Shifting Burdens: Gender and Agrarian Change Under Neoliberalism

Front Cover
Shahra Razavi
Kumarian Press, 2002 - 265 pages
* Details the effects of structural adjustment policies imposed on agriculture, and their effect on gender relations within rural areas in the developing world
* Empirically grounded case studies from India, Mexico, South Africa, Uganda, and Vietnam

Over the past ten years neoliberal policy shifts in rural development across the globe have reduced the role of government, consigning the costs of services to the rural poor themselves. But what are the gender effects of this change?

The contributors unravel the ways in which economic and social structures, institutions, and policy outcomes are mediated by gender as a social relationship, and consider the degree to which a "diversified livelihoods strategy," touted as the means by which rural families are struggling to improve their standard of living, accurately describes what is taking place on the ground.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
Gender and the Expansion of Nontraditional Agricultural
35
Land Reform and the Empowerment of Rural Women
67
From Where Have All the Flowers Come? Women Workers
93
Leaving the Rice Fields but Not the Countryside Gender Livelihoods Diversification and ProPoor Growth
109
Impact of Microfinance Programs on Poverty and
151
Making a Difference? Gender and Participatory Development
197
Bibliography
233
Index
255
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2002)

Shahra Razavi is Research Co-ordinator at UNRISD. She specializes in the gender dimensions of social development, with a particular focus on livelihoods and social policies. She began her collaboration with UNRISD in February 1993, when she joined the Institute to work on a new research initiative to explore the gender dimensions of economic policy (Technical Co-operation and Women's Lives: Integrating Gender into Development Policy). She has led the Institutersquo;s subsequent research projects on gender, including Gender, Poverty and Well-Being; Agrarian Change, Gender and Land Rights; Globalization, Export-Oriented Employment for Women and Social Policy; and work on Gender Justice, Development and Rights which was carried out as part of the Institute's contribution to the Beijing Plus 5 Review Process. More recently, she coordinated the preparation of the UNRISD report (published in 2005), Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World. Her current research areas include work on Gender and Social Policy, and the rise of Islamic-based politics and gender equality. Prior to joining UNRISD, Shahra was working on her D.Phil. Thesis at St.Antony's College (Oxford University). Her thesis explored the gender dimensions of agricultural commercialization in southeastern Iran, where she carried out field research in 1988. She obtained her D.Phil. in December 1992. Shahra is currently serving on the editorial boards of Development in Practice and Global Social Policy.

Bibliographic information