ABSTRACT
Until the 1970s, development policy, practice and evaluation in Africa had been gender-blind, with women’s roles and contribution to development in particular being invisible (Benería and Sen, 1981). The dominant development paradigm of the time was one of modernisation. Based on Rostow’s model of economic ‘take-off’, it focused on modernising the economy to achieve increases in economic growth, involving a movement from family production to specialised production of goods and services (Rostow, 1960; Boserup, 1990). The assumption was that the benefits of economic growth would trickle down and benefit all citizens (Rathgeber, 1990; Zwart, 1992; Mohindra and Nikiema, 2010). Thus, at best, modernisation would benefit all, and at worst it would be benign. However, in 1970, this myth was exploded by the publication of Boserup’s influential book Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970). This book was the first comprehensive overview of women’s roles in the development process, and in particular investigated how development affected women’s subordinate position in society (Benería and Sen, 1981). Boserup demonstrated that the benefits of modernisation and economic growth in Africa seemed to accrue more to men than women, and that women were often marginalised from or even forbidden access to productive innovations and commercial enterprises (Boserup and Liljencrantz, 1975; Boserup,1989; Moghadam, 1998; Mohindra and Nikiema, 2010). Boserup’s book is acknowledged as the catalyst and foundation for the inclusion of feminist and gender perspectives in development thinking, policy and programming in Africa (Kilby, 2015). This chapter will trace the approaches to gender and development in Africa over the last 50 years, and explores the journey from a women in development (WID) focus in the 1970s through to the current gender justice approach of the Sustainable Development Goals.
