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This article provides information about the impact of stereotyped role in women’s development:
Women though often perceived as dependents or as homemakers, are engaged in three basic responsibilities have been referred to in developmental literature as their triple role. Firstly, women are engaged in reproductive work that involves both children bearing and rearing. Secondly, most low income households in the developing world have their women engaged in what is called productive work, or work that earns wages.
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In rural areas this could be agricultural work in urban areas women work in large numbers in the informal sector, in and around their homes. Thirdly, as part of their reproductive responsibilities women also take up community managing work that facilitates collective consumption needs of the neighbourhood or the community.
Despite these three roles women’s work is generally made invisible for either their work is regarded as a natural extension of their biological role of giving birth to children or nurturing them or their work is considered secondary. Men in contrast are largely seen as productive workers even when they may be unemployed or earning erratically.
As far as reproductive role is concerned men do not have a clearly defined reproductive role in most societies and when involved in the community, men do not largely engage in consumption related voluntary work, rather they take up the community leadership roles that get them either some payment or social prestige.
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Feminists have identified this gender based division of labour as both the reason and expression of women’s subordination. They have contested the dualistic division of work as productive and reproductive, which essentially implies that the productive elements of reproductive work are completely erased. It has been pointed out that women’s reproductive work both “produces” labour force and maintains it, thereby making for the fundamental productive activity that is essential for all subsequent productive enterprises.
Capitalistic development is itself held responsible for this historical and artificial division between men and women’s roles that later got enforced by ideology. Several feminists have traced this “domestication of women” to the industrial revolution which created the modern cash economy that cut women off from their traditional subsistence activities and resulted in women’s loss of autonomy as farmers, crafts workers or traders.
The housewife role that came onto women as their primary responsibility however is neither valued nor paid and the use value of reproductive work is not given the recognition it deserves. Even as far as the realm of productive work goes, the ideology of housewifisation masks asymmetry in men and women’s work and their exchange value.
Not only do women get work at the lower end of the economy which are low skilled and low paid and not wanted by men, they are also vulnerable to exploitation and harassment and an overload of labour due to their multiple roles. Yet the unpaid work of women at homes and in the community and their low paid work in what is recognised as the productive sphere have not created major conflicts in the rank and file of women because they themselves accept and conform to the gender ascribed roles and find little choice.
Strategic gender needs are the needs women identify because of their subordinate position to men in their society. Strategic gender needs vary according to particular contexts. They relate to gender divisions of labour, power and control and may include such issues as legal rights, domestic violence, equal wages and women’s control over their bodies. Meeting strategic gender needs helps women to achieve greater equality.
It also changes existing roles and therefore challenges women’s subordinate position…. Practical gender needs are the needs women identify in their socially accepted roles in society. Practical gender needs do not challenge the gender divisions of labour or women’s subordinate position in society, although rising out of them.
Practical gender needs are a response to immediate perceived necessity, identified within a specific context. They are practical in nature and often are concerned with inadequacies in living conditions such as water provision, health care, and employment.
It is evident that addressing strategic gender needs makes for a transformation in social relations such that women come to enjoy greater equality and power and that such a transformation is dependent on a consciousness of a different order and a commitment to struggle against the prevalent order. Practical gender needs, since they are addressed to make for better adaptation to women’s concrete conditions in the domestic arena or in income generating activities or even in community based resources, do not result in such transformation though they generally provide relief to women in their gendered roles and responsibilities.
The greater majority of developmental interventions, aim at attending to women’s practical gender needs and do not contribute directly to challenging either the sexual division of labour, or social political and economic organisation of society that subordinates women. However, it would not be right to term strategic needs based development interventions to be feminist and the interventions directed at improving women’s access to their practical needs as “less” feminist, for the two are linked and in effect often inseparable.