A.I.D. Policy Paper

**Women in Development**

**U.S. Agency for International Development**

**Washington, D.C. 20523**

**October 1982**

**Table of Contents**

**Preface**

**I. Summary of AID Women in Development Policy**

**II. Introduction**

**III. Rationale for Women in Development Policy**

**A. Access to and Control Over Resources: Gender Differences**

**B. Stakes and Incentives Related to Productivity: Gender Differences**

**IV. Women in Development Policy Issues**

**A. Agricultural Development**

**B. Employment and Income Generation**

1\. *Measurement of Women\'s Economic Activities*

2\. *Migration*

3\. *Displacement of Female Workers by Technology*

4\. *Women\'s Organizations*

**C. Human Resource and Institutional Development**

1\. *Education*

2\. *Population, Health and Nutrition*

3\. *Institutions*

**D. Energy and Natural Resource Conservation**

**E. Water and Health**

1\. *Water Use*

2\. *Water Management*

3\. *Time Allocation*

**V. Implementation of the Women in Development Policy**

**1. Women in Development Activities in AID\'s Project**

**2. AID\'s Women in Development Office and Women in Development
Officers**

**3. AID\'s Support for Other Donor and Host Government Women in
Development**

**Activities**

**Preface**

This policy paper demonstrates how LDC women\'s concerns are to be
integrated into AID\'s program. Other policy papers recognize various
roles LDC women play. For example, the Food and Agriculture Paper
highlights women as agricultural producers, farm laborers and family
food providers, and recommends an expansion of their opportunities in
the food-related and agriculture fields. The Water and Sanitation paper
recognizes women\'s stake in the provision of clean water and sanitation
for the community. The Nutrition paper points out that since women\'s
income is most likely to go toward food for her family, improving
nutrition through increased income generation should focus on women. The
Private Enterprise paper establishes four priorities for AID\'s
investment (agriculture, agribusiness, small-scale industries and
private sector service enterprises), all of that are important areas for
women\'s involvement. But, unlike most of AID\'s policy statements, the
Women in Development Policy is cross-sectoral; it is meant to provide
the policy framework and overall practical guidance for each sector and
for the Agency as a whole in its efforts to incorporate women into the
total development process.

**I. Summary of AID Women in Development Policy**

\(1\) AID will take into account the actual and potential roles of LDC
women in carrying out its development assistance program. This will be
done in all AID\'s country strategies and projects in order to ensure
achievement of development goals, through:

a\. overall country programs and individual project designs which
reflect the distinct roles and functions of LDC women as they relate to
project implementation;

b\. strategies for explicitly benefiting women and girls in all sectors
within countries, and in all projects within sectors which are developed
and implemented as an integral part of AID\'s work;

c\. sex-disaggregated data collection, gender-specific social-soundness
analysis and economic analysis, monitoring and evaluation.

\(2\) AID will also, under appropriate conditions, support LDC women\'s
institutions and programs where special efforts are required to reach
women because of cultural conditions, where separate programs and
facilities are deemed necessary, or where women\'s groups provide a
particularly advantageous vehicle for addressing women\'s needs.

\(3\) AID recognizes that the productivity of women is important to
personal, family and national well-being. Women\'s increased
productivity depends on their improved access to resources, e.g. land,
improved farming techniques, information, employment; therefore,

a\. where lack of education and training constrain women\'s effective
access to more productive work, AID will seek to increase relevant
knowledge and skills among women and girls;

b\. where inefficient technologies reduce women\'s overall productivity,
AID will support the development of labor-saving and time-saving
technologies which are acceptable and accessible to women;

c\. where systematic bias exists against females in the labor force, or
in certain segments of the labor force, AID will support efforts to
alleviate the bias, through policy reform and/or experimental programs
which demonstrate ways in which women can enter non-traditional types of
work.

\(4\) AID acknowledges that largely because of their traditional
responsibilities for child care and family welfare, women in developing
countries have special needs for adequate human resource development
programs in the areas of health care, family planning, potable water,
nutrition and education. AID will support investments in human resource
development which have particular implications for females in society.
Effective strategies to secure women\'s inclusion in such programs will
ultimately result in the critical national benefit of a healthy,
well-trained, productive workforce.

\(5\) AID will support the development of institutions and transfer of
technology which ensure: (a) the appropriateness and access of improved
technology to women (as well as men); and (b) the existence of
institutions which include women and effectively reach women (as well as
men) and which permit the dissemination of benefits and information to
both sexes.

\(6\) AID acknowledges that there is still much to know about the
implications for development of gender differences among target
populations. Such knowledge gaps severely reduce the effectiveness of
development program planning. Therefore AID will support research in
areas where adequate knowledge of gender-roles in relation to
development planning is lacking. Such research will include (but not be
limited) to:

a\. studies of *intra-household* dynamics regarding division of labor,
distribution of resources and decision-making;

b\. income needs and income sources for males and females;

c\. women\'s contribution to agriculture;

d\. fuel and water needs and sources;

e\. incidence of households which are actually or *de-facto*
female-headed.

