Gender, Development, and Money

Overview

Money, value, power, and status are linked in complex ways in the global economic system. Male-biased economic policies and practices fail to give equal pay for equal work in any sector; women are more likely than men to have insecure, informal employment; and unpaid work done mainly in the home by women is not valued or remunerated. In this book, contributors from South and North emphasise that in order to end economic poverty and social inequality between the sexes, a profound change is needed in our attitudes to women’s work and relationship with money. The belief that ‘money is power’ has informed much gender and development policy and practice, where concerns about inequality between women and men have been met by a commitment to women’s ‘economic empowerment’, by way of income-generating projects and credit schemes targeted at women. But what role does earning income really play in transforming the power relations between women and men? How far do changes in men’s and women’s roles affect beliefs about who has the power in the household, the market place, or the state? And how can we value the unpaid work that most women perform in the home and family context?