Engendering Development? Women in Development (WID) in International Development Regimes

Abstract

Demonstrates that, as it has been implemented by international development agencies, the women in development (WID) regime, with its origins in modernist colonial discourses & discourses of the market, disempowers Third World women. Drawing on relevant literature, colonial discourses are described as privileging the economy, culture, society, & politics of European peoples & homogenizing & essentializing Third World peoples, particularly women. Moreover, the discourses of the market are taken to stress individualism & voluntary choice in a manner that disempowers Third World nations in the international political economy. It is shown that these discourses have been at the root of the WID regime as it has been implemented by the World Bank. The Third World women's, or empowerment, perspective is advocated as an alternative basis for development, because it is rooted in the concrete experiences of women & grassroots strategies of organization that do not essentialize or disempower the people it is trying to assist. D. M. Smith