CHAPTER 7

Women, Development, and the World

Growth and Development

Issues of growth and development deeply affect how an individual structures his or her life. Thus, everyone
needs to understand key development issues the world is facing today, including global poverty and
ecological crisis. This chapter will tackle these development issues in relation to poor and vulnerable
women around the world. These problems can have genuine solutions if women’s perspectives are allowed
to shape the shared economy.

Measurement of development is based on a simple scheme that determines the thinking of most people
who control the world’s economy. Development is assessed in terms of the gross national product (GNP)
and the gross domestic product (GDP), which means the growth, is measured according to how much a
country is able to produce, consume, and earn. GNP includes earnings from foreign investments and
activities. GNP and GDP measure economic activity based on how much people in a country are producing
in terms of income-generating products and services, and the amount of consumable and non-consumable
products they are buying. The higher the GDP and GNP, the greater the economic activity. Presumably,
more economic activity equates to greater earnings of the people in that country, raising, and their general
well-being. A continuously growing GNP means a healthy economy because more products, thus,
stimulating production. This simple concept yields a very straightforward explanation of economic growth
and defines a healthy economy.

However, the quest for constant growth is problematic for some reasons. First, the desire for constant
growth drains our natural resources. The more products or services are consumed, the more the resources
vital to human survival is used up. Although most people accept this notion as a fact, it is something that
must be avoided. Humanity is now facing a severe water crisis, such that most of the world’s people will
not have enough water for irrigation and bodily consumption by the middle of this century. The earth is
also losing thousands of species of flora and fauna annually. Forests are disappearing rapidly every year.
The decline and eventual end of the world’s petroleum supply is also imminent. Scientists estimate that we
have reached, or will soon reach, “peak oil”.” Peak oil refers to a state in which all the easily accessible oil
has been consumed and that the only available petroleum supply come from sources that are very difficult
to access. The world has yet to feel the effects of this oil crisis, although difficult-to-access sources of oil
and natural gas have recently been discovered in the Balkan Peninsula and the US. However, with the
world’s current level of consumption, peak oil is only being delayed.

It is not hard to imagine the suffering people might face with lack of water. The very survival of human
beings, their livestock, and their crops will be threatened by crisis. Loss of species is a great threat to
human survival because genetic variety is the basis of the resilience of all living creatures. Extinction
shrinks the DNA variety which developed over millions of years, and may affect the chances of survival of
the world’s creatures, including the plants and animals that human beings depend on for survival. A drastic
decline in petroleum supply will also be devastating. Oil is not only the main fuel in manufacturing and
transportation, but also a major resource for agriculture since modern nitrogen fixers are now petroleum
based.
People must begin reflecting the causes of these destructions and depletions. What is causing the severe
shortage of water that will soon reach crisis proportions in the foreseeable future? One answer is global
warming. Because Earth is getting warmer, the wind patterns in the sea are changing directions such that
rain is not reaching its usual destinations. Thus, underground water tables fed by rainwater are drying up.
Because temperatures are climbing higher, mountain glaciers are also beginning to melt which implies
water scarcity in some areas dependent on mountain water. Moreover, pollution is threatening the water
supply systems, making water harmful for consumption and even toxic to the animals that live there.

What is causing the great warming and pollution that is threatening the world’s water supply? The answer
is human production and consumption. Mass production is pushing current agricultural activities to use too
much water from the water supplies, and is inducing the other industries to give off waste in the
environment, resulting in widespread pollution. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change—a study
group of the most influential scientists who study the world’s climate—reiterated in 2014 that global
warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by human modes of
transportation and energy-intensive production systems. In total, daily human activities generate large
amounts of greenhouse gas emissions—from driving between destinations, to eating food imported from
other parts of the globe, to using air-conditioning or heating systems for regulation of temperature. The
human carbon footprint is very heavy on Earth. In the end, high levels of production and consumption are
the major reasons of mankind’s dependence on oil and its depletion.