\(7\) AID recognizes that most LDC\'s have endorsed the goal of further
integrating women and girls into the development process through support
of international efforts such as those undertaken by the various UN
entities (e.g., UN Decade for Women, FAO\'s WCAARD Plan of Action), and
that most countries have established their own programs and plans to
address the concern of women in development. Therefore, AID will support
reforms, which are consistent with these national positions.

\(8\) AID seeks to increase the knowledge and skills of its staff in
planning projects, which effectively engage women in the development
process and its benefits. The Office of Women in Development and the
women in development officers will continue to *support* the Agency\'s
personnel in their efforts to implement the women-in-development policy.
However, *the overall responsibility for implementation of this policy
rests with all of AID\'s offices and bureaus, in all AID programs and
projects*.

**II. Introduction**

Nearly a decade has passed since Congress first introduced the subject
of women in development into AID\'s program. The 1973 \"Percy
Amendment\" to the Foreign Assistance Act required that the U.S.
bilateral assistance programs: \"be administered so as to give
particular attention to those programs, projects and activities which
tend to integrate women into the national economies of foreign
countries, *thus improving their status and assisting the total
development effort.\"* (emphasis added)

This legislative mandate and the extensive women in development
literature make two basic points. The first point (\". . . thus
improving their status . . .\") raises the social or equity issues which
derive from women\'s status relative to men in many countries. It
stresses the need for development planners to be sensitive to the ways
in which modernization may negatively affect females in society. This
approach casts females as beneficiaries of development, and focuses on
the need for planners to guard against negative effects of their
projects on women. The second point (\". . . and assisting the total
development effort\"), the economic or efficiency issue, focuses on
women as active contributors to and agents of economic development, and
actively seeks to enhance women\'s participation in the process. This
approach emphasizes women\'s economic roles. It stresses the need to
enhance their productivity, raise their incomes and promote their access
to economically productive resources as a means to achieving overall
national economic growth. While both arguments are important and both
serve to guide AID\'s interpretation of the women in development policy,
AID\'s primary concern is to fully comprehend that the *pace of
development and the quality of its outcome* is greatly dependent on the
degree to which women and girls fulfill their potential contribution and
share in society\'s gains.

Of course the primary responsibility for ensuring the participation of
both women and men in development rests with LDC governments and the
people themselves. But it is clear that foreign donors such as AID can
play a part in the process. AID must now move beyond its initial
activities, and provide leadership in ensuring that women have access to
the opportunities and benefits of economic development.

The major challenge for economic development is the need to make more
efficient use of scarce resources. Women and girls are resources for
development whose contribution to development is already substantial.
Yet their contribution would be dramatically enhanced if they were
better educated, in better health, and had better access to training,
services and jobs. Therefore, to pursue a development planning strategy
without a women in development focus would be wasteful and
self-defeating wasteful, because of the potential loss of the
contribution of vital human resources and self-defeating because
development which does not bring its benefits to the whole society has
failed. The underlying premise of this paper is that, for AID to
undertake an effective strategy that promotes balanced economic
development, a focus on the economic participation of women in
development is essential.

**III. Rationale for Women in Development Policy**

One of the premises of AID\'s women in development policy is that
gender-roles constitute a key variable in the socio-economic condition
of any country one that can be decisive in the success or failure of
development plans. Research from the last decade portrays a fairly
consistent pattern of findings that in most developing countries,
females differ from men in their:

\- access to and control over productive resources;

\- stakes in development outcomes;

\- responses to incentives introduced to encourage development

Briefly stated, the constraints which women face in the task of self-
and therefore national- development are often different constraints than
those men face. The particular ways in which females are constrained
function as limitations to the overall development process itself. Some
constraints relate to cultural norms of physical mobility, while others
derive from the predominant sexual division of labor and the consequent
segregation of women in the economy. Time can also act as a constraint
when women must fulfill childcare, home production, and market
responsibilities.

The implications of these differences for development planners are
substantial. The experience of the past ten years tells us that the key
issue underlying the women in development concept is ultimately an
economic one: misunderstanding *of gender differences, leading to
inadequate planning and designing of projects, results in diminished
returns on investment*. Gender, therefore, is a critical category of
analysis in AID\'s work, one, which has not received sufficient
attention to date.

**A. Access to and Control Over Resources: Gender Differences**

Although there are regional variations, in most countries and within
most ethnic groups it is much more difficult for women to: own land;
obtain credit; receive training and information; and obtain new
technologies. If these constraints are not overcome women\'s
productivity will decrease and their economic independence will decline.
Attempts to raise overall output and to achieve national
self-sufficiency will be thwarted.

For example, even though there is now sufficient evidence to prove
women\'s substantial contribution to agriculture in many of the
countries of the world, there is equal proof that these women are often
farming without benefit of the improved inputs and services required for
a more productive and remunerative agriculture. The paradox is most
obvious in the African setting, where it is estimated females do 60‑80
percent of all agricultural work. Yet these same females are rarely
systematically targeted for: training, extension, research, technology,
or improved inputs. It is predictable, then, that efforts to improve
access to resources and thereby to increase productivity in the
agriculture sector will need to be better directed to the female
population, if goals for growth are to be achieved.

