Concept of Gender

Dr. Vibhuti Patel, DIRECTOR, P.G.S. R.

Professor and Head, Post Graduate Department of Economics,
SNDT Women’s University,
Smt. Nathibai Thakersey Road, Churchgate, Mumbai-400020
TelL91) (22) 22031879, Ext.243, Mobile-9321040048
E mail: vibhuti.np@gmail.com

Gender: refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female
and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations
between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are
socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes. They are context/ time-
specific and changeable. Gender determines what is expected, allowed and valued in a women or
a man in a given context. In most societies there are differences and inequalities between women
and men in responsibilities assigned, activities undertaken, access to and control over resources,
as well as decision-making opportunities. Gender is part of the broader socio-cultural context.
Other important criteria for socio-cultural analysis include class, race, poverty level, ethnic group
and age.

The concept of gender needs to be understood clearly as a cross-cutting socio-cultural variable. It

is an overarching variable in the sense that gender can also be applied to all other cross-cutting
variables such as race, class, age, ethnic group, etc. Gender systems are established in different
socio-cultural contexts which determine what is expected, allowed and valued in a woman/man
and girl/boy in these specific contexts. As gender roles are learned through socialization
processes; they are not fixed but are changeable. Gender systems are institutionalized through
education systems, political and economic systems, legislation, media, religion and culture and
traditions. In utilizing a gender approach the focus is not on individual women and men but on
the system which determines gender roles / responsibilities, autonomy and restrictions, access to
and control over resources, and decision-making potentials.

It is also important to emphasize that the concept of gender is not interchangeable with women.
Gender refers to both women and men, and the relations between them. Promotion of gender
equality should concern and engage men as well as women. In recent years there has been a
much stronger direct focus on men in research on gender perspectives. There are three main
approaches taken in the increased focus on men. Firstly, the need to identify men as allies for
gender equality and involve them more actively in this work. Secondly, the recognition that
gender equality is not possible unless men change their attitudes and behaviour in many areas,
for example in relation to reproductive rights and health. And thirdly, that gender systems in
place in many contexts are negative for men as well as for women – creating unrealistic demands
on men and requiring men to behave in narrowly defined ways. A considerable amount of
interesting research is being undertaken, by both women and men, on male identities and
masculinity. The increased focus on men will have significant impact on future strategies for
working with gender perspectives in development.

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Difference between Sex and Gender: ‘Sex’ Versus ‘Gender’
Sex is a biological term and gender refers to the sex of the individual after socialization. Sex
refers to biological difference between men and women. Gender is a social construct that defines
social relationship between men and women. Women belong to the feminine gender because
during the process of growing up, certain culturally constructed feminine traits are inculcated
into them, right from the birth.

Gender equality: Equality between women and men refers to the equal rights, responsibilities
and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women
and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and
opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies
that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration
recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men. Gender equality is not a
women’s issue but should concern and fully engage men as well as women. Equality between
women and men is seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of,
sustainable people-centered development.

Gender Equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full
human rights and for contributing to, and benefiting from, economic, social, cultural and political
development.

Gender equality is therefore the equal valuing by society of the similarities and the differences of
men and women, and the roles they play. It is based on women and men being full partners in
their home, their community and their society.

Gender Equity is the process of being fair to men and women. To ensure fairness, measures must
often be put in place to compensate for the historical and social disadvantages that prevent
women and men from operating on a level playing field. Equity is a means. Equality is the
result. Gender equity denotes an element of interpretation of social justice, usually based on
tradition, custom, religion or culture, which is most often to the detriment to women. Such use of
equity in relation to the advancement of women is unacceptable. During the Beijing conference
in 1995 it was agreed that the term equality would be utilized. Gender Equality means that the
rights, responsibilities and opportunities of individuals will not depend on whether they are born
male or female. Equality does not mean “ the same as” – promotion of gender equality does not
mean than women and men will become the same. Equality between women and men has both a
quantitative and a qualitative aspect. The quantitative aspect refers to the desire to achieve
equitable representation of women – increasing balance and parity, while the quantitative aspect
refers to achieving equitable influence on establishing development priorities and outcomes for
women and men. Equality involves ensuring that the perceptions, interests, needs and priorities
of women and men (which can be very different because of the differing roles and
responsibilities of women and men) will be given equal weight in planning and decision-making.