Women and the Dominant Economic System

The pursuit for development is destructive to the world, threatening human existence and well-being. It is
unsustainable yet people insist on pursuing growth because it is assumed to be necessary for sustaining
economies and maintaining collective existence. This road toward development, however, is causing vast
ecological destruction and is not benefitting the majority of the world’s people. In fact, it is keeping the
majority poor. Environmental destruction exposes most of the world’s people to flooding and severe
weather conditions, causing loss of homes, food and water shortages, and diseases. Unfortunately, a
greater proportion of these vulnerable people are poor women. These rather unfortunate effects of
growth and development sadly affect women negatively, in part due to their socialized gender roles. Global
warming directly affects workers in the agricultural sector who are mostly women. People in households
responsible for providing water for their families are also women.

Development continuously draws cheap labor to the cities where economic activity is high. However,
women participating in cheap labor have to take on the additional burden of child-rearing. Women who
work in factories are also prone to risky jobs in exchange of lower pay than men. Being the primary health
providers in their families and communities, women too suffer from negative health effects of global
warming, industrialization, and the squalor of expanding urbanization—all of which are the direct effects of
the pursuit of growth.

The dominant system toward development needs to be re-examined because of its potential for harm.
However, no opportunities for re-examination are available at present. All people are convinced that the
existing system is beneficial and that it is the only route worth realizing because people’s values are
determined by this system. Somehow, all people are recruited in making sure production and consumption
are preserved at levels that sustain the existing system of wealth accumulation. Unfortunately, the world’s
governments and economic elites are maintaining this system to serve a small minority. It can be said that
economic development is threatening humanity’s well-being and perhaps even its survival.

The existing development models are clearly very Western. They were developed from a history of wealth
accumulation that required the colonization of non-European peoples and lands. Although people will
argue that the development and great wealth accumulation of the West is rooted in their creativity and
inventiveness, it is clear that they would not have grown their economies to their present proportions
without having extracted resources from their colonies. A large factor for the development of European
economies was the use of slave labor from Africa, the acquisition by force of land from various peoples
such as the native Americans for cotton production and the Philippines for sugar, the extraction of
resources like gold and spices in ways that destroyed native habitats and cultures, and the imposition of
products that destroyed local economies like how they imposed cheap textiles in India and mass-produced
livestock that compete with the backyard livestock farmers of the world.

Western countries used the resources of their resources of their colonies to accumulate the capital that
allowed them to develop their industries and support their standard of living. Thus, even if the former
colonies, which are known as the developing nations of the Global South are disadvantage by the existing
system, they have no choice but to further and implement this system because the so-called developed
nations insist that the world supports their affluence. Even if backyard farmers suffer from competition
with giant food corporations that produce cheaper meat using energy-hungry, carbon-intensive, and
polluting systems, national governments still support the entry of global, multinational corporations into
their territories. Some powerful corporations even control how nations use land, resources, and labor.
These shared resources of nations are employed for wealth creation through processes that are
determined by multinational corporations. Whether one agrees or opposes liberal trade of the market
economy, the fact is that developed nations are what they are because they historically exploited the
colonies they conquered.

Although it is debatable to what degree these corporations control economies and how much harm they
can do, this system is still based on conquest and exploitation. Without conquest and exploitation, there
would have been no massive and phenomenal wealth accumulation. Even if one claims that Western
development is due to their technological inventiveness, the product of this inventiveness, however,
required some form of violence against nature and their colonized peoples. Women have particularly
suffered this violence. When industrialization began to peak and cheap labor was needed to address the
growing demands for workers, women were made to fill the gap. Women are traditionally paid lower
salaries than men. In the developing world, sweatshops employ women to expected to produce and raise
the future manpower for industries, often having to take on the double burden of child-rearing and income
generation because economic development demands that their husbands be paid insufficient wages.

