The Research Group Women and Gender in Developing Countries came into existence with the Sociology of Development Research Centre SDRC. In 1990, a professorship was created, which was occupied by Gudrun Lachenmann (coming from the German Development Institute in Berlin) officially from 11/1992; she retired in 03/2006 but continues to do research, some supervision etc. There has been no direct successor with this denomination in the faculty. The position of lecturer created was occupied from 1998 to 09/2007 by Petra Dannecker who had received her doctoral degree from the Graduate School in sociology/social anthropology and is at present holding a guest professorship in development sociology at the University of Vienna / Austria. Certainly the subject matters continue to be considered in other working groups.
At this moment in time it seems to be absolutely necessary and promising to ask where we are with regard to including gender in development co-operation, policy and theory. I would like to put forward the thesis that quite fundamental changes have occurred over the past decade with regard to transformations going on in "developing countries" and concepts of development policy and co-operation as regards the inclusion of social science and societal and cultural issues. It can be argued that gender planning and analysis has been the first perspective to open this avenue; however, when considering most recent "soft" concepts, gender is not included, either as an analytical tool or as a consistent dimension of overall policy formulation.
In two very important fields of ongoing global processes, gender analysts and activists have been at the vanguard of critically analysing implications and effects such as poverty, feminisation of poverty and labour, informalisation of economy, etc. in the context of structural adjustment and globalisation of the economy. In addition, they were the first to begin "socialising" sustainability discourses and environmental policies, starting from a pre-conference to Rio (1992). However, it seems as if radical positions were so fundamentally denunciatory of globalisation as an external force which cannot be shaped at all in a process of "glocalisation", and in global environmental governance it has become clear that the North is not willing to change the modes of growth. Gender has indeed officially been integrated into all development fields, but in reality this has led to losing its dynamic as a theoretical and political transformatory approach. The important feminist network of DAWN (Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era), through Vivienne Taylor, has recently conceptualised its analysis of the social consequences of globalisation through "marketisation of the State".
Gender analysis is in fact applied in development co-operation but mostly using concepts and static models, such as, gender "roles" and division of labour, instead of looking at gender as power relations on the household and beyond, constructs of gender in institutions, the gendered structure of the economy and the gender order of society. Gender equity has been accepted, but this approach often analyses women (and men) as homogenous groups, not accepting differences and plurality, including, for example, in segregated markets and social and cultural spheres, but denouncing differences as culturally legitimised suppression and discrimination.
Apart from overcoming the project (and even programme) level I think from "women in development", and "gender in development" we should go beyond "mainstreaming gender". This, anyhow, has proven to be not a very successful bureaucratic effort which rapidly would be leading to marginalisation again. Instead, we should "engender" - from a theoretical and practical point of view - development theory and policy. I suggest that this aim be pursued by "engendering" recent concepts put forward by New Economic Sociology, for example, such as the one of embeddedness (Granovetter, following Polanyi), with economy, poverty, decentralisation and democratisation as well as civil society being the main areas. In this way I believe, the opposition between structuration and agency can be overcome. This means that we should abandon "impact analysis" and treating women as "vulnerable" groups, and instead analyse interaction and the structural embeddedness of economy and the construction of gender in institutions (Goetz 1995), adopting a relational and dynamic planning approach (Kabeer 1994). Thus the ongoing restructuring processes can be studied at different levels. Of special interest is a profoundly empirical approach for analysing the local economy in a gendered way and linking it to the global context, as is being done at the Sociology of Development Research Centre in Bielefeld (Lachenmann, Dannecker ed., 2001).
* See Gudrun Lachenmann, EADI Newsletter with Joy Clancy, Margaret Skutsch, Isa Baud, Convenors, 2001, Proceedings of the EADI-Workshop. Gender and Globalisation: Process of Social and Economic Restructuring. 20-21 April 2001, Occasional Paper 10, Noordwijkerhout: Universität Twente, EADI)
Elson, Diane, 1995, Gender awareness in modeling structural adjustment, in: N. Cagatay, D.
Elson, C. Grown, eds., Gender, adjustment and macroeconomics. Special issue in: World Development, vol. 23, no. 11, pp 1851 - 1868
Taylor, Vivienne, 2000, Marketisation of governance: critical feminist perspectives from the South, Suva, Fiji Islands: DAWN Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era
Goetz, Anne Marie, 1995, Institutionalising women's interests and gender-sensitive accountability in development, in: IDS Bulletin, Getting institutions right for women in development, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 1 - 10
Goetz, Anne Marie, David O'Brien, 1995, Governing for the common wealth? The World Bank's approach to poverty and governance, in: IDS Bulletin, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 17 - 26
Granovetter, Mark, 1985, Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness, in: American Journal of Sociology, no. 3, p. 481 - 510
Harcourt, Wendy, ed., 1994, Feminist perspectives on sustainable development, London, Rome: Zed Books, Society for International Development
Kabeer, Naila, 1994, Reversed realities. Gender hierarchies in development thought, London, New York: Verso
Lachenmann, Gudrun, Dannecker, Petra, 2001, Die geschlechtsspezifische Einbettung der Ökonomie. Empirische Untersuchungen über Entwicklungs- und Transformationsprozesse, München/Hamburg/London: LIT-Verlag, Reihe: Market, Culture and Society, Band 12
Unifem, coordin. Diane Elson, 2000, Progress of the World's Women 2000. Unifem Biennial Report, United Nations Development Fund for Women, New York
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