Implementación y Operación

The third theme which has been used to measure changing gender relations has been household decision-making processes. Initially, it was assumed that this topic was unproblematic, with both orthodox marxist and neo-classical approaches assuming that household dynamics functioned on a equitable basis and that the position of women would improve if they gained access to a waged labour market. Feminist research, however, has illustrated that the ways in which gender relations are constituted and expressed through decision-making are very complex (Young 1992).

Research on household decision-making has focused on several themes. The issues of access raised above (including women’s access to public and private space and access to paid work) have been covered in a variety of locations, together with a focus on decisions about fertility (Maudood Elahi 1993, Safilios-Rothschild 1985, Wong and Levine 1992), sexuality (Barrosoad and Bruschini 1991, Lee 1991) and household budgeting patterns (Oughton 1993). Since the mid 1980s, much of the work on the different realms of decision-making has focused on exploding the myth of the unified household by showing

the hierarchy of power relations that exist within households (Bruce and Dwyer 1988). This hierarchy produces tensions and conflicts that have to be negotiated before decisions are reached. These negotiation processes often involve reconciling contradictory differences within households and sometime within personal conceptualisations of self, which may include working through contradictory conceptualisations of work, motherhood and partnership.

Identity and cultural feminisms

While gender and development analysis has largely been concerned with changing gender relations in the context of development policies, other feminist research has concentrated on the broader aspects of power relations in association with the formation of gender identities. Largely inspired by debates around post modernism and post colonialism, feminist research in the social sciences has recently given much attention to the formation of identity categories. It has focused on the ways in which gender, sexuality and ethnicity interconnect in specific contexts in the lives of individuals and communities and in the formation of cultural identities and nationalisms (Parker and Russo et al 1992; Blunt 1994; Jackson and Penrose 1993). This research has highlighted the mechanisms which work to maintain and contest identities and has analyzed these mechanisms by focusing on the role of the reproduction and subversion of stereotypes in the formation of multiple identities in specific contexts.

In the broad field of feminist research, identity debates have gained momentum from the critiques made by black feminist writings and post colonial research that focus on white privilege in feminist studies (Abel 1993, Caraway 1991, Crosby 1992, Hooks 1991). This research highlights the partial view and bias conceptualisation to which white/western privilege has given rise. In the context of gender and development, this debate has produced a focus on ‘difference’ that has been politicised and used to question the homogenising approach of much research to date (Mosse 1993, Radcliffe 1994).

Authors such as Mohanty, Russo and Torres (1991) have been particularly critical of work on ‘Women in the Third world’ (including that of geographers), which they claim has cast ‘women in the Third World’ as passive victims to whom global and local processes are

seen to happen. In practical terms, in many social science disciplines, this approach has defined development in purely economic terms because it gives so much emphasis to modernisation and the role of global capital in shaping people’s experiences of places. Theoretically, in interdisciplinary feminist studies, it has positioned ‘Third World Women’ as the exotic other, thereby marginalising them from mainstream theoretical debate (Mohanty 1991; Acosta-Belén and Bosse 1993). Radcliffe (1994) argues that for geographers especially, "Third World women have become privileged loci of knowledge, rather than active, experiencing subjects" (Radcliffe 1994 p.26)^.

Methodologically, this debate has provoked an increase in research on ‘representation’ which seeks to include an analysis of a researcher’s positionality taking into account her or his power relationship with the subject. In a world dominated by colonial legacies, Acosta-Belén and Bosse claim that:

the condition of women cannot be separated from the colonial experience since the basic paradigm of power relationships that was established during the era of imperialist expansion between Europe and the New World colonies, and between women and men, has not varied significantly and these relations are still created through contemporary mechanisms (Acosta- Belén and Bosse 1993 p.63).

This approach, together with post modem interests in texts and narratives, has produced new approaches in gender and development studies which seek to place the analysis of gender relations clearly within the context of wider aspects of identity formation. These approaches emphasise the influence that the relationship between colonialism and development paradigms has on the constitution of gendered identities (Stephens 1993).

Despite the current renaissance of a ‘cultural geography’ which has sought to address issues of culture and representation (Duncan and Ley 1993, Anderson and Gale 1992,

^ Lawson and Klak (1993) make a similar point about geography and development studies in general. They suggest that the construction of geography as a discipline has ensured that the flow of ideas is nearly always north - south.

Jackson 1992) Radcliffe (1994 p.25) daims that feminist geographers have not generally taken on board post colonial debate in research on gender and development.

Gendered identities: an agenda

Taking both bodies of research, GAD and cultural identities, and analysing the connections between them produces several, new inter-related approaches to issues traditionally covered by geographical research on development. For the purpose of this thesis these approaches have been identified as new research agendas. The most significant of these approaches is to emphasise strongly that studies of changing gender relations need to be placed in the context of multiple identities and secondly that an emphasis on commonalities and differences between women’s experiences of their identities and oppressions need to compliment comparative studies of mapped gender relations which have typified much geographical work on Gender and Development^. Both of these approaches focus on placing the negotiation of gender relations in the contexts of specific experiences of marginalisation and ‘empowerment’^.

When these two agendas are broken down further, four specific themes for research emerge: