Rhetoric and reality: Where do women in agricultural development projects stand today? Part 2?Women in agricultural development: some project, programme and policy issues
ABSTRACT In Part I, an attempt was made
to show the extent to which what is at present known about women's
rôles in agriculture and related activities has failed to impact on the
World Bank which, in terms of its visibility and spending power, tends
to set the tone for other donors and national governments. It was argued
that most donors and governments have merely added Women in Development
(WiD) projects or WiD components to their ongoing activities, changing
neither the overall approach nor the content of their ‘mainstream’
projects and programmes. Doing otherwise would involve a profound shift
in perspective and transfer of resources. Integration of women to ensure
that they enjoy more of the benefits and suffer less of the pains of
development would mean looking hard at the relations between family
structure and specific economic and institutional arrangements. But,
neither the Bank nor most other development institutions as yet have the
capacity to adapt policy or practice to the heterogeneity of
socio-economic formations, nor the variable place of women within them.
However, while it is certainly too early to develop generalisable
theories of any utility as guidelines for action, careful field research
and evaluation of the ‘lessons of experience’ to date do suggest a
series of improved procedures likely to strengthen the terms on which
women gain access to development opportunities. Part 2 of this paper
looks at a number of these at the project, programme and policy levels
