Understanding Development: A Feminist Perspective on Growth

When we talk about development, what do we mean? Economic growth? Building infrastructure? Expanding industries? For decades, development theories have focused largely on these economic indicators, treating progress as a straightforward march toward industrialization and wealth. But what if these theories have overlooked half the population? A feminist perspective on development challenges the assumption that economic growth alone leads to genuine progress, especially when gender inequalities remain embedded in the very structures meant to drive development.

The promise and problems of modernization theory 🔗

Modernization theory emerged in the mid-20th century with a seductive promise: all societies could follow the same path to development that Western nations had taken. The theory suggested that economic growth, industrialization, and exposure to Western values would naturally lift countries out of poverty. Traditional societies would inevitably transform into modern ones, and with this transformation would come prosperity for all.

But feminist scholars quickly identified serious flaws in this thinking. Modernization theory often portrayed women as obstacles to progress, treating them as tradition-bound conservatives who needed to be brought into the modern economy. The theory assumed that development in the public economic sphere would naturally benefit women in the private domestic sphere through a trickle-down effect.

This assumption proved dangerously wrong. Research showed that modernization often made women’s situations worse, not better. As economies shifted from subsistence agriculture to cash crops and wage labor, women lost traditional forms of economic autonomy. Their unpaid domestic labor and care work remained invisible in development metrics, while their contributions to household survival went unrecognized and unvalued.

Gender blindness in development planning 🔗

Modernization theorists noted that gender equality tends to be greater in more developed countries, but this correlation doesn’t tell the whole story. Economic development can harm gender equality when women are exploited precisely because of their lower status. Development policies that ignore gender dynamics can reinforce existing inequalities rather than challenge them.

Consider how development projects have historically excluded women. Agricultural extension services taught new farming techniques to men, even in societies where women did most of the farming. Credit programs and land titles went to male heads of households. Factory jobs paid women less than men for the same work. These weren’t accidental oversights but reflected deeper assumptions about who counted as an economic actor worthy of investment.

Dependency theory and the double burden of women 🔗

By the 1960s and 1970s, dependency theory emerged as a radical critique of modernization approaches. Theorists like Andre Gunder Frank argued that developing nations failed to develop not because of internal barriers but because the developed West systematically underdeveloped them, creating a permanent state of dependency.

Frank’s core-periphery model revealed how wealthy nations extracted resources and labor from poorer countries, keeping them economically subordinate. A world capitalist system locked Latin America, Asia, and Africa into exploitative relationships where core nations accumulated wealth while peripheral nations remained impoverished.

How dependency systems affect women differently 🔗

Feminist scholars extended this analysis to show how dependency operates along gender lines. Women in peripheral countries face a form of super-exploitation, constituting an invisible social layer below the peripheral working class. They work in the lowest-paying, most precarious jobs in global supply chains while also shouldering the burden of unpaid reproductive labor at home.

Women constitute between 65% and 90% of workers in many global supply chains, particularly in the garment industry. In Bangladesh, 85% of garment workers are women; in Cambodia, the figure reaches 90%. These women work in hazardous conditions for minimal wages, with little legal protection or recourse when employers violate their rights.

Transnational corporations exploit existing patriarchal values rather than challenging them. They take advantage of women’s material subordination, knowing that women will accept worse conditions because returning to unpaid domestic labor is often their only alternative. This represents a form of dependency within dependency, where women’s economic participation reinforces rather than challenges their subordinate status.

The structural dimensions of women’s underdevelopment 🔗

Dependency theory reveals that women in peripheral countries face more than just economic exploitation. Gender inequalities function as adjustment variables in the economic cycles of peripheral countries. When economies face crises, women’s wages drop first and their working conditions deteriorate fastest. They become the shock absorbers for economic instability, bearing disproportionate costs of structural adjustment.

Women in peripheral countries also face heightened vulnerability to violence, political instability, and lack of access to education and healthcare. These social inequities result from both global power structures and local patriarchal systems that reinforce each other. The dependency isn’t just about economic resources but also about knowledge, technology, and cultural norms that flow from core to periphery, often imposing Western gender ideals that may undermine local women’s traditional sources of power.

Economic determinism and its failure to account for gender 🔗

Both modernization and dependency theories share a common weakness: they rely heavily on economic determinism. This approach assumes that economic forces drive all social and political change, and that transforming economic structures will automatically solve problems of inequality.

Feminist critics argue this assumption is fundamentally flawed when it comes to gender. The subordination of women is not inherent to their biological attributes but results from specific economic arrangements within capitalist society. However, changing those economic arrangements alone doesn’t guarantee gender equality.

Why capitalism needs gender oppression 🔗

Capitalism benefits from women’s unpaid domestic labor, which allows the state to save on collective facilities and employers to pay lower wages. If women weren’t expected to handle domestic work within families, significant reductions in working time and substantial development of social services would be necessary. The capitalist system has successfully avoided transforming domestic tasks into paid professional employment by relying on patriarchal values that naturalize women’s responsibility for this work.

The relationship between capitalism and patriarchy is mutually reinforcing. Capitalism exploits gender divisions to maximize profits, while patriarchal structures ensure a steady supply of cheap or free female labor. Women are channeled into low-wage, precarious jobs while simultaneously expected to provide unpaid care work that sustains the workforce. This dual burden keeps women economically dependent and limits their ability to challenge either system.

Beyond economic solutions 🔗

Economic growth alone cannot solve gender inequality because gender oppression operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously. It’s embedded in cultural norms, political institutions, legal systems, family structures, and individual psychology. Addressing one dimension while ignoring others leaves the fundamental structures of inequality intact.

Development policies that focus solely on women’s economic integration without challenging patriarchal power relations often end up instrumentalizing women for economic growth rather than genuinely empowering them. Corporate investments in women and girls frequently mask historical and structural conditions that perpetuate poverty while de-politicizing demands for fair labor practices and equitable economic orders.

True development from a feminist perspective requires transforming not just economic structures but also the social relations that determine how resources, power, and opportunities are distributed. It means recognizing and valuing women’s unpaid care work, ensuring their political participation, challenging cultural norms that limit their autonomy, and creating legal frameworks that protect their rights. Development must be measured not just by GDP growth but by improvements in women’s actual lived experiences across economic, social, and political dimensions.

What do you think? Can development truly be achieved without fundamentally transforming gender relations? How might development policies better address the interconnected nature of economic exploitation and gender oppression?

References

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/world-politics/article/abs/women-and-modernization-theory-a-decade-of-feminist-criticism/CA513CA04037C69319854D5F188F452B
2. https://revisesociology.com/2017/03/22/modernisation-theory-applied-to-gender-inequality/
3. https://revisesociology.com/2015/10/17/dependency-theory/
4. https://developingeconomics.org/2021/09/12/dependency-gender-and-race/
5. https://revisesociology.com/2017/04/08/dependency-theory-applied-to-gender-and-development/
6. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2023.2292176
7. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-02341-2
8. https://www.cadtm.org/How-Patriarchy-and-Capitalism-Combine-to-Aggravate-the-Oppression-of-Women
9. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/features/book-reviews/the-gender-effect-capitalism-feminism-and-the-corporate-politics-of-development