The way different generations have managed to sustain and reproduce life under conditions of rapid social change compels our respect for the strength, versatility, and resourcefulness of women. We now lament failed development. What has failed is a set of attitudes and structures built by men and maintained with the help of women, which prevent women from being equal partners in development. With more resources available to women, and a more equitable distribution of workloads between men and women, the development story would read very differently. While the failures have been more severe in the third world, the problems underlying them are to be found on all continents.
More research is needed on the hidden needs of women and the hidden resources that women represent.
We need more women and men planners and policy-makers sensitized to these resources and needs. Of course, this project does not stand alone here. Yet the growing number of non-governmental women's networks, United Nations special units, and government programmes focused on women in development have not yet had sufficient impact on mainstream research and planning. The weight of history is against basic changes in the role and status of women and it will take unremitting efforts to integrate women more fully into decision-making everywhere. The researchers who conducted these studies were themselves subject to the pressure of inadequate resources, and are to be commended for having persevered under conditions that would have overcome less hardy students of society.