Gender and Development

Women who choose to participate in the dominant system are made to accept its values. From the
perspective of the dominant system, these values are supposed to result in a better life, although these
same values compel women to decide between success in the electronic system and the cultivation of
family and community life. It has been the situation because the dominant system, which remains
unchallenged, is mainly defined by Western male values that do not hold high regard for alternative values.
Well-being based on consumption, income growth, and the push for more wealth is never questioned,
while well-being founded on relationships, community, and fulfillment is set aside.

An individual is expected to earn a living and almost everyone will end up working in institutions that
operate on profit and growth. One has to be involved in some form of livelihood where the accumulation
of personal wealth is a primary value, continuous growth and improvement are a matter of well-being, and
one’s worth is based on what one is able to consume and own. These values have implications for the way
a person lives his or her life. An individual is obliged to acquire a certain level of income to feel his or her
value and worth in a community, and to keep up with accumulation, growth, and consumption at levels
that can support his or her society.

What kind of economic activities does one have to engage afford overpriced coffees, dinners in the latest
artisanal restaurants, and expensive gadgets? What does a person have to do to afford designer clothes
and bags and be able to travel to exotic locations? One has to participate in economic activities that allow
for considerable income generation. For instance, he or she may need to become a successful
entrepreneur to afford these expenses.

If you are to become a successful entrepreneur, you must be driven to find new ways to increase
production and sales, to source the cheapest supplies, to ensure market visibility, and to constantly keep
an eye for “the next big thing” to sell. You must be able to keep inputs low and sell products high. In a very
competitive market, you may be forced to source from exploited producers who pay workers or suppliers
amounts that cannot even provide the latter access to decent health care. Successful entrepreneurship
may entail employing poor women who will have to work for long hours in unfavorable conditions in order
to cut expenses and increase profit. It may mean frequent commutes and long hours of work for the
employee, which translates into less time with his or her children as you are busy building wealth and
income through continuous growth and development. Such a life takes away time from the family and
community, and pushes one to adopt values of individualism and aggressiveness that do not encourage or
allow for deep relationships.

These observations may be thought of as sexist and even detrimental to women because these beliefs tend
to place women in a position of subordination in dominant economic systems. The very reason why
women are relegated to roles such as teaching and health care is because they are perceived to be more
caring. Women are also thought of as not capable of thriving on competition or being in managerial
positions. Cultural circumstance and historical gender assignment of roles have enforced internal and
external controls that make women genuinely develop certain values. These values revolve around the
building of community and solidarity, the preservation of relationships, and the care of people. Women are
said to value dialogue and accommodation because of the recognition of the pluralism in society, and they
end to see personhood as “relational” rather than “autonomous” or “individualistic”. Feminist scholars
have noted that patriarchal values, or values associated with the subordination of women, have influenced
the present economic system to be built on aggression. This economic system has taken the form of war,
colonization, land – grabbing, strip mining, deforestation, and intensive farming. Many of these activities
use slave labor, and the dispossession of most of the peoples of the world of their ancestral lands and
access to livelihood, only in order for a few families to accumulate wealth. Modern Western economies are
built on these acts of violence and the values of individualism, conquest, and contests which inspire and
fuel them.
Agriculture and the Values of Development
Examine the development of agriculture to see how patriarchal values to define what a big business is. In
today’s world, food is controlled by a few large corporations that values profit over ecology. These
corporations produce a variety of food from freshly packed meat and canned goods to fast foods and
snacks. These companies supply the world with meats and cereals that are mass – produced. In order to
mass produce, they need farmers who will grow large amounts of chicken, pigs, and cows in pens. These
livestock will all come from a particular genetic stock and will be kept alive with feeds that are filled with
vitamins and antibiotics. The same is true for the wheat, rice, and corn they produce which are used for
many human needs. These plants are all developed from one kind of stock that can only survive or be
made fruitful if supplied with artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Also, the seeds of these plants cannot be
replanted because they are designed in such a way that they cannot be fertilized.