There is a dual rationale for promoting gender equality. Firstly, that equality between women and
men – equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities - is a matter of human rights and social
justice. And secondly, that greater equality between women and men is also a precondition for
(and effective indicator of) sustainable people-centred development. The perceptions,
interests, needs and priorities of both women and men must be taken into consideration not only
as a matter of social justice but because they are necessary to enrich development processes.
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Empowerment of Women

The empowerment of women concerns women gaining power and control over their own lives. It
involves awareness-raising, building self-confidence, expansion of choices, increased access to
and control over resources and actions to transform the structures and institutions which
reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality. The process of empowerment is
as important as the goal. Empowerment comes from within; women empower themselves. Inputs
to promote the empowerment of women should facilitate women’s articulation of their needs and
priorities and a more active role in promoting these interests and needs. Empowerment of women
cannot be achieved in a vacuum; men must be brought along in the process of change.
Empowerment should not be seen as a zero-sum game where gains for women
automatically imply losses for men. Increasing women’s power in empowerment strategies
does not refer to power over, or controlling forms of power, but rather to alternative forms of
power: power to; power with and power from within which focus on utilizing individual and
collective strengths to work towards common goals without coercion or domination. EW is a
win-win formula.

Empowerment is about people -both women and men- taking control over their lives: setting
their own agendas, gaining skills, building self-confidence, solving problems and developing
self-reliance. No one can empower another: only the individual can empower herself or himself
to make choices or to speak out. However, institutions including international cooperation
agencies can support processes that can nurture self-empowerment of individuals or groups.

Oppression and Exploitation

Any form of dehumnisation and degradation, violence and injustice, terrorization and
humiliation, intimidation and threat, subordination and discrimination is considered as
‘OPPRESSION’, while ‘Exploitation’ has an economic connotation. In a Marxian sense, it is an
extraction of ‘surplus labour’ (that generates profit) over and above ‘necessary labour’ that an
individual does for his/her subsistence.

Socialisation

Socialisation is defined as the process through which the self acquires the rules, social recipes,
conceptions of appropriate conduct and knowledge that allows them to act in their socio-cultural-
political world. It is a mechanism of cultural transmission. Gender socialization means the
process by which the individual is taught to internalize socially determined values of appropriate
masculine traits and feminine traits.

Social Construction

It is the process by which men and women are moulded into the culture of the group and thereby
become accepted members of the group/community/society and measure up to their expectations.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction

They are the analytical tools to examine individual’s unfolding capacity to complex forms of
behaviour and direct those capacities to new ethos/values to create new personalities. In gender

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economics, these analytical tools are used to bring a change from ‘gender biased’ or ‘gender
neutral’ attitude to ‘gender aware’ and ‘gender sensitive’ attitude.

Patriarchy
Patriarchy is an institution that perpetuates male domination and female subordination. It
sustains power relations that discriminate against girls and women in the households and in the
economy. It attributes ‘private’ realm to women and ‘public’ domain to men. Pillars of patriarchy
are family, kinship network, state, religion and media- PANCH MAHABHOOTA. In a
patriarchal society, the line of inheritance passes from father to son known as Patrilineage. The
patriarchal order is Patrilocal i.e after marriage, the bride is expected to go to the groom’s
residence.

Matriarchy
Matriarchal institutions are mother centered. In this system, the line of inheritance is from
mother to daughter, known as Matrilineage. After marriage, groom goes to brides house termed
as Matrilocal.

Gender Based Division of labour has existed in all societies for thousands of years. In India, it
is based on the ideology of male dominance, caste and social norms of ‘purity and pollution’. It
is also based upon the notion that women are physically weaker than men and are not suited for
physically arduous tasks. Women’s biological tasks of monthly menstruation and pregnancy,
confined them to subsistence economy such as lowly paid agricultural work, handicrafts and also
household work.