**B. Stakes and Incentives Related to Productivity: Gender Differences**

There are also important gender-role differences affecting the way
members of the society respond to incentives introduced to encourage
development and the degree to which they perceive a stake in the outcome
of a development intervention. Gender-

roles are strongly associated in most regions with such tasks for daily
survival as water-bearing and fuel provision. For example,

\- in the numerous areas where water-carrying is traditionally women\'s
work, it is crucial to understand the greater stake women may have in a
project designed to improve water availability;

\- certain types of environmental degradation (deforestation, soil
erosion) also may bear more heavily on the lives of women and girls if,
for example, their traditional responsibilities for providing fuelwood
are affected. Where females supply the household with fuel women, not
men, may be largely contributory to the fuelwood/deforestation crisis
and at the same time women and girls may have the greatest stake in
finding a solution to the problem.

Knowledge of these gender-role patterns will assist project planners to
maximize the chance of project success. Introducing incentives for
change which are specifically adapted to gender-roles, and are therefore
based on a proper assessment of the stake the population feels in the
outcome of project, are critical to success. For this reason, the
accuracy and utility of descriptive terms which AID uses to describe
target populations are questionable without gender distinctions.
Employing aggregated terminology such as \"family labor,\" \"hired
labor,\" \"farmers,\" \"youth,\" \"children,\" and others, may mask key
sex-linked aspects or social and economic behavior and may contribute to
incorrect assumptions about the population in the conceptualization and
implementation of projects.

Reliance on the *family* as the level of analysis in social data
collection for instance, also contains inherent risks of misinformation.
Often *intra-family* dynamics related to distribution of resources and
division of labor by sex and age will be overlooked; these
intra-household dynamics have critical implications for the successful
implementation of projects.

An example is useful here. There is a predominant misperception about
disposition of income within poor families which has persisted and given
rise to critical miscalculations in project planning. This is the
assumption that household incomes are:

\- dominated by the contribution of a male \"breadwinner,\"

\- pooled with other supplementary income earners (women and children),
and

\- redistributed within the family according to need.

This has led project planners to establish such objectives as to \"raise
family incomes, \"improve family living standards,\" and \"increase
family resources.\"

However research findings for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and
South and Southeast Asia, indicate that the prevailing pattern of
household economics is quite different. In fact there is a pattern of
separate and distinct income streams and expenditures, where males and
females meet financial responsibilities to the family individually with
little or no access to each other\'s cash or other resources.
Furthermore, studies indicate that it is often from women\'s income, not
men\'s, that the basic survival needs of the family (food, health care,
education, maintenance of property) are met. In some cases this type of
family dynamic is a carry-over from tradition, one which has been
misperceived and misunderstood by generations of outsiders. In others it
is a relatively new pattern resulting from socially dislocating factors
like migration, leaving women for at least part of the year as heads of
households. In either event, income needs and income sources within the
family require analysis, which goes beyond preconceived and often
erroneous assumptions about household behavior. A thorough understanding
of the gender- related dynamics of: decision-making, resource
allocation, and financial responsibility within the household is
imperative if a Women in Development Policy is truly to be implemented
by AID. Miscalculations derived from ethnocentric assumptions about
women and imprecise social analysis will have negative consequences for
project design and implementation.

**IV. Women in Development Policy Issues**

**A. Agricultural Development**

Women are the majority of the Third World\'s rural population. The small
farmer producing food in Third World countries is, increasingly, a
woman. The worldwide demographic and social changes which have occurred
in tandem with Third World development have worked to push women into
the agricultural sector, rather than out of it as was the case
historically in many of the developed countries.

In the Andean region, women engage in agricultural field work,
especially planting and weeding, processing of agricultural products,
feeding, grazing, milking and shearing of animals and to a great degree
in marketing (Deere & Leon de Leal, Bourque & Warren).

In Cameroon, the existence of women\'s farming systems, separate and
distinct from those of their husbands\' and fathers\', and women\'s
crops, has been described and analyzed (Guyer; Jones).

In Kenya, the productivity of women farmers compares favorably to that
of men who receive equivalent farm services (Staudt).

In India, the participation of women in reforestation programs and in
milk production schemes has been shown to be an important source of
household income, particularly for those with limited resources (Dixon;
Jain).

Therefore, steps must be taken to ensure that the new technologies and
resources, which are part of development assistance in the agriculture
sector, actually reach women. There has been little evidence in the past
decade of \"trickle-across;\" in fact resources allocated to \"the farm
household\" typically reach men rather than women. Male agricultural
extension agents provide information to groups of male farmers; women
farmers get the knowledge of improved technologies second-hand, if at
all. Credit is given to those who own land; women in most countries,
however, till land that is owned by their husbands, fathers, and
brothers. Furthermore, steps must be taken to ensure that control which
women may have over resources is not threatened or eliminated by
reallocation of such resources to others. Finally, women\'s
participation in agriculture must not be defined solely in terms of
their labor; the benefits of that labor should also flow to women.