Big companies plant in large farms where their crops will be grown by the ton. For instances, if they need
corn, they will grow all the corn using massive machinery that pumps large amount of chemicals. This
breed of corn can only grow with specific fertilizers and pesticides designed for it. If one owns a medium –
sized or small farm, most of the seeds available for commercial planting are also designed for mass
production and demand the input of specific fertilizers and pesticides. Why is this advantageous for big
companies? First, they get a supply of corn in the size and shape that they can process to cereal in large
volumes efficiently. Second, producing this way provides a cheap supply of corn because it can be farmed
in mass. Third, this practice allows big companies to earn more because they are the main buyers of this
type of corn and thus, they can dictate the buying price to the farmers. Finally, this system of factory
farming allows other multinational corporations to earn more money by producing and selling the inputs
that are required by the seeds. They end up having a monopoly of the inputs and also dictate the price to
the farmers. Finally, this system of factory farming allows other multinational corporations to earn money
by producing and selling the inputs that are required by the seeds. They end up having a monopoly of the
inputs and also dictate the price to the farmers.

What is the problem with this form of production? One major problem is that it pollutes water systems and
destroys the soil. When the fertilizer seeps into the waterways, it kills the life or encourages the growth of
alien organisms, thus negatively affecting the native aquatic life. Small farmers do not actually earn enough
from this system because they have to keep buying expensive seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides from
multinational corporations. Farmers hardly break even because, in many instances, they have to borrow
money for these inputs from traders who charge high interest rates. Lastly, this system promotes
monoculture which means that many species of plants life will eventually get wiped out because they are
no longer cultivated by farmers or their habitats are being destroyed to plant the commercial corn for
cereals.

This great reduction in biodiversity has a destructive effect on the sustainability of life as we know it. The
lack of diversity leads to the depletion of DNA stock that may influence the resilience of the surviving
species. It is imperative to maintain the diversity of species especially in the face of the adverse effects of
climate change.
FAST FACTS!!!

 Some 75% of plants genetic diversity has been lost since the 1900s as farmers worldwide have left
their multiple local varieties and “landraces” for genetically uniform, high – yielding varieties.
 Around 30% of livestock breeds are at the risk of extinction; six breeds are lost each month.
 Today, 75% of the world’s food is generated from just 12 plants and five animals’ species.
 Of the 4% of the 250,000 – 300,000 known plant species that are edible, only 150 – 200 are used by
humans and only three – rice, maize, and wheat – contribute to nearly 60% of calories and proteins
obtained by humans from plants.
 Animals provide some 30% of human requirements for food and agricultural and 12% of the
population lives almost entirely on products from ruminants.

How Women Feed the World

Women are known keepers of biodiversity throughout the world. In small farms in Africa and many parts
of Asia, women cultivate small backyard farms, thus preserving hundreds of species. Around 18 to 120
species are farmed in small gardens that are separate from cash crop hectarage. As much as 230 plants
species in Thai home gardens and some 150 plant species in India backyard farms are used for food,
fodder, or medicines. Mexican peasants use nearly 435 flora and fauna species for various purposes. The
preservation of plant species in these countries is directly tied to how the locals utilize their understanding
of which species are suited to a given environment without resorting to planting methods that impose the
use of artificial chemicals and processes. Thus, “small agricultural farms are hundreds of times more
productive than industrial farms based on conventional farming”. Women plant more nutritious food
than those produced by multinational corporations. Food produced through women’s ways of knowing –
that is rooted in traditional methods – is healthier because the food is not processed, hence, offering a
variety of natural sources of vitamins and minerals.

Multinational companies are aggressively pushing for monocultures in the quest for wealth accumulations.
This aggressive push is founded on patriarchal values. Vandana Shiva, an ecofeminist and environmental
activist, makes this observation:

“Agriculture based on diversity, decentralization, and improving small farm productivity through ecological
methods is a woman – centered, nature – friendly agriculture. In this agriculture, knowledge is shared –
other species and plants are kin, not property – and sustainability is based on the renewal of the earth’s
fertility and the renewal and regeneration of biodiversity and species richness on farms. There is no place
for monocultures of genetically engineered crops or IPR monopolies on seeds. Monocultures and
monopolies symbolize patriarchal agriculture.”

