International Labour Organization
SEAPAT
South-East Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary Advisory Team

Some gender planning approaches and strategies

Moser’s Gender Planning Framework 

Features of the framework

One of the most popularly used frameworks is that developed by Caroline Moser. It is based on her concepts of gender roles and gender needs, and policy approaches to gender and development planning. Other sections in this module discuss the concepts of gender roles and gender needs, and contain exercises which clarify an understanding of these concepts.

Moser categorises the main policy approaches to women and development as follows:

• Welfare: Earliest approach, 1950-70. Its purpose is to bring women into development as better mothers. Women are seen as passive beneficiaries of development. It recognises the reproductive role of women and seeks to meet PGNs in that role through top-down handouts of food aid, measures against malnutrition and family planning. it is non-challenging and, therefore, still widely popular.
• Equity: The original WID approach, used in the 1976-85 UN Women’s Decade. its purpose is to gain equity for women, who are seen as active participants in development. It recognises the triple role and seeks to meet SGNs through direct state intervention giving political and economic autonomy, and reducing inequality with men. it challenges women’s subordinate position. It is criticised as Western feminism, is considered threatening, and is unpopular with governments.
• Anti-poverty: The second WID approach, a toned-down version of equity, adopted from the 1970s onwards. Its purpose is to ensure that poor women increase their productivity. Women’s poverty is seen as a problem of underdevelopment, not of subordination. It recognises the productive role of women, and seeks to meet the PGN to earn an income, particularly in small-scale income-generating projects. It is most popular with NGOs.
• Efficiency: The third, and now predominant, WID approach, adopted particularly since the 1980s debt crisis. its purpose is to ensure that development is more efficient and effective through women’s economic contribution, with participation often equated with equity. It seeks to meet PGNs while relying on all three roles and an elastic concept of women’s time. Women are seen entirely in terms of their capacity to compensate for declining social services by extending their working day. very popular approach.
• Empowerment: The most recent approach, articulated by Third World women. Its purpose is to empower women through greater self-reliance. Women’s subordination is experienced not only because of male oppression but also because of colonial and neo-colonial oppression. It recognises the triple role, and seeks to meet SGNs indirectly through bottom-up mobilisation of PGNs. It is potentially challenging, although its avoidance of Western feminism makes it unpopular except with Third World women’s NGOs.

• For planning at all levels from policies to projects
• In conjunction with Harvard framework

• Moves beyond technical elements of planning, recognising its political elements and assuming conflict of interests in the planning process. Recognises the transformative potential of gender planning.
• Conceptualises planning as aiming to challenge unequal gender relations and support women’s empowerment
• Makes all work visible and valuable to planners, through the concept of triple roles
• Distinguishes between types of gender needs: those that relate to women’s daily lives but maintain existing gender relations (practical gender needs), and those potentially transform existing gender subordination (strategic gender needs)
• Categorises policy approaches

• The idea of gender roles obscures the notion of gender relationships and can give the false impression of natural order and equality
• The framework does not mention other forms of inequality, such as class, race or ethnicity
• The framework is static and does not examine change over time as a variable
• The policy approaches should not be seen as mutually exclusive; they may often overlap each other in practice

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