It is especially important, in the transition from subsistence to
commercial agricultural systems, that the traditional concept of reward
for labor be retained. In Cameroon, for example, men were allocated the
resources (land, water, seeds, information) to enable them to produce
rice for sale. Women were expected to carry out the tasks of
transplanting and harvesting this rice and, at the same time, to
continue their traditional cultivation of sorghum for their family\'s
subsistence. Unavailability of women\'s labor became an unanticipated
constraint to the expansion of commercial rice production and therefore
to the desired improvement in standards of living in the area (Jones).
Better pre-project analysis as well as implementation monitoring systems
which enable women to communicate directly to project management, can
help to prevent repetition of such cases. Farming systems approaches to
agricultural research *where researchers get directly in touch with
rural women* offer another avenue for seeking women\'s inputs into the
definition of agricultural problems and possibilities. It should be
noted however that experience has shown that this access to women
farmers often requires special efforts; these must be planned for in the
research design.

Other areas of agricultural and rural development activity which
primarily involve women are those of food storage, processing and,
often, trade. Women perform storage and processing tasks as part of
their household maintenance duties as well as for cash incomes. Women
engage in the trade of both processed and unprocessed agricultural
commodities (both food and fiber) for profit. For example, Caribbean
women higglers and hucksters are the mainstay of inter- and intra-island
food trade.

In efforts to reduce post-harvest food losses and to increase the amount
of private sector activity in the rural areas, it is important to keep
the role of women in these activities in mind. Addressing the problem of
information transfer in methods of improved storage and processing
technology will be part of the solution; training of women extension
agents will help in this process. And developing techniques and
technologies of post-harvest food preservation and storage which are
accessible to women, and which can be maintained by them are equally
important.

As efforts get underway in many developing countries to reduce the role
of public agencies in food marketing, it is essential that women be
given opportunities for greater roles in these markets. Their
participation should be especially encouraged where they can provide
marketing services efficiently and effectively at low capital costs. To
summarize, the key elements of AID\'s policy concerning women in
agricultural development are that:

1\. The sex- and age-linked division of labor by crop and ethnic group
must be fully comprehended as a basis for all project planning.

2\. Male and female differentials in access to and control over key
productive resources must be understood and planned for in projects.
These resources include:

land - capital - labor - credit - information - seeds - tools -
fertilizers - water - fuel

3\. The specific farming responsibilities which are uniquely and
particularly assigned to female members of the household/society must
receive an appropriate share of attention in project identification,
design and implementation. These may include:

\"women\'s animals\" - \"women\'s crops\" - weeding - transporting -
marketing - preserving - processing - storage

4\. Explicit strategies to address gender-role aspects of farming must
be built into all projects where outreach to farmers is attempted
(extension, training, research, etc.). In particular, integrated
services to address females\' multiple responsibilities in farm
households are required. These would include:

human nutrition/health - animal nutrition/health - farm management -
family resource management - time/labor saving technologies

**B. Employment and Income Generation**

In the past decade, development activities that have targeted women as
beneficiaries have been primarily focused on women\'s reproductive,
health and nurturing roles. Projects aimed at directly increasing
women\'s income have typically been small in scale with little attention
paid to effective marketing or long-term viability. Such small-scale
income generation programs, which effectively stand outside the
mainstream of development planning, do little to address the long-term
economic needs of low-income women. Furthermore, large-scale development
programs often have not accounted for the actual economic roles women
play or attempted to enhance these roles. The consequences have been to
keep women in the unproductive sectors of the economy, underutilizing
their capacity, and contributing to the failure of programs.

Poor women in developing countries bear major economic responsibilities,
yet they are generally less well educated than men and have less access
than men to modern productive resources. Thus they often fill jobs which
require little skilled work and are among the lowest paying. General
trends in Third World countries show that the percentage of women,
although low in the formal labor force as a whole, is disproportionately
high when one looks at the service sector. In all regions except Africa,
where women tend to concentrate in agriculture, more than a third of
working women are confined to service occupations. The data from Latin
America show quite dramatically how the ranks of women in the labor
force are swollen by their entry into service sector, where they fill
the menial jobs, primarily as domestics.

Informal labor markets have always existed in developing countries but
the increased population and the inability of the formal sector to
accommodate the expanding labor force has pushed more people, especially
women, into seeking employment in the informal sector. The size of the
informal sectors in cities such as Bombay, Djakarta, and Lima varies
from 53 percent to 69 percent of the working population of those cities.
Female workers are disproportionately represented. In India, between 41
percent and 49 percent of the female labor force participates in the
informal sector, while only 15 percent to 17 percent of the male labor
force does so. (Mazumdar 1976, ICSSR 1975).

Therefore, in the formal sector, AID must encourage attempts to break
the pattern of women\'s relegation to low-productivity occupations with
no growth potential. AID can accomplish this by designing into projects
the expansion of employment opportunities in sectors where women have
not traditionally worked, and in those relatively new sectors of the
economy where gender-specific work roles are not yet entrenched. In
addition, AID can support and fund occupational training programs for
women at two basic levels:

Technical and industrial skills programs should be used to prepare
younger women for entry into profitable employment sectors where there
are shortages of skilled workers.

