Volume 2, Number 1
October 1996

Contextualizing Revisited and the Utility of Gender

Abstracts of the Papers

Mike's first paper, "How Useful Is Gender in Explaining the Economic Roles of Africa's Rural Peoples," argues that research in Africa is increasingly focusing on the importance of gender in defining the social and economic roles of rural peoples throughout the continent. Using a logistic regression approach, this paper attempts to assess the statistical "usefulness" of gender in explaining the economic roles of rural peoples in Northern Ghana. While gender is found to be useful in predicting involvement by surveyed individuals in particular economic activities, so too are marital status and other social constructs as covariates within the model. Even in those cases where economic roles are found to be largely gender-defined, a great deal of additional policy-relevant information is obtained by further disaggregating the categories 'women' and 'men' according to marital status, 'seniority', and other social constructs. Women, in particular, are found to differ greatly among themselves in terms of production roles, control of income, extent of asset ownership, and involvement in intra- and extra- household transfers. The paper concludes, highlighting a number of practical implications of these findings for how field research and targeting of policy and interventions might best be structured.

The second paper, "Beyond Gender Roles: Conceptualizing the Social and Economic Lives of Rural Peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa. Some Evidence from Northern Ghana," presents a similar discomfort with the use of gender as a policy determinant. Warner argues that repeated failure to design and appropriately target policies and interventions that address the needs of rural peoples in Africa suggests that something may be wrong with our understanding of the way these people live their lives. He argues that perspectives that focus on intrahousehold processes, and on gender issues in particular, represent useful advances in the way the social and economic lives of Africa's rural peoples are conceptualized. However, this paper questions the value of adopting development planning, policy, and project approaches based in the rigid identification of "gender roles." With reference to field research undertaken in Northern Ghana, the paper aims to demonstrate that other social constructs, such as marital status and seniority, may be at least as important as gender in determining the roles and status of individuals in African rural societies. The paper concludes by highlighting a number of practical implications of this finding in terms of structuring of development-oriented research and targeting policy and interventions.

In his most recent contribution, Mike shares with subscribers another paper, which also deals with the issue of contextualizing sex, gender, and economic roles. The abstract of the latest paper being written by Mike and Ramatu Al-Hassan is provisionally titled "Sex, Gender, and the Roles of Rural Peoples in Africa. A Critical Reappraisal of Some Aspects of Feminist Theory in the Context of Empirical Research Results from Rural West Africa." Since this latest paper is still 'work in progress', the authors have taken the unusual step of writing an abstract before the paper has been completed. His abstract and line of argument follow for comment.

"As a conceptual framework, gender is increasingly influential in the structuring of research, planning and policy initiatives relating to rural peoples in Africa. Many of these initiatives are informed by the assumption that gender is intrinsically pre-eminent in defining the social and economic roles of individuals in African rural society. In this paper, the assumed pre-eminence of gender is examined by way of a statistical analysis of survey data from Northern Ghana. It is found that gender is not in fact the most 'useful' covariate in explaining involvement by surveyed individuals in many important economic activities. In as much, it is suggested that a primarily gender-based research or planning approach may not always be appropriate. The conceptual distinction between sex and gender is then critically re-examined and it is argued that only by abandoning or re-defining the concept of gender can it then legitimately be claimed that sex is intrinsically pre-eminent in defining the social and economic roles of rural peoples in Africa or elsewhere. The authors conclude by advocating a return to a rigorous empiricist approach that does not seek to arbitrarily elevate any particular conceptual focus to a position of pre-eminence at the ex-pense of other legitimate and related concerns."

The line of argument, based on their data, runs as follows: (1) Gender is distinguished from sex as being a 'social construct'; (2) If gender is a social construct, then it must be legitimate to assess its usefulness in explaining the social and economic roles of individuals, alongside other social constructs (such as marital status, cooking wife status, and seniority); (3) Where it is found that gender is less useful than these other social constructs, then it is reasonable to conclude that a primarily gender-based approach is not helpful; (4) Only by returning to the biological concept of sex can it legitimately be claimed that differences between men and women are in some way intrinsically more important than other differences, say between young and old, junior and senior members of society—in other words, emphasizing the fact that differences between women and men are innate; (5) Since the authors are wary of the sort of biological determinism implied in [4], they prefer to emphasize a return to a rigorous empiricist approach where the influence of gender/sex is assessed alongside other social/natural factors and a priori assumptions are kept to the minimum.

