Women and Development (WAD)

Marxist historians, beginning with Frederick Engle's (1942), assert that the
Agricultural Revolution, through the establishment of stationary communities for
growing crops and domesticating animals, led to hierarchical structures in
societies presumed to have been previously classless. 

Engels argued that the

institution of private property and consequent exaltation of monogamy

contributed to the decline of women's status Marxist feminists hypothesize that

the desire to retain privately held property within blood-lines (a need that did not

arise in the period of communal ownership) as well as to control children' s labor

made men attempt to control their wives sexuality through monogamous

marriage. This gender hierarchy was intensified with the spread of capitalism.

Production for direct use, which was a hallmark of more communal societies, was

replaced by production for exchange, which was taken over by men and came to

be viewed as a 'public function.

associated with the 'private domain were assigned to women. The

significance of this public-private cleavage is apparent in the importance

by feminists of all persuasions to women's paid employment as a source

and autonomy.

tance attachea

urce Gt status

Jaquette (1982) notes that Marxist and liberal feminists share the

structures of production detern ine women's inferior status; liberal anal

technological change as the causal mechanism, however, without consido

view tha

analysis cite

impact on class differentiation as do Marxists. Jaquette, stresses the impori

ork and

fits hingeon

the recognition within Marxist theory that women's unpaid domestic

reproductive services are critical for capitalist employers, Whose profits hi

paying workers less than the true value of their labour.

Based on her research review, Bandarage (1984) argues that liberal fer

using a WID framework tend to focus' narrowly on sexual inequality and

the structural and socio-economic factors within which gender inequalit:e

embedded. By contrast

feminis

arc

[Marxist feminists'] studies show that the changing roles of WOmen

historical factors: the sexual division of labour in reproduction, local

structure, the articulation of specific regions and sectors of production within

national economies and the international economy. The result is a Orei

economic production are determined by the confluence of a.

diversity and complexity in the integration of women into the.processes n

capitalist development (Bandarage, 1984; 502).

The theoretical steno of the Marxist and the dependency theorists is

exemplified in their focus on the exploitation of women by multinationals. Poor,

young non-white women are sought out for their purported pliancy and are paid

low wages to staff the factory complexes that amass, proits for foreign

companies. As they have multiplied around the world, these export-processing

zones have provided a microcosm of transnational exploitation of women that has

become a laboratory site for innumerable studies by feminists and scholars

representing diverse disciplines and ideologies.(See Part 2, Chapter 12, Part ,

Chapters 17-19; and Part 5, chapter 34.)

the dependency theorists is

Examing structuralıst perspectives on women and development, 

(1994) finds, like earlier critics, that the Marxists have given scant attune

men.

sphere of reproduction and household-level relations between men and women

She notes that their preoccupation with the structures of production for exc wark

has downplayed men's role in the oppression of women. Kabeer reviewo