Management skills programs should be used to prepare women for entry
into white collar occupations which require knowledge of basic
accounting, and administrative skills.

For the *informal* sector, a variety of programs for small entrepreneurs
and micro-enterprises have been successful, and AID can adapt them for
women. AID\'s decision to focus on technical assistance and/or provision
of credit through financial intermediaries must depend on the particular
situation. However, in many countries there are substantial numbers of
self-employed women, particularly in micro and small industries, who
will gain from enhanced managerial, administrative and financial skills,
as well as from the formation of cooperative institutions.

Other factors which are relevant to AID\'s approach to women\'s
employment and income generation are:

1\. *Measurement of Women\'s Economic Activities*

Current information on women\'s productive activities in their national
economies not only masks the contribution women make, it also masks the
division of labor and the roles women play. These data collection
practices are disadvantageous to women because:

they exclude activities connected with household production of goods and
services which are not actually sold on the market, and

because women are more likely to be mis-classified as economically
inactive since the reference period or time frame in which women perform
work often does not conform to the standard reference period used in
data collection; women\'s work is more often than men\'s, home based,
seasonal, and therefore elusive to categorize;

for status reasons both men and women often deny that women \"work\".

AID\'s reliance on standard statistical measures of female economic
activity must be tempered with knowledge of the substantial limitations
of these data. Wherever possible, efforts to supplement national census
data with more recent and micro-

level surveys and other research data should be undertaken.

2\. *Migration*

For several decades increasing population pressure, rural poverty and,
more recently, the high wages offered in countries with labor shortages
have caused men to emigrate from rural areas in search of wage labor in
the city or in another country. As a result, women\'s roles are changing
rapidly in rural areas. Rural women are being called upon to increase
their work loads, to take over important decision-making roles, to
organize cultivation, and to ensure that the decisions they make in
economic matters are implemented. AID\'s investments in rural areas must
be made with full knowledge of these effects of migration and the
concomitant increase in number of households, which are female-headed.

Though men still predominate among migrants to urban areas, the number
of women migrating is increasing, especially in Latin America and a few
African and Asian countries. As compared to the men, the women
immigrants have a lower educational level and face a very limited labor
market. In Latin America they usually become street vendors or
domestics. Whereas long-term male migrants are more likely to achieve
upward mobility, the female either remains at the same level or her
situation worsens. Special programs of non-formal education and
vocational training must be provided to help these women develop skills
for employment in the formal sector and increased income earning
opportunities in the informal sector.

3\. *Displacement of Female Workers by Technology*

The introduction of labor-saving technologies in many developing
countries has resulted in the displacement of large numbers of unskilled
rural and urban female laborers (e.g., rice milling, grain grinding,
food processing, and the mass production of handmade items). In cases
where mechanization has resulted in a decline in traditional sources of
income for females or in reductions in female employment, mechanization
can provide new employment for women only when they are trained and
encouraged to enter the industry. The choice of mechanization in the
agriculture sector, for example, should be made selectively, where
economically justified and where the selected technologies are
appropriate to the setting.

4\. *Women\'s Organizations*

Typically, organizations selected to undertake income generating
activities for women have had little technical expertise and yet have
been selected because they are organizations exclusively of women. The
objectives of these programs tend to be welfare-oriented and
ill-defined; their activities often fail to provide women with real
opportunities for generating income over the long-term. AID should
support the upgrading and development of implementing institutions based
on their technical capability or potential technical expertise. AID will
support the funding of women-specific organizations only to the extent
that they meet this criterion.

**C. Human Resource and Institutional Development**

1\. *Education*

The education of women and girls has been called by the World Bank \"one
of the best investments a country can make in its future growth and
welfare\" for the following reasons:

The better educated the mother, the less likely the child is to die in
infancy. The children of educated mothers are better nourished and
healthier.

The children of educated mothers are more likely to succeed in school,
more so than if only the father is educated. Their daughters are more
likely to attend school, do well and graduate.

Educated women are more receptive to family planning and tend to have
later marriages and fewer children.

Primary education opens the way to further education or vocational
training in agriculture, health services, etc. and, thereby, increases
the opportunities to find remunerated employment. All these facts are
increasingly recognized, yet the number of female illiterates grows at a
pace faster than males. Two out of three of the world\'s illiterates
today are women. The following table presents literacy rates for
selected countries in which AID works; only in Latin America is the skew
less severe.

Number of Literates in the Population Over 15 Years (by Percent)\*

**Country Year Male Female Total**

**Africa**

Kenya 1980 64.3 35.1 49.6

Liberia 1980 42.2 9.3 25.4

Somalia 1980 10.0 0.5 5.2

Zaire 1980 77.2 39.4 57.9

**Asia**

Bangladesh 1974 37.3 13.2 25.8

India 1971 46.8 18.9 33.4

Nepal 1975 33.4 5.0 19.2

Pakistan 1972 29.6 10.3 20.7

**Latin America**

Ecuador 1974 78.2 70.4 74.2

Guatemala 1973 53.9 38.5 46.1

Honduras 1974 58.9 55.1 56.9

**Near East**

Egypt 1974 53.6 22.4 38.2

\* Source: UNESCO Statistical Handbook 1981.