She Adds:

“The violence intrinsic to the destruction of diversity through monocultures, and the destruction of the
freedom to save and exchange seeds through IPR monopolies, is inconsistent with women’s diverse, non –
violent ways of knowing nature and providing food security.”

The observation illustration how the world – and its development – is built on violent traits that is
essentially masculine and patriarchal. It also shows how women’s ways can cultivate sustainable human
existence and may hold clues to how humans can develop the world without violence and self –
destructive.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations claims that women – cultivated small farms
feed more people and provided better nutrition than large monoculture farms. The report explains exactly
what women do and how they do it. Below is an excerpt from the report.

“Women produce more than half of all grow food produced globally. Women produce more than half of all
the food that is grown. In sub – Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, they produce up to 80 percent of basic
foodstuffs. In Asia, they provide from 50 – 90 percent of the labor for rice cultivation. And in Southeast Asia
and the Pacific as well as Latin America, women’s home gardens represent some of the most complex
agricultural systems know.

Women in the rural areas are almost exclusively responsible for the nutrition of their children, from
gestation through weaning and throughout the critical period of growth. In addition, they are the principal
food producers and prepares for the rest of the family. In general, most of this food comes from homes
gardens or from family and community plots. But it has been found that women also spend a significant
part of their household income – a much larger part proportionately than men – on buying additional food
for the family.

Food preparation involves work far beyond caring for crops and livestock. Women must gather the wood
for fires and carry the water they need for cooking and processing food. In many regions of the world,
women spend up to five hours preparing food. In additional, rural women provide most of the labor for
farming, from soil preparation to harvest. After the harvest, they are almost entirely responsible for
operations such as storage, handling, stocking, marketing, and processing. As more and more men migrate
from rural areas in search of work, women bear a heavier burden. In some regions of Africa, 60 percent of
households are now headed by women. The expanded workload can prompt women to cultivate less labour
– intensive –though less nutritious – crops and to use agricultural practices that may harm the
environment.

Women also play a crucial roles as custodians of genetic diversity and related knowledge on varieties and
their uses, be it for food, medicine, or cultural or other applications. From generation to generation, they
pass on this vital knowledge to their daughter’s.”

Although focused on food security, these insights show how women are vital to human growth. While this
growth does not necessarily involve economic growth, rural women can sustain life better than big
businesses. Their way of being productive has less impact on the environment. Thus, they are a proof that
one need not rely on destructive, mass production – based development to feed the world.

Despite the important contribution of women in food production, they are not supported as producers and
feeders of the world. They neither have access to land nor are given rights for land use. Few programs are
available to support their work in cultivation because government and private investments are focused on
commercial farming in the beliefs that the latter can feed the world better and create greater wealth. The
world market is also primarily focused on sustaining the activities of commercial producers who have
confined human diet to a few species of livestock and vegetables. The moneyed consumers would rather
buy food produced by large corporations because it is cheaper and is deceptively more attractive due to
artificial flavors, fats, salt, and sugar. This cheaply produced food does not contribute to good health, in
fact, it marginalized poor farmers. In sum, these dominant economic practices could bring about the
demise of the practices of women who care for the earth and who favor alternative practices.
Women in Relation to Development
Because development is still based on aggressive masculine values, women themselves must act together
in enriching, or correcting, this narrow view of development. Thus, there is a need to articulate a potential
framework for the participation and engagement of women as agents of development.

Many non-governmental and multi-lateral agencies like the UN and the World Bank understand that
women empowerment and capacity-building are key to realizing self-development and achieving the well-
being of women. However, these goals are hampered by social and economic systems, hence the many
efforts of these agencies to transform these obstructive systems. A crucial area is the exclusion of women
in decision-making and governance structures and many agencies have worked at overcoming hindrances
against the participation of women in these processes. However, this approach implies a tendency that
women need some form of intervention from an influential agency to effect change. What this approach
misses out is the need for women to realize change according to their own agency. Often, when an
institution like the World Bank institutes change, it creates reform according to its own agenda—which
inevitably promotes the dominant agencies and only according to certain conditions. Women are not still
the primary agents who would determine the shape of the economic order they will follow. In addition, the
system in which they are empowered to serve do not serve their interests. The Women, Culture, and
Development (WCD) approach to development is a new model for empowering women. This approach
advances women liberation by realizing the capacity of women to become agents of change.

