Reversed Realities Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought

by KABEER, NAILA

• ISBN13: 9780860915843
• ISBN10: 0860915840
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-07-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Reversed Realities uncovers the deeply entrenched, hence barely visible, biases which underpin mainstream development theory and account for the marginal status given to women’s needs in current development policy.

Naila Kabeer traces the emergence of “women” as a specific category in development thought and examines alternative frameworks for analyzing gender hierarchies. She identifies the household as a primary site for the construction of power relations and compares the extent to which gender inequalities are revealed in different approaches to the concept of the family unit. The book assesses the inadequacies of the poverty line as a measuring tool and provides a critical overview of an issue that has been fiercely contested by feminists: population control. While feminists themselves have no unanimous view of the meaning of “reproductive choice,” Kabeer argues that it is imperative for them to take a lead in the construction of population policy.

Author Biography

Naila Kabeer is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She has worked extensively on issues related to gender and development in Bangladesh, India and Vietnam.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
The Emergence of Women as a Constituency in Development	p. 1
Treating Cancer with Bandaid? The Theoretical Underpinnings of WID	p. 11
Same Realities, Different Windows: Structuralist Perspectives on Women and Development	p. 40
Connecting, Extending, Reversing: Development from a Gender Perspective	p. 69
Benevolent Dictators, Maternal Altruists and Patriarchal Contracts: Gender and Household Economics	p. 95
Beyond the Poverty Line: Measuring Poverty and Impoverishing Measures	p. 136
'And No-one Could Complain at That': Claims and Silences in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis	p. 163
Implementing the Right to Choose: Women, Motherhood and Population Policy	p. 187
Empowerment from Below: Learning from the Grassroots	p. 223
Triple Roles, Gender Roles, Social Relations: The Political Subtext of Gender Training Frameworks	p. 264
Appendix	p. 307
Bibliography	p. 312
Index	p. 340
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