Third World countries increasingly accept the importance of education
for their populations. Yet girls are still impeded in their access to
education by:

competing household and child care tasks and responsibilities. In poor
families both boys and girls must work, but girls have the added
responsibility of caring for younger siblings.

parents\' negative attitudes toward educating daughters. There is the
fear that education will make girls less compliant and, therefore, less
marriageable. Educating daughters often is considered a poor investment
by the family.

shortage of schools. In countries where schools are segregated by sex,
there are disproportionately fewer girls\' schools.

distance from schools, especially upper-primary schools. Many village
schools are incomplete, offering only the first three or four grades.

shortage of female teachers who can encourage girl students and provide
role models. Housing for female teacher-trainees and teachers is often
inadequate in rural areas.

earlier marriage age for girls keeps them out of school or forces them
to leave school at a younger age. a lack of provision for girls to
re-enter school once they have dropped out.

A variety of direct and indirect programs have been established in some
countries to overcome obstacles, such as programs to improve attitudes
towards female education. Financial rewards and other incentives can be
provided to schools and teachers with high female enrollment in their
classes. Women must be recruited for teacher training programs and
encouraged to teach in rural areas. Alternate child care arrangements
will release young girls so they can attend school. However, no
significant progress in either raising the levels of education in
society as a whole or in increasing upward mobility for women is
possible without a major increase in the number of girls successfully
completing primary and entering academic secondary schools.

2\. *Population, Health and Nutrition*

Among the most important goals of development are better health,
improved nutrition and reduced fertility. In their multiple roles, women
play a central part in strategies to improve health, raise nutritional
levels and reduce population growth. Investments in these areas and in
education are the basis for the development of human capital.

It is not possible to achieve the necessary changes in nutrition, health
and population growth without understanding and addressing the roles of
women. In places where the norms prescribe for a woman the role of child
bearer as the primary means of attaining status, where female children
find their educational prospects limited, where early marriage is the
rule rather than the exception, daughters are typically condemned to the
same conditions which circumscribed their mothers\' lives. If fertility
is to be reduced through the use of voluntary family planning services,
it is necessary to address, through other development efforts, those
factors which may militate against women\'s understanding of and ability
to utilize family planning. Of the factors bearing on women\'s
reproductive behavior, their education and their access to and control
over resources and income are particularly significant.

3\. *Institutions*

Viable self-sustaining institutions at the local, regional and national
levels (both public and private) are critical elements in development.
Unions, cooperatives, credit and lending associations, and markets are
examples of institutions that greatly benefit from women\'s active
participation, while at the same time benefitting women. To the degree
all LDC institutions include and represent women as well as men they
will succeed in providing access to key resources and ensuring the full
development of human capital. Women who combine the skills provided by
modern education with an understanding of the traditional values and
local realities affecting women contribute a great deal to successful
development programming. Thus AID must take measures to provide access
for women to training programs and higher education, especially in the
management and administration of the sectors, to prepare them for
positions from which they can influence policy formation.

Additionally, since most countries today have governmental agencies
assigned to address the needs of women, AID should regard these entities
as channels for both obtaining and disseminating information about women
as well as potential vehicles for carrying out projects to enhance
women\'s economic productivity. In countries where women\'s issues can
*only* be addressed in a segregated context, these women\'s bureaus can
also provide an appropriate institutional contact to inform and advise
AID in its women in development efforts. AID recognizes, however, that
in most countries it is the functional ministries that bear primary
responsibility for integrating women into their programs and for
ensuring the relevance of their programs to the particular needs of
women and girls in order to ensure the success of their overall
activities.

**D. Energy and Natural Resource Conservation**

In the villages of the Third World, women are important providers and
consumers of energy. Traditionally, animal and human energy have been
used to plant, harvest and prepare food, and to obtain fuel for warmth
and cooking. It is usually women and girls who collect the wood, dung
and crop residue used for these purposes. In effect these women are
caught in a kind of vicious circle. In order to obtain fuel for the
household they must expend their own energy. As fuelwood shortages
increase their situation is aggravated. More and more human energy is
required to travel greater distances to collect fuel or to generate cash
income to pay for fuel. In effect, human energy is substituted for
another form: woman\'s labor must increase in proportion to the
ever-decreasing supplies of fuel while women\'s available energy for
labor is increasingly being taxed.

If women are to participate effectively in the development process, the
energy they expend for such activities as obtaining fuel must be reduced
by access to more convenient fuel sources; this frees energy for other
productive activities. Any development project, which proposes to add to
women's workload without commensurate energy savings, can be expected to
fail.

Women, therefore, have a large stake in the success of AID\'s
reforestation projects, which can provide not only fuel, but food,
fodder and medicines, as well as a cash return. Rural women have been
shown to be very knowledgeable about the attributes of both familiar
forest products and new rapid-growing trees for forest plantations.
Women, however, cannot be expected to care for the seedlings and young
trees if the primary benefits will accrue to others. Only if women share
the control of forest product distribution will they have the incentive
to participate in reforestation.