The WCD approach builds the possibilities of women as agents of change in a holistic perspective that is
based on women’s culture, system of values and understanding, as well as economic structures and social
systems. WCD partners are tasked with encouraging women to take on this role. To see the potential of
women shaped by this perspective allows a WCD practitioner to appreciate the multifaceted forces
hindering a woman’s development and emancipation. As practitioner of development, they will have to
work with women toward their emancipation, study women’s situations, and understand their concrete
possibilities and their desires regarding emancipation. This world mean engaging in holistic studies and
women’s initiatives around the world, and discovering what women are doing to emancipate themselves.

The most important purpose of WCD is to support women’s initiatives that liberate themselves without
imposing ideas. In India, WCD partners have formed cooperatives for women vendors to increase the
latter’s economic advantage and to protect them against exploitative men. Women of the Amazon have
organized themselves together with other rubber tree tappers to resist rubber tree destruction. Women in
several communities in Africa have also gathered together to resist genital mutilation. These examples are
only a few of the many instances mentioned in the book Feminist Futures about initiatives undertaken
toward women’s liberation. The book highlights the importance of women-initiated projects rooted in their
real situations and the actions women undertake for emancipation. WCD advocates believe that women as
active agents should and can be emancipated only if they emancipate themselves, with the supporting
development agencies respecting their process toward this liberation. Therefore, women’s development
must be rooted in the transformation of the totality of societal/cultural and economic realities that shape
and limit a woman’s agency. They should be agents of their own development according to their
understanding of human growth.

Women today are said to have acquired economic power. They are now to shape policies in corporations
as executives (although rarely as CEOs) and as consumers who have buying power. This progress means
that women can be influential in determining what gets manufactures, how employees are treated, and
what safety standards should be adopted. However, women still has to conform to the underlying
patriarchal values of endless growth and wealth accumulation, and the prioritization of societal and
abstract relations over the buiding of communities and families. This system to which women must
conform is called a paternalistic system.

Pro-Women Perspectives on Development

Pro-economic development may be detrimental to everyone but it has a more negative impact on women.
According to Shiva, an economic system that is geared toward growth and accumulation is anti-women and
anti-environment. She has a point. The way humans realize this accumulation is through a system of
growth that understands development as the transformation of nature through manpower and
technological intervention.

From the perspective of Western development, raw nature is a wasted resource that ought to be
transformed into a tradable commodity or things that can then be transformed into instruments of wealth
accumulation in the market. Thus, a forest is underdeveloped unless it can be harvested for wood and
converted into agricultural land for cash crop production or into real estate. Bodies of water are a waste
unless they can be utilized for irrigation, hydroelectric power, or bottled water. However, the more
transformation goes into production, the more expensive a commodity can be sold and the more money
can be made from it. In sum, the economic systems intervene and harvest so that it can be turned into
commodities using energy-hungry multistep processes. This cycle of intervention, transformation, and
processing for accumulation and consumption form what may be called destructive development.

Western people intervened in nature and traditional cultures using violent means of processing and
appropriation. They took away from nature its capacity to renew itself and sustain life, and from women
their ability to create non-destructive engagements with nature centered on preserving life. Women and
traditional communities were denied access to their most fundamental source of life and livelihood. Using
intrusive and destructive means, forests were cleared, wildlife was depleted; soil was made barren, and
water was polluted and drained. Thus, nature could not renew itself according to its natural cycles. Women
had to work harder to obtain water from displaced waterways, plant crops in less productive soil, and lose
access to fish and other accessible sources of protein because their natural supplies have been removed or
depleted as a result of the modernization of economy. Development as we know it, destroys the resource
base of women’s creativity and productivity and nature’s sustainability.

