context of labor and its commodification
concept in the subsequent regimes and in particular capitalism.
As
production shifted away from the household, the role of reproduction changed
substantially. The shift toward agricultural production sharply increased the
productivity of labor. This, in turn, increased the demand for labor with
resulting increase in the number of workers and higher surplus. Thus, unlike
hunter-gatherer societies, which sought to limit the number of offspring,
agricultural societies sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential, so that
the family would have more children to help out in the fields. Therefore, at
the same time that men were playing an increasingly exclusive role in
production, women were required to play a much more central role in
reproduction.
The
advent of the private property transformed the relations between men and women
within the household because it radically changed the political and economic
relations in the larger society. According to Engels the new wealth in
domesticated animals meant that there was a surplus of goods available for
exchange between productive units. With time, production by men specifically
for exchange purposes developed, expanded, and came to overshadow the
household’s production for use. As production of exchange eclipsed production
for use, it changed the nature of the household, the significance of women’s
work within it, and consequently women’s position in society.
Patriarchy
and capitalism work together to maintain the oppression of women. Capitalism
requires a group that controls the means of production as well as a group that
is exploited. This basic social relationship is what allows capitalist to
create profit. It is in the best interest of both public and private
institutions to exploit the labor of women as an inexpensive method of
supporting a work force. For the producers, this means higher profits. Patriarchy
on the other hand, consists of both men who control the means of production and
profit; and women who provide cheap and often free labor. Much of what women do
often is done for free for example no wages are paid for the wife’s domestic
labor constituting the unpaid labor force in capitalism. Paying women for
carrying children and domestic work would significantly reduce profit margins
and the capitalist’s ability to accumulate capital. Man’s ability to devote his
time entirely to a job or career is dependent upon the woman’s exploitation.
When women are allowed in the work force, they tend to be kept in menial
positions or given lower wages for the same work as men because of the
importance of women’s cheap and free labor to the capitalist system, elite
formulate and preach a patriarchic ideology that gives a society a basis for believing
in the rightness of women’s primary call to child bearing and domestic labor.
Elite men also use their structural and legislatives power to disadvantage
women’s fair work force participation. The greater the workforce participation
of women particularly in high paying jobs, the less the structure of inequality
is able to be maintained.
Resources
are critical for development and the people controlling the allocation and
utilization of resources control to a bigger extend the output of production. According
to Engels (1884), the shift from feudalism to private ownership of land had
a huge effect on the status of women. In a private ownership system,
individuals who do not own land or other means of production are in a
situation that Engels compares to enslavement - they must work for
the owners of the land in order to be able to live within the system of private
ownership. Much of land as the chief factor of production in Africa is under
the control of men thereby disadvantaging women.
Women's
subordination is not a result of her biological disposition but of social
relations, and man’s efforts to achieve their demands for control of women's
labor and sexual faculties. Women's subordination is a function of class
oppression, maintained because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling
class; it divides men against women, privileges working class men relatively
within the capitalist system in order to secure their support; and legitimates
the capitalist class's refusal to pay for the domestic labor assigned, unpaid,
to women. Every structural system is sustained through legitimization and in the
context of women, oppression has been legitimized though cultural practices and
laws in the modern society and institutionalized in the nuclear family.
Measured
in the dimensions of improving the welfare state of the people through
sustained quantitative growth in the economy, development should result in
better working conditions and fair distribution of the gains of production to
both genders. The concept of gender disparity has found its way into Africa through
the ‘exporting of capitalism’ and leveraging on the existing ‘innocent’ African
socio-cultural customs. According to Engels describe the bourgeois sees in his
wife a mere instrument of production and this is a fairly accurate portrayal of
how capitalism, often through colonialism, has managed to successfully exploit
the female workforce. Through colonialism, capitalism has managed to spread to
indigenous and previously autonomous societies and inflict a capitalist mode of
production upon the men and women living in these regions. Before the arrival
of the colonialists and subsequent arrival of capitalism, women and men often
had set traditional roles to play in society, but the significant economic
change has led in many circumstances to a dramatic shift in gender roles and
relations. While men are often expected to contribute more significantly to the
economy at large, women have been given the responsibility to directly provide
for the family, thereby contributing both financially and domestically. Women in
these societies’ indigenous societies begin to be seen as a source labor for
production. Besides women labor is more appealing to capitalism because; the
labor is cheaper to employ compared to the male counterparts, women have
greater patient when it comes to tedious work, work under poor working
conditions and are less likely to agitate for unionization.
Further
capitalism has innovated ways of increasing accessibility to women labor
through adoption of various measures including; inadequate childcare and
increased cost of living, demanding domestic and financial responsibilities,
dependency on employers and husbands. These factors contribute to the
vulnerability of women putting them in a situation where they must provide labor
to the market. Technology on the other hand has advanced so that the time spent
on household chores, like laundry, has been reduced, fast-food restaurants have
made it possible for women to spend less time cooking, public schooling means
that the time women spend on childrearing is greatly reduced from the days when
they barely left the home
Conclusion
Since
the gains of development are not a preserve of men and the capitalist in the
society, for the realization of equality in the achievement of development
goals; radical restructuring of the current capitalist economy and patriarchal
systems, in which participation of women in production is highly regulated and much
of women's labor is uncompensated must be enforced in the society and
particularly in Africa to liberate women and have them equally contributing to
the development process and fairly sharing in the gains of production in order
to improve their living standards both at the work place and also in the
nuclear family.
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