The establishment of WID
WID perspective was developed by American liberal feminists. “WID” was the name of a women’s caucus formed by the Society for International Development (SID/WID); part of a deliberate strategy to bring gender issues to the attention of policy-makers
Important role also played by the UN Commission on the Status of Women (> UN Decade for Women 1976-85) (see Tinker 1990)
 Emphasis on strategies that would minimize discrimination against women and their disadvantaged economic position.
 This approach was closely linked to and represented a modification of the modernisation paradigm: concern that the benefits of modernisation should be for women as well as men  The solutions to women’s problems were generally envisaged as “technological fixes” of one kind or another.

 Focus on the better integration of women into existing development initiatives. Typical WID projects were income-generating activities with social and welfare components added (cf. Moser’s (1989; 1993) refined typology of WID approaches: welfare, gender equality, anti-poverty, efficiency, and empowerment)

3. Shortcomings of WID (and WAD)
Criticism of WID
 By the mid-late 1970s it was becoming clear that women had often fared worse under modernisation and the development efforts of the past decade.
 WID focused on integration and advocacy for greater participation.
 It didn’t question why women’s position was often declining and what the sources and nature of women’s subordination and oppression were.
 It was often ahistorical and shared in many of the weaknesses of the modernisation paradigm.
 WID also tended to focus on women as producers and ignore or minimise their reproductive