Subsistence economies are assumed to be underdeveloped because “they do not participate

overwhelming in the market economy, and do not consume commodities produced for and distributed
through the market even though they might be satisfying those needs through self-provisioning
mechanisms”. These economies are considered “underdeveloped” by international development
standards even if their inhabitants are healthier from the kind of food and clothing they produce using less
stressful traditional methods that are more appropriate and sustainable to their environment.

Nonetheless, many subsistence economies can provide a good equality of life. Shiva rightly observes that,
“On the contrary, millets are nutritionally far superior to processed foods, houses built with local materials
are far superior, being better adapted to the local climate and ecology, natural fibres are preferable to
man-mad fibres in most cases, and certainly more affordable. Western societies undermine these
economies because they wish to promote and press their own version of good human life. The impositions
of their ways of living, however, destroys wholesome and sustainable lifestyles and create real material
poverty, or misery, by the denial of survival needs themselves, through the diversion of resources to
resource-intensive commodity production. Cash crop production and food processing take land and water
resources away from sustenance needs, and exclude increasingly large numbers of people from their
entitlements to food. Clearly, a modern development does not exactly lead to greater well-being. Hence,
much of human subsistence and even flourishing is endangered by the reduction of nature to the market.

There is a genuine need to re-examine what most understand as development. This task is particularly
important for women to realize because “it is now imperative to recover the feminine principle as the basis
for development which conserves and is ecological. Women in traditional societies still understand how to
provide for living since they have not fallen into the destructive traps of development. Their voice needs to
be cultivated and allowed to influence and transform the dominant model.

Women who reside in the rural and more traditional world are oriented toward the care of the
environment, the community, and the family. Because the dominant male-centric economic rationality is
so pervasive, these women need to preserve their way of life against this aggressive, destructive system.
As noted above, women are responsible for the care of their families while men are recruited for cheap
labor under the Westernized world. Women preserve their natural environments, keep their traditional
wisdom, preserve sustainable practices, and even take responsibility for the natural world’s reproductive
health. Despite all these tasks, their labor is not valued. In fact, they are looked down as underdeveloped
and are sees as dependent on the dominant system for assistance in realizing genuine human flourishing.

No matter how much improvement happens on this Western system so fight poverty, a significant
population of the Earth will still remain poor. It is because the kind of wealth accumulation demanded by
Western development requires that the majority of the people work for less so that a few can accumulate
more. This view is now an accepted fact but but has no trickle – down effect. This reality for women is
summed up well in following paragraph.

“The UN Decode for Women was based on the assumption that the improvement of women’s economic
position would automatically flow from an expansion and diffusion of the development process. Yet, by the
end of the decade, it was becoming clear that development itself was the problem. Insufficient and
inadequate ”participation” in development was not the cause for women’s increasing under – development;
it was rather their enforced but asymmetric participation in it, by which they bore the cost but were
excluded from the benefits, that was responsible. Development exclusivity and dispossession aggravated
and deepened the colonial processes of ecological degradation and the loss of political control over nature’s
sustenance base. Economic growth was a new colonialism, draining resources away from those who
needed them most. The discontinuity lay in the fact that if was now the new national elites, not colonial
powers, that masterminated the exploitation on grounds of national interest and growing GNPs, and it was
accomplished with more powerful technologies of appropriation and destruction.”

Clearly, women need to participate in development that is more than just an expansion of the existing
economic system. Development should not simply mean the Westernization of the world. Women of
different cultures must come together and demand that their voices be heard. It is important for both men
and women, Westernized or not, that women be given the chance to participate in re – imagining a
possible economic system that defines prosperity and well – being. Since women have valuable knowledge
about ecological preservation, solidarity – building, and shared prosperity, they can enlighten the
dominant system about how to build a more sustainable and humane economic order amidst threats of
global warming and poverty.