2005 Handbooks

This unit focuses on the relationship between 'development' and the cultural construction of gender. It examines the (culturally specific) assumptions concerning gender difference and identity that underlie and inform Western understandings and theories of development, as well as the effects that 'development' processes and programs have had on women in the past, and continue to have in the present, in both Western and non-Western societies. There is a particular concern with the ways in which the concept 'Third World Women' has been constructed in the West in the context of colonial and post-colonial domination, and with how this concept is located within discourses of 'development'. Throughout the unit an attempt is made to compare and contrast the positions and analyses of orthodox sociologists of development and development professionals, Western feminists, and Third World women themselves.