Oxfam GB

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Women's Role in Economic Development by Ester Boserup
Review by: Myriam Blin
Source: Gender and Development, Vol. 16, No. 1, Rural Livelihoods and Agriculture (Mar.,
2008), pp. 206-208
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Oxfam GB
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20461261
Accessed: 08-03-2017 12:24 UTC

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Gender and Development

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violence is reduced to the problem of dowry. This, she believes, has led to the
'eroticizing domestic violence' and a lack of recognition of the distinct and varied
forms of oppressions women experience in relation to dowry and domestic violence.
The strength of the book lies not just in its critical review of feminist conceptions of
female sexuality and gender justice, but in the way in which it weaves together the
long history of feminist struggle for legal rights, the shifts and contradictions in their
discourses on equality, and three decades of legal and legislative measures for
women's rights that demonstrate the attitude of judiciary, the state, and communal
forces towards female sexuality. Examples from case laws and discussions on the
controversial judgements presented in the book offer new perspectives on Indian law,
and also a new analytical framework to understand not just the judiciary's attitude to
gender justice, but also feminist legal activism. Significant too, is the way in which the
book combines its 'constructive criticism' of Indian feminists with suggestions and
strategies for an alternative feminist politics. This accessible book will be educative to
activists in the women's movement and in the development sector, as well as
to academicians concerned with feminist politics, women's legal rights, and sexuality.
A minor remark about the production of the book: there are numerous typographical
errors in the book that require serious editing should a second edition be produced,
since they interfere with the flow of reading.

S. Anandhi, Associate Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai,

anandhister@gmail.com

Boserup, Ester, with a new introduction by Nazneen Kanji, Su Fei Tan, and Camilla
Toulmin
Women's Role in Economic Development

London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2007, ISBN: 978 1 84407 392 4, 271 pp.
When Women's Role in Economic Development was first published in 1970, it provided
ground-breaking and pioneering analysis of the impact of development on the status
of women, and on the role of women in the development process. In particular, the
book offered a comprehensive empirical review of women's contribution to the
agricultural and industrial sectors; issues which, at the time, remained marginal in
economic thinking and policy making.
This third edition (with a new introduction) is highly welcome, as Women's Role in
Economic Development has become a key reference book for anyone - student, scholar,
or practitioner - interested in gender and development analyses. This book is
important not only because it provided the intellectual underpinning of the Women
in Development (WID) analysis, but also because of the lasting influence it had on the

Gender & Development Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2008

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development of theoretical, conceptual, and policy thinking in the fields of women,
gender, and development.
Boserup's book was particularly influential in the intellectual development of WID
in that it provided comprehensive empirical evidence on women's diverse roles in
economic development, and showed how the modernisation process was margin
alising women from the productive economy. The book's key argument is that lack of
access to productive resources or activities, and responsibility for reproductive
roles, are the main sources of women's subordination, constraining their ability to
take advantage of development opportunities. For Boserup, development policy
should therefore support women in gaining greater access to productive labour and
the productive economy in general.
The book starts with a comparative analysis of different farming systems, showing,
in particular, the different roles played by women. Boserup describes in detail the
'female farming systems' of shifting agriculture found in Africa, where women
contribute a great deal to agriculture and food production through their work in
traditional subsistence agriculture. In contrast, within the 'male farming system' of
ploughing, found mostly in Asia, women contribute much less to agricultural
production and tend to be confined to the family sphere. Comparing farming systems,
Boserup shows how social hierarchies, land availability, and population density are
crucial factors in explaining the differences in the extent and nature of women's work
in Asia and Africa, and their status with respect to men (Chapter 1). Here, women's
subordinate position is analysed mostly in terms of women's relation to the productive
economy.
The book also argues that modernisation (colonial and post-colonial) policies failed
to benefit women because of the manner in which social relations, and cultural factors,
affected the distribution of roles between women and men, in the productive economy.
For example, the European notion that agriculture was a 'man's job' meant that all
modemisation incentives and new technologies were targeted to men, while women
farmers were sidetracked from the modernisation process. Boserup argued that such
development has the unavoidable effect of enhancing the prestige of men while
worsening the status of women, pushing them further into the reproductive and
subsistence spheres, and rendering their contribution to development invisible
(Chapters 3-4). Similarly, in industry, modernisation is driving women away from
modem industrial activities as on the demand side employers show preference for
male labour, while on the supply side women are reluctant to enter the modern
industrial sector (Chapters 5-8). The author concludes that unless women gain greater
access to training and education, they will remain marginalised from the development
process and therefore women's subordinate position will be reinforced if not increased
(Chapter 12).
Boserup's book made other important contributions to the literature of the time. For
example, through her comparison of different farming systems and her analysis of

Gender & Development VoL. 16, No. 1, March 2008

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 7-E -7

gender roles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America she clearly shows that rather than
being natural, the division of labour is socially constructed (Chapter 1). Boserup also
highlights women's heavy work burden, and the invisibility of women's work in the
reproductive and subsistence sectors in official statistics. She highlights the need for
better statistical accounting of women's work in these invisible activities (Chapter 9).
Boserup also offers an interesting analysis of polygamy and its economic rationale
(Chapter 2), and an analysis of the role of the division of labour in agriculture in
shaping migration patterns and women's participation in non-agricultural activities
(Chapters 9-10).
One of the most important critiques of the book at the time was that neo-classical
and modernist conceptual tools were used to analyse women's subordinate position.
The new introduction by Nazneen Kanji, Su Fei Tan, and Camilla Toulmin reiterates
the critique, highlighting that the use of a neo-classical and modernist conceptual
framework provides a simplistic, incomplete, and over-general understanding of the
development process, and of women's role in that process. The introduction
successfully highlights the areas in which Boserup significantly contributed to the
literature, while simultaneously reviewing the more recent developments in gender
and development analyses. For example, the introduction highlights analyses of the
'feminisation' of the labour force in the industrial and non-traditional agricultural
sectors that occurred in many least-developed countries; the impact of structural
adjustment on women's and girls' well-being; and the role of women's activism, and
that of economic, social, and cultural factors, in shaping women's status vis-a'-vis
men's. The authors also discuss more recent gender analyses of the impact of HIV and
AIDS, and sustainable development.
The new introduction suffers from one major drawback, in that it fails properly to
raise one of the more fundamental criticisms that arose after the publication of
Boserup's book. Feminist economists, such as Gita Sen, Lourdes Beneria, and Naila
Kabeer, have highlighted how the narrowness of the neo-classical framework
prevented Boserup from fully explaining how social relations within the household
shaped women's subordinate position and their role in the development process. In
particular, by focusing on economic and social relations in the productive economy,
Boserup fails to analyse the role of the reproductive economy and its impact on
women's work, the sexual division of labour, and women's status.
Nevertheless, the re-editing of Women's Role in Economic Development, with its new
introduction, ensures students, academics, and practitioners continued access to an
essential reference for those interested in the women and development literature.
One final note: it is unfortunate that the publisher has made an error in omitting
page 173, instead duplicating the content of page 183. This forces anyone reading this
edition to go back to the 1989 one.

Myriam Blin, School of Oriental and Africa Studies, UK, mb77@soas.ac.uk

EGender & Development VoL. 16, No. 1, March 2008

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