Several other cautions are in order. The adaptation of fuel conserving
stoves and other energy- and labor-saving technologies to village life
has proven to be extremely complex.

Fuel conserving stoves have been slow to be adopted for a variety of
reasons. For example, though the smoke of the old stoves is considered
deleterious to the family\'s and particularly the women\'s health, it
also keeps the insects away.

Solar cookers are of use only in the heat of the day when many women may
prefer not to cook or need to be working away from the house.

Biogas digesters have proven adaptive for pig-raising since pigs can be
penned and fed fairly easily. In a cattle-raising society, however,
either fodder for the cattle must be collected or the dung must be
collected if they graze. Either activity adds time to a woman\'s already
long day.

Labor saving technologies have displaced poor women from some of their
traditional means of livelihood. The spread of mechanized rice mills in
most of Asia, though a boon to the overworked women on the medium and
large farms, has left many poor women destitute. Traditionally these
poor women derived some income from hand processing rice, but it is now
predominately men who own and work the mills.

In one Asian country, Bangladesh, a few rice mills have been set up
under the management of women\'s cooperatives with cooperative members
employed to run the mills. And in Egypt, some women in one village have
organized to bake bread for the rest of the community using solar ovens
which, though very economic in terms of fuel costs, are too
time-consuming for individual households. Therefore these new
technologies can provide the basis for small-scale enterprises with
long-term viability and economic return for village women when
appropriately conceived and implemented.

**E. Water and Health**

AID recognizes that success of water and sanitation programs depends in
large measure on the ability and commitment of people to use, operate
and maintain the systems properly. What is not clearly understood by
project planners is that the relation between water and health is
primarily a women\'s concern.

As mothers, women are the traditional family health guardians and
teachers of hygiene, disease prevention and sanitation. And as mothers
they are largely responsible for the care and raising of children. Thus
the high prevalence of waterborne and parasitic diseases, health
problems due to contaminated water, and consequent high infant mortality
rates are critical concerns to women. Women, therefore, have a strong
stake in the establishment of water and sanitation systems and an
equally strong incentive to make sure the systems are adequately and
continuously maintained.

1\. *Water Use*

Women as primary users and haulers of water can and should play a
significant role in promoting community acceptance of improved water
supply and sanitation programs. As primary water users the question of
access is usually of more importance to women than to men. Will the
location of the water source mean an increase or decrease in the time
spent fetching and hauling it? Furthermore, numerous social and
religious restrictions exist in many regions, which may dictate
restrictions (as in the case of installation of latrines) which will
virtually prohibit men and women, or men and children from using the
same facilities. Or the facilities may be situated too far from the home
so that women will not or cannot use them. A lack of awareness of these
sorts of traditional attitudes can lead to the failure of water and
sanitation projects.

2\. *Water Management*

Once a water supply system is brought to a village, a number of
questions arise regarding its use. Will it be used primarily for
agricultural and irrigation purposes? The need for sufficient available
water for domestic use and for women\'s use in their small home gardens,
where much of family\'s food needs are met, should not be overlooked.
Women and men must not be put into competition with each other over
limited available water. Involving local women in early management and
water-use decisions, in regard to both domestic and agricultural uses,
is critical and ultimately will be beneficial to the entire community.
Wherever feasible water and sanitation projects should include a plan to
train community workers women as well as men in the actual construction,
operation and long-term maintenance of systems. Teaching women to
maintain the water source can lead to long term cost savings.

3\. *Time Allocation*

The time saved from water collection is especially important to women
and to the community. Frequently women use this saved time in expanding
or initiating more economically productive activities like
income-generation. AID Impact Evaluation Report Number 32 states that
with the installation of piped water systems women in one village in
Panama actually doubled their monthly output of small home-produced
goods.

**V. Implementation of the Women in Development Policy**

The responsibility for implementing AID\'s Women in Development Policy
rests with all of AID\'s offices and programs, at all levels of
decision-making. Implementation of this policy must be understood to be
an important qualitative aspect of AID\'s overall program, one, which is
crucial to the achievement of the Agency\'s goals. It is not a concern,
which can adequately be addressed in any one sector alone, or by any
single office or officer.

Several factors may constrain AID\'s implementation of the Women in
Development Policy. These are:

inadequate data on women\'s actual economic roles and a lack of
experience in targeting women for other than welfare-type assistance;

imputed or real sensitivities on the part of some host governments to
interventions which explicitly address gender differences in the
population;

the cross-cutting nature of the Agency\'s women in development policy
which precludes convenient compartmentalization of the issue. In light
of these constraints, AID\'s Women in Development Policy should be
implemented through the following approaches:

**1. Women in Development Activities in AID\'s Project**

Effective implementation of AID\'s Women in Development Policy depends
on the policy being reflected throughout AID\'s portfolio. This shall be
done by:

a\. introducing gender distinctions in the terminology employed in all
of AID\'s program and project documents in order to define more
precisely the social context and impact of AID\'s work.