Gender and the Process of Economic Development.

The incorporation of subsistence economies into ‘modern’ market economies has brought into
question the traditional gender-based division of labour as an organizing principle in the rural
and urban sector because of the basic injustice it perpetuates. Women end up doing the least
skilled work and are underpaid or are expected to contribute to survival needs of the family
without any corresponding benefits. Esther Boserup in her pioneering work brought to fore
African women’s crucial contribution towards food security and explained the political economy
of polygamy in Africa that allowed men to concentrate and centralize economic resources thro’
unpaid and backbreaking labour of women and children in the subsistence economy that did not
have much animal resources for cultivation of land.

Gender mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The calls for increased
gender mainstreaming are not only for increased gender balance within the institutions but for
increased attention to gender perspectives and the goal of gender equality in their work.Gender
mainstreaming does not entail developing separate women’s projects within work programmes,
or even women’s components within existing activities in the work programmes. It requires that
attention is given to gender perspectives as an integral part of all activities across all
programmes. This involves making gender perspectives – what women and men do and the
resources and decision-making processes they have access to – more central to all policy
development, research, advocacy, development, implementation and monitoring of norms and
standards, and planning, implementation and monitoring of projects.
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It is important to see the linkages between gender mainstreaming in the substantive work of the
state and social movements and the promotion of equal opportunities and gender balance.
Organizational culture and organizational values are important in terms of creating work
environments which are conducive to gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming is easiest to
implement in organizational environments which support approaches such as multi-disciplinary
focuses, teamwork, creative thinking, flexibility and risk-taking.

Gender mainstreaming strategy does not mean that targeted activities to support women are no
longer necessary. Such activities specifically target women´s priorities and needs, through, for
example, legislation, policy development, research and projects/programmes on the ground.
Women-specific projects continue to play an important role in promoting gender equality. They
are still needed because gender equality has not yet been attained and gender mainstreaming
processes are not well developed. Targeted initiatives focusing specifically on women or the
promotion of gender equality are important for reducing existing disparities, serving as a catalyst
for promotion of gender equality and creating a constituency for changing the mainstream.
Women-specific initiatives can create an empowering space for women and act as an important
incubator for ideas and strategies than can be transferred to mainstream interventions. Initiatives
focused on men support promotion of gender equality by developing male allies. It is crucial to
understand that these two strategies - gender mainstreaming and women´s empowerment - are in
no way in competition with each other. The endorsement of gender mainstreaming within an
organization does not imply that targeted activities are no longer needed. The two strategies are
complementary in a very real sense as gender mainstreaming must be carried out in a manner
which is empowering for women.
Gender Analysis is the collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated information. Men and
women both perform different roles. This leads to women and men having different experience,
knowledge, talents and needs. Gender analysis explores these differences so policies,
programmes and projects can identify and meet the different needs of men and women. Gender
analysis also facilitates the strategic use of distinct knowledge and skills possessed by women
and men.

Sex-Disaggregated Data is data that is collected and presented separately on men and women.

Origin of the gender mainstreaming strategy

In efforts to promote the advancement of women and gender equality over the past few decades
the approaches or strategies adopted have changed significantly. Initial efforts were focused on
separate targeted activities for women. While many of these efforts produced positive results,
particularly for the limited numbers of women who could benefit directly, this approach did not
tackle the structural constraints to gender equality. Efforts in the 1970s shifted instead to
integrating attention to women into all activities rather than keeping women on the sidelines of
development. However the gains made through the integration strategy were limited by the fact
that most efforts were undertaken too late in processes when all important decisions on goals,
strategies and resources had already been taken. Equally constraining was the fact that
integration was often taken to mean only increasing women’s participation in development
agendas already decided upon by others without taking their contributions, knowledge, priorities
and needs into consideration-add gender and stir. The potential for bringing about the types of
structural changes required for achieving gender equality was therefore reduced.
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In the 1980s a new approach evolved, the mainstreaming strategy, which aimed to make the goal
of gender equality central to all development activities. The term mainstreaming came from the
objective to bring attention to gender equality into the mainstream of development activities. An
important element in the mainstreaming strategy is the ambition to give attention to gender
equality from initial stages of processes so that there is potential to influence goals, strategies and
resource allocations and thus bring about real changes in policies, programmes and other
activities and make a real difference to gender equality.

The ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions 1997/2 provided a clear definition of the mainstreaming
strategy as: “…the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned
action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a
strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension
of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all
political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is
not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.”

The mainstreaming strategy is utilized in areas where the principal objective is not promotion of
gender equality but promotion of other goals, such as, poverty elimination, environmentally
sustainable development, health development, peace support operations or economic
development. Mainstreaming involves taking up gender equality perspectives as relevant in
analysis, data collection, and other activities, to ensure that all processes take into account the
contributions, priorities and needs of the entire stakeholder group, women as well as men.
Attention to the goal of gender equality needs to be mainstreamed into research, analysis, policy
development as well as operational activities.

The Platform for Action (Beijing Conference, 1995) made it very clear that gender analysis is
the first essential step in the mainstreaming strategy. Before any decisions are taken in any area
of societal development an analysis should be made of the current responsibilities and
contributions of both women and men and the potential impact of planned processes and
activities on women and men respectively.

Mainstreaming does not replace the need for targeted, women-specific policies and programmes,
and positive legislation. Mainstreaming and empowerment of women are complementary
strategies. The mainstreaming strategy should always be implemented in a manner which
facilitates empowerment of women.

The mandate for gender mainstreaming

The mandate on the mainstreaming strategy comes from the Platform for Action (Beijing, 1995)
where mainstreaming was established as the main global strategy for promoting gender equality,
required in all the critical areas of concern. The ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions 1997/2 also
established some basic overall principles of mainstreaming. Initial definitions of issues/problems
across all areas of activity should be done in such a manner that gender differences and
disparities can be diagnosed. Assumptions that issues/problems are neutral from a gender
perspective should never be made; gender analysis should always be carried out. Efforts should
be made to broaden women’s equitable participation at all levels of decision-making and in all
areas of societal development.
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Agency for gender mainstreaming

Overall responsibility for implementing the mainstreaming strategy should rest at the highest
levels within Governments and other organizations, including in the United Nations
system. Management levels should develop adequate accountability mechanisms for
monitoring progress with mainstreaming. One means of ensuring accountability is to
establish clear indicators of progress which can be monitored over time by management.

Although the mainstreaming strategy requires a shift of responsibility for promoting gender
equality from specialists to all personal, especially management levels, this does not imply that
gender specialists are no longer required. The need for specialist support can be increased with
the implementation of the mainstreaming strategy, particularly during initial periods. Gender
specialists should, however, have new roles – catalysing, advising and supporting the efforts of
others rather than doing mainstreaming themselves. Effective roles for gender specialists requires
adequate allocation of resources, clear mandates and strategic location within organizations.
Specialists require the strong support of, and direct access to, senior management levels.

Process of Gender mainstreaming

The first step required is an assessment of the linkages between gender equality and the issue or
sector being worked on, that is, to identify the gender implications of working on, for example,
environment, poverty elimination, health development, and all other areas of development. This
involves understanding why promotion of gender equality is important for securing human rights
/ social justice for both women and men, as well as for achievement of development goals.
Secondly the opportunities for introducing gender perspectives need to be identified in the work
tasks undertaken. These opportunities or entry-points can be found in research and analysis,
policy development, use of statistics, training events and workshops/conferences, as well as in
planning and implementing projects and programmes. Thirdly an approach or methodology has
to be identified for successfully incorporating gender perspectives into these work tasks in a
manner which facilitates influencing goals, strategies, resource allocation and outcomes. This
could include, for example, giving attention to gender perspectives and the goal of gender
equality in terms or reference and job descriptions. Institutional development, in terms of
developing guidelines, utilizing gender specialists, providing competence development for all
personnel, etc., is also required to support gender mainstreaming.