The authors see themselves as relatively new to the field, and were most grateful for comments/suggestions made by GENDER-CG subscribers, and commented upon it was!

Comment/Suggestions

"We did really adopt gender to get away from the 'which is the primary oppression' rhetoric, so it seems a step backwards to get into it again, and particularly ironic to blame the concept of gender for it."

In response to the authors request for comments, a lively discussion ensued. What follows is a summary of some of the key points submitted by fellow Gender CG subscribers. It was felt that Mike's work may be criticized from some of the following perspectives.

1. The emphasis on 'roles' belies conceptual weakness. Who would talk of the 'roles' of peasants, or the 'roles' of races or of classes? We talk about race relations and class relations, and we should talk of gender relations. The relation between social relations and innate biological characteristics is still a subject of debate and will probably continue to be until biology itself is altered.
2. The debates about the 'primacy' of gender (e.g., as an 'over-determining' variable) versus other relations of social differentiation such as class go quite a ways back (especially, e.g., Marxist-feminists); some still argue that at a theoretical level, gender is the primary determinant (e.g., some theories of patriarchy). No one would argue that gender is the only 'determining' factor; in the last decade or so, in fact, conceptualization has gone in quite the opposite direction, in the stress placed on 'difference'. Naila Kabeer, in her book, Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought (Verso 1994), gives a good, accessible overview of some different perspectives.
3. Any statistical analysis may be limited regarding the pervasiveness or not of gender relations in social dif-ferentiation: the institution of marriage, sexual rela-tions, class and ethnic relations, etc., will shape and are shaped by gender relations. The universality of gender relations does not negate the specificity of relations that defines any particular group, nor does it mean that gender relations are 'over- determining' in any specific context. The research may empirically demonstrate that a reductionist view of gender is not only untenable, but unhelpful to women who experience life from a multitude of positions, but who nevertheless still experience it as women.
4. It was suggested that literature on gender and occupations, generated in vast quantities by organi-zations such as the ILO, represents a quite small but significant genre that may be of further use.
5. Regarding the preeminence of gender, one subscriber asked: "Is it really true that policy, research, and planning initiatives are assuming that gender is a very important–or even the most important–social variable?" The contributor then went on to suggest that this may be due to a more general weakness of much policy, planning, and research to properly accommodate, address, and account for social differences, than to a faulty conceptualization of gender. Mere recognition of women as a specific target group, or a willingness to differentiate impacts and activities on the basis of gender, can hardly be said to be 'structuring' research or planning.
6. In reference to the link between gender and social and economic roles, one subscriber agrees that gender may indeed be a 'source' of social difference, but it is not the only one, nor necessarily the most important one. Identities and roles of individuals in a society are determined by a large number of economic and social relations and ideas surrounding these relations. These different social relations are interdependent and mutually constitute each other. A discussion on which social difference is more important for planning, policy, or research purposes is thus not very meaningful—and even less so outside the context of a specific planning, policy, or research exercise. The question is not so much whether gender matters, but how and to what extent gender 'matters'.

And finally, one subscriber contributed an interesting reference and perspective on intrahousehold gender aspects in rural Zimbabwe. Mike was referred to Elizabeth Schmidt's book, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870-1939. Schmidt offers a gendered explanation of the importance of female seniority. With specific reference to Mike's work, this subscriber thought perhaps something was missing from the discussion. "Are we really talking about anything other than competing paradigms? Indeed, if gendered analysis is to become/survive as a meta-para-digm, it will have to prove itself capable of stretching to incorporate and account for the other axes of differentiation that Mike would like taken into account." The subscriber felt that gender analysis has a long way to go in applications to rural African societies before it hits the point of diminishing returns, as happened so quickly with class analysis.