Critically discuss the women in development and development approaches. Which of these approaches are most useful in the SA context.

Women in Development (WID) 

Women in development came into the picture in the early 1970’s after the publication of Ester Boserups women’s role in economic development. Boserups did analyse the changes in traditional agricultural practices as society’s modernised differential impact of those changes on the work done by both men and women. In densely populated regions, where other simple technologies are used, men do more of the agricultural work. The WID perspective was closely linked with the modernisation pattern that dominated mainstream thinking on international development from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. The WID only focuses on how women could better be integrated into ongoing development initiatives, but it also avoided questioning instead of advocacy for extra/more equal participation in education, employment and other spheres of society. The critiques of WID is that they treated women as a homogenous group and they did not question the sources of women oppression.

Women and Development  

The Women and Development approach did emerge in the 1970’s, it draws some of the theoretical base from the dependency theory. The WAD approach had some concerns about explanatory limitation of the modernisation theory. The WAD approach begins from the position that ladies continuously have been portion of development forms which they did not abruptly show up in the early 1970.s as the result of the experiences and intervention strategies of many researchers and organisations staff. This approach focuses on the relationship between women and development processes rather than focusing on the strategies for the integration of women into development. However, with the under-presentation of women especially in political, social and economic structure they are still identified as problems which can be simply solved by carefully intervention strategies, rather than by fundamental shifts in to the social relations of gender.

I think the approach that is most useful in the South African context is the(WID)Women in Development, simply because it is currently focusing on the equality within every sphere of the society especially in the sphere of Education and Employment