Women in Development vs. Gender and Development Essay

In the article “Women’s Human Rights and Gender Equality’’ i read about how Women’s rights are the fundamental human rights that were enshrined by the United Nations for every human being on the planet nearly 70 years ago. These rights include to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination; to be educated ; to vote and to earn a fair and equal wage. A famous saying goes “Women’s rights are human rights” meaning, women all around the world are entitled to all of these rights, but yet there are women and girls who are still denied these rights, often simply because of their gender. Winning these rights for women isn’t all, it’s also about changing how countries and communities works and their perspectives on gender equality. Global Fund for Women exists to support the tireless and courageous efforts of women’s groups who work every day to win rights for women and girls. These groups are working to ensure women can own property, vote, run for office, get paid fair wages, and live free from violence – including domestic violence, sexual assault. The Global Fund for Women also stand for other rights that are vital for women’s equality. They stand for a woman’s right to decide if and when she has children, and to have high-quality health

1. Why did Cato object to repealing the Oppian law? What was the basis of his objections?

Although the issue of women’s rights has attracted international recognition and support, women still face many inequalities and barriers. Gender-based violence and economic discrimination are problems in many parts of the world.

However, the contributions of women to the economy have gone unrecognized and unvalued. Also, there is unequal opportunities between men and women in the workforce, which means that women do not receive an opportunity at demonstrating their ability to lift themselves from poverty and similar issues, and their options to improve their lives are limited or nonexistent. However, I feel that what men do not realize when oppressing women is that women make up half of the world's population. This ultimately means that women also make up half the workforce. A nation that limits women and discriminates against them cannot reach it's full potential or productiveness. On the other hand, if a country's government, businesses, and overall, the communities invest in women, developing countries are less likely to be striken by poverty. Women are educated to wisely manage the money that they earn, which results in less poverty because they will know how to save and spend her money properly. To add on, economic empowered women raise healthier and better educated children, which results in children that will continue to manage money wisely, with their mother's guidance, and ultimately this would lead to a decrease in poverty. Economic empowerment means not only reducing

In the post classical period, different societies viewed the women in different ways, therefore they were all treated differently. Due to all the passages being around the world, it shows how differently and similar these societies treated women. All have a different opinion on women’s role and position within their society. Some views were negative while others are positive and think both sex’s are both equal. In document 1, Islam: The Koran, it talks about how women are made from men.

the defination of ‘feminism of poverty’ refers to situations of increasing poverty for women and the fact that more women are living in poverty than men, basically poor people are disportionately women (Townson, 2000).

Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.

In many regions of Africa it is still common to practice female genital mutilation and other forms of violence against women in patriarchal societies and through the IAW many women and girls have been saved from such mutilation. Other programs include the provision of contraceptives for women, in particular those in poorer undeveloped nations. Pre and post natal care as well as other programs which foster the development and growth of women in leadership roles and avenues for women to create and develop businesses. These programs and campaigns have fostered the growth of so many women whether tangibly through their successes or intangibly through their improved self confidence and belief to know they can do better and should expect better despite their past. It has empowered women to overcome boundaries decades ago were impenetrable. As with any other process of change, they too have encountered challenges. Some of these are the same obstacles they try to overcome; gender biases and discrimination. Others include effecting a change in the mindset of individuals and in gaining support for their cause in male dominated countries and cultures where it is the status quo for women to 'know their place' and stay at home and 'raise' the kids. They also face economic and political challenges from governments and corporations who still believe the best senior executives should be males as opposed to promotions based on

Women and poverty is one of the critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action. Unfortunately there is over 1 billion of who are women that are living in poverty. Most of the women who are living in poverty and in very poor condition are from developing countries, but we also have this problem here in the United States. Poverty has been a factor of little to no education, single mother raising their families, little resources, and pay gap. In the article of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the strategic objectives is, to analyze from a gender perspective, policies and programmers including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems,

Poverty can be defined as a condition that people suffer from due to lack of economic resources. For being such a prosperous country, the United States possesses a persistent problem. The problem is the poverty rate in America and how it has become a force that continuously grows. One fact that American citizens are not aware of or do not wish to implement in their minds is that nearly 50 million people in the United States live in poverty. Amongst the 50 million people in the United States that live below the poverty line, over 5 million more were women than man. This phenomenon as to in which women experience poverty at far higher rates than men is described as feminization of poverty, a term coined by Diana Pearce in 1978 (3: Thibos).

The term “feminization of poverty” was first created in 1978 in an article that analyzed the economic statuses of women. “In 1976, nearly two out of three of poor persons over 16 years of age were women” (Pearce; 1976). The feminization of poverty describes a phenomenon in which women represent a disproportionate percentage of the United States poor. This trend is not only a result of lack of income, but also a lack of opportunities due to gender biases and fixed gender roles in some societies (DeNavas-Walt; 2012). Gender biases often deprive women of opportunities to independently pursue education or careers and are often linked to the expectation that women are responsible for childbearing and caring for them as well. To better

In a statistic released by the United Nations, it was discovered that, “while forming more than one-half of the world’s population, women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, own one-tenth of the world’s wealth and one-hundredth of the world’s land, and form two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people … Over three-fourths of starving people are women with their dependent children” (Johnson, p. 26). While this statistic may be shocking, it is part of a battle that women have been fighting for centuries. Women have consistently been the target of sexism. But what, exactly, is sexism? Margaret Farley posits sexism “is ‘belief that persons are superior or inferior to one another on the basis of their sex. It includes, however, attitudes, value systems, and social patterns which express or support this belief’” (Johnson, p. 23). How can women fight back against a concept such as this that has been deeply engrained within society? Many suggest fighting for equal rights in specific aspects of one’s life (such as equal pay), but these actions are worthless if the system itself cannot be made equal. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of sexism, the entire social system that allows for the devaluation of another being based on

In many developing countries globalization has brought masses of wealth to the elite at the expense of the poor. Consequently, many women of the poorer classes leave their homeland in search of opportunities for employment. These women are disproportionately affected by

This article addresses four main points. First, at the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the significance of women’s contribution was emphasized by the World Bank. However, according to the authors, the perception of women as goods was strengthened by the World Bank because of its emphasis on economic outcomes and its consequent failure to pay attention to the meaning of women’s empowerment and gender equality. Second, the World Bank, UN agencies and other institutions were observed to value only young women and girls, thus completely ignoring men’s role . Third, despite the existence of programs encouraging women empowerment such as microfinance and conditional cash transfers, women are forced to work for their livelihood coupled with the burden of housework. The authors also cast doubt on the notion that investing in young women and girls leads to the promotion of women’s empowerment and gender equality, or actually improves the economy as they are often unconsciously regarded as cheaper labor . Therefore, they underscored that while smart economics might

Baserup (1970) suggested that women needed to reduce the work loads they had so that they take part in education, projects which will also extend their power in the economy. In addition, Baserup pointed out that women have to receive credit facilities for greater economic projects. For example, Baserup echoed the mechanization of “female farming’ in African women farmers and revolutionarize traditional forms of agriculture for productive efficiency extracted from Schech and Haggis (2000). Rogers (1980) also suggested for a complete overhand of male attitudes against women. Rogers explicitly challenged this in her survey of the FAO institutional arrangement. She concluded that no women were found in field officers in technical division. Rogers (1980) therefore, concluded that women were not only excluded from planning and decision making but were being ignored and overlooked. Furthermore, households were assumed to be male headed which also generalized women as housewives (Rogers 1980:66 in Schech and Haggis, 2000). This shows that women’s work was regarded as non- work due to male bias. However, the WID approach agitated for equity, empowerment, efficiency and equal participation of women in existing structures.