b\. disaggregating by sex data collected for AID\'s country strategy
formulation, project identification, project design and throughout the
life of projects. This prepares the way for soundness of project
implementation and provides a basis for measuring success/failure in
gender-related terms.

c\. relying on sex-disaggregated social soundness analysis to *inform*
(not merely justify) the project development process.

d\. requiring AID\'s country strategy, project identification and
planning documents (CDSS\'s, PID\'S, PP\'s) to *explicitly* describe
strategies to involve women, benefits and impediments to women and
benchmarks to measure women\'s participation; providing substantive
analysis of these statements during the process of their review.

e\. requiring AID\'s consultants to address women in development issues
by introducing this requirement in their scopes of work.

f\. increasing the number of LDC women involved in AID\'s participant
training programs.

g\. evaluating and assessing the impact of AID\'s programs and projects
according to gender differentials both in relative and absolute terms
with regard to improvements in access to and control over resources and
predicted benefits and returns.

WID projects and WID components of projects will continue to constitute
a mechanism for the Agency to reach women, in circumstances where:

a\. access to females in an integrated setting is constrained by
cultural conditions;

b\. where segregated institutions or facilities are the norm;

c\. where experimental or model activities are being introduced and a
controlled sex-specific environment offers the best hope of success. For
definitional purposes in AID, separate, \"women-only\" projects or
components of projects which are exclusively designed to directly
benefit women *economically* are differentiated from projects, which
provide *services* to women such as maternal-child-health, family
planning services, etc. The former meet the criteria for a \"WID
project\" in reporting funding levels in women in development. The
latter, services to women, do not.

**2. AID\'s Women in Development Office and Women in Development
Officers**

AID\'s Office of Women in Development, in the Bureau for Program and
Policy Coordination, will continue to serve as the Agency\'s focal point
for disseminating relevant information, providing technical advice on
specific women in development issues, granting supplementary funds to
missions and outside groups to support women in development projects,
components of projects, and data collection and analysis.

a\. The Office will offer technical support to AID missions and bureaus
to enhance their capacity to implement the Agency\'s women in
development policy by Participating in CDSS, PID and PP reviews; by
consulting with mission and project staff during TDY\'S, and by
contributing a women in development perspective to the Agency\'s overall
policy development and evaluation efforts.

b\. The Office will grant additional funds to AID\'s missions and
outside groups primarily to support field projects where women in
development concerns are addressed. Additionally, these funds will be
used to support new and/or experimental initiatives where direct
economic benefit will be achieved.

c\. The Office will, together with other PPC offices, fulfill the
coordinating function for AID with the other donors, UN agencies and
non-governmental organizations that are implementing their own women in
development programs.

d\. The Office will commission, compile and disseminate written
resources on subjects related to women\'s economic and productive roles
in LDC\'S, to inform and advise the Agency on scholarly findings and
practical results from worldwide women in development activities.

e\. The Office will seek to systematically collect, bank, assess and
exchange experiences in implementing AID\'s women in development policy
in projects and programs.

f\. The Office will continue to work in cooperation with Title XII and
other universities, the Bureau of the Census, the Department of
Agriculture and other public and private institutions to engage their
expertise in implementing AID\'s policy on women in development through
activities which provide information exchange, research, training and
technical assistance to missions and private groups involved in
development.

AID\'s women in development officers in bureaus and missions will inform
and advise Agency staff and others on effective ways to implement the
Agency\'s policy.

a\. WID officers will be selected based on their knowledge of the
subject of women in development in the setting to which they are
assigned, their knowledge of the Agency\'s women in development policy,
and their ability to act as resources to other staff and contractors in
effectively translating the policy into operational terms.

b\. WID officers will function as resources for the planning and
implementation of work AID is undertaking in *every* sector. They should
not be restricted to a single sector such as health, family planning or
working with PVOs.

c\. WID officers should seek out and make contact with groups and
individuals who are actively engaged in women in development activities
including host country government officials and leaders, women leaders
in the public and private sectors, scholars and researchers, project
personnel and community members who have knowledge of women in
development issues.

**3. AID\'s Support for Other Donor and Host Government Women in
Development Activities**

The United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) has been instrumental in
focusing international attention on women\'s issues as well as
encouraging specific national measures for women in many countries. The
sub-themes of the UN Decade for Women employment, health and education
have important development implications and serve to guide many national
governments in establishing priorities for action in women\'s programs.

Many LDCs now have women\'s bureaus within their government structures.
These national machineries for the advancement of women as they are
termed by the United Nations are important to AID in carrying out its
Women in Development Policy. Whenever appropriate, women\'s bureaus will
be encouraged to undertake activities such as collecting information on
women to supplement existing macro-data sources, carry out action
projects which increase women\'s economic self-sufficiency and encourage
leadership by women leaders and scholars. AID will actively support LDC
efforts to strengthen women\'s organizations and bureaus by granting
funds and providing technical assistance as needed.

AID through its missions will support and encourage the work of regional
UN organizations such as UNECA, UNESCAP and the U.N. agencies such as
FAO, ILO, UNESCO in their efforts to implement their plans of action
relating to the goals of the Decade for Women.