Global Crisis, Development and the Emergence of Women Voices

Abstract

Since the Seventies, the theme of development has gathered increasing attention from women, both of industrialized Countries and the Global South. This paper aims to provide a historical reconstruction of how and why women participated to this process, as well as to what extent they influenced the mainstream sector of development and defined alternative and more radical positions.

Women academics, activists and development practitioners entered the development process after a pairs of decades: since the post-World War II the “development discourse” has been shaping the international agenda, the objectives to be realized for the improvement of life conditions, as well as the common perception of poverty and the concept of crisis. Until the Eighties, the development theorists assumed as universal the vision of woman –with related interpretation of their needs and roles– commonly shared in Europe and United States. In reply to this, emerged a the own position from the Global South, as a result of a intellectual emancipatory effort. This was a milestone for the transnational movement that encompasses different considerations of women’s roles in development.

The concept of gender empowerment, that emerged within the current alternative movements, was later assumed at the Beijing Conference. This paper examines the different declinations this concept has assumed since then.