Gendering the Development Agenda

Gendering the Development Agenda Scholars of Women’s Studies are continuously critically engaging with culturally defined gender roles and raising questions about the way we have organized ourselves, our major political and social institutions and knowledge itself. To understand the meaning that these scholars imply when they speak of gendering development agenda and the agenda itself, it becomes imperative to understand the following five forms of the interaction between feminism and development: From the above table, we can deduce that the paradigm that actually most prominently talks about gendering development is Gender and Development, though all paradigms have certain implications to this regard. [1] Since development intends to change people’s lives, individually and collectively, it takes into its purview the established structures and institutes. Overlooking relevant gender factors in macroeconomic policies and institutions can undermine the successful outcome of those very same policies and institutions as these structures have gendered dimensions which influence the processes as well as the impact of development. Therefore, it is imperative that gender perspectives, especially women’s voices and perspectives, inform policy making and development planning.[2] Gendering the development agenda makes women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences indispensable to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all policies and programmes intended for development. It entails the embedding of gender mainstreaming and gender equality in all development agendas and asserts that without a gender perspective, development will remain but an unfinished agenda. It also talks about investing in women, not because of instrumentalism, but because of its value in its own right and their treatments subjects, not objects of policies in the political and international realm. Development policies are unlikely to be effective if disadvantaged groups in the process of development do not have the capacity to obstruct unsatisfactory policy outcomes. Therefore, planners and policy-makers must be watchful of the major aspects of socially endorsed gender functions and the specific needs of both the genders. If development policies are to be sustainable, they must consider existing gender disparities in employment, poverty, family life, health, education, the environment, public life and decision-making bodies Gendering the development agenda focusses on immediate issues like reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence alongside long-term issues such as patriarchy, stereotyping, objectification, and oppression. It encompasses a retake on the definition of desirable development and the strategies needed to achieve it and rethinking of development as a masculine enterprise, throughout the planning cycle. It talks about a paradigm shift from a view of development planners in which women are vulnerable and should be provided with aid to the view in which women can be empowered actors of development and challenging the traditional balance of power. Women need not be seen as victims, but their capacities as social actors who are capable of affecting change should be acknowledged and their voices should be a part of the dialogue for an inclusive and gendered development agenda. This approach looks at women’s real problem as the imbalance of power between men and women and focuses on both women’s practical as well as strategic gender needs by challenging existing divisions of labour and power relations. Thus, gendering the development agenda uses a gender lens to formulate development and shape policy, taking into account the significance of gender relations as an organising dimension within households, communities and public policies, and the implications of the universal practice of placing women in an inferior position as compared to men. If private sector labour and credit markets alongside private process of information dissemination make it likely that women will be less mobile than men, then public mechanisms must exist to offset the bias. A gender analysis of Structural Adjustment moved the focus from UNICEF’s concern with women as a vulnerable group to an understanding of the male bias in economic policies. Gendering development agenda implies not simply conducting ‘impact’ studies and auditing of budgets without being given a chance to develop and critique content of policies and budgets with respect to gender. It denotes acceptance of gender needs, not for instrumental reasons such as ‘educate women to reduce fertility’ but for reasons in their own right such as ‘educate women so as to enhance their functionings and capabilities and expand their freedoms’. It means not only well establishing gender in development discourse, but for the extent of change in women’s lives to match the discursive landslide and the development of effective gender policies within key policy spaces and documents. It represents, not a token, partial or selective incorporation of gender into policies, but an infiltration inside development agencies of gender to combat the current development planning orthodoxies and ineffective mainstreaming and changes to goals, s trategies, actions and to organizations, institutions, cultures and behaviours. It involves taking care of not only practical gender needs but also strategic gender needs and the gender division of labour that creates those needs. It envisages a pro women agenda with women specific expenditures in the areas of water supply, sanitation, solid waste management and bus transit. Identifying gender constraints is important while formulating policy. Explaining this through an example, 30% of labor in all agricultural activities is supplied by women in India and less than 10% of women farmers own land. So over 90% of women don’t have access to information and farm support services as the traditional focus of most extension services remains the farmer-landowner,who is in a position to claim credit and invest in inputs and new technology.[3] Gender relations are specific mechanisms whereby different cultures determine the functions and relationships of each sex and their access to material resources, like land, credit and training, and ephemeral resources such as power. Gender relations manifest themselves in the form of division of labour, fiscal and financial policies, the responsibilities of family members inside and outside the home, education and opportunities for professional development and a say in policy-making.[4] Therefore, themes related to development include the inequality between genders across all areas (even those such as infrastructure and economics which are apparently ‘gender neutral’), the disproportionate amount of work done by women, and yet the absence of women in development policy or group decision making—in general, all of this being linked to the subordination of women. The development agenda, covers, but is not limited to education, health, economic participation and oppor tunity and political empowerment. It includes all areas of life and all policies – fiscal, trade, agriculture, industry, infrastructure, labor and employment. In most economies, women encounter difficulty with regard to availing credit facilities as they are unable to put collateral up the collateral that lending institutions require. Legislation doesn’t grant women with property rights at par with men or at times fails to acknowledge them as heads of household. There are also barriers for them for joining farmers associations, especially those concerned with processing and marketing.[5] Gendering the development agenda encompasses the three aspects of gendering of international development policy, the interrogation of development policy through a gender lens and the analysis of global structural change. Gendering it would involve acknowledging non-typical and changing gender roles and questioning cultural norms regarding families and households. This understanding extends the agenda from women’s reproductive roles (health, family planning, education), through economic roles (employment, income generation, household budgeting) to generic issues of macro-economic planning, environmental degradation and conservation, structural adjustment and debt and civil and political organisation. For engendering, the development agenda includes the growth model which entails perceiving women, first, as producers of economic goods by recognition which requires integrating male-female differences in their constraints and potential to development policies and second, of non-economic goods that contribute to development which entails incorporating unpaid work as a macro-economic variable which contributes to the well-being of population and in the formulation of human capital. The 11th Five Year Plan itself had a lot of provisions for gendering the development agenda. To cite an example, the Plan stated â€Å"that 85% of farmers who are small and marginal are increasingly women and who find it difficult to access the inputs†¦Ã¢â‚¬  and that â€Å"with the share of female workforce in agriculture increasing, and increased incidence of female-headed household, women names should be recorded as cultivators in revenue records [†¦] the gender bias in institutions for information, credit, inputs, marketing should be corrected by gender-sensitizing the existing infrastructure providers; women’s co-operatives and other forms of group effort should be promoted.† It also stated that female beneficiaries must be 30% in all schemes and women’s credit fund must be set up alongside provision of women-friendly technologies and appropriate training. Another instance of a gendered approach could be the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons’ Report on the Post 2015 Development Agenda, submitted to the UN Secretary General which proposes that gender equality be integrated across all goals, both in specific targets and making sure that targets are measured separately for women and men, girls and boys. To summarize, the development agenda must consider existing gender disparities in the various aspects of development as shown on the following page: References: Pearson, Ruth (2006), Gender and Development, in Clark, David Alexander [ed], The Elgar Companion to Development Studies, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, pp189-196 Peet, Richard and Hartwick, Elaine (2009), Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives, [Second Edition], The Guilford Press, New York and London, pp240-274 Graham, C. (1994), Safety Nets, Politics and the Poor: Transitions to Market Economies, Washington DC: Brookings Institution Vivien, J. (1995), How safe are social safety nets, European Journal of Development Research, Vol 7 No 1 Young, K. (1997), Gender and Development, in N. Visvanathan, L. Duggan, L. Nisonoff N. Wiegersma [eds], The Woman, Gender and Development Reader, (pp. 51-53) National Alliance of Women (2008), Engendering the 11th Five Year Plan, 2007-2012 http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/am307e/am307e00.pdf, accessed on 4th June, 2014 http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsummit/english/fsheets/women.pdf, accessed on 4th June, 2014 http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x2919e/x2919e04.htm, accessed on 4th June, 2014 [1] It must be noted that gender, being used in this context, implies its abstract nature in terms of the absence of a concrete, visible and countable body as compared to women and its relational nature in terms of the system of relations between men and women. [2] Since gender is seen as a universal organising principle of all human activity in the social, economic and cultural realm, it is rational that gender analysis should be central to all policy and practice that is aimed at engaging with and eliminating international inequality and poverty through developmental efforts. [3] Another example for this, comes from Chile, where the introduction of a new scheme (POJH) targeting heads of household (mostly made leads, women were 25-30% of beneficiaries), and which paid 40 percent of the minimum wage, led to the feminisation of a pre-existing programme (PEM), paying only one quarter of the minimum wage. (Graham 1994; Vivien 1995). [4] For instance, gendered exclusion in a lot of sectors is linked to the public/private divide that identifies men’s role as being in the public world of politics and paid employment, and women’s in caring and child-rearing in the home. [5] A closely related instance in which women have access to credit, but access remains inadequate due to gender relations that adversely affect women is the provision of credit to low income landless women in rural Bangladesh. Research finding suggest that the official figures mask a great degree of male appropriation of women’s loans. This is found to be an outcome of women’s inability to control resources allocated to them and mediation by powerful social relations and gender ideologies that put them in a subordinate position and do not give them full autonomy.

TV Families and Real Families Essay -- Family, television

As early as 1950, television families have depicted not only the way we live today, but also the way we ought to live (Tueth, 2003). Hence, television has continued to present comedies about family life that ranges from the didactic model of domestic conventionalist and gradually to non-conventionalist ways of life. By conventionalist, I mean the depiction of the â€Å"nuclear† family that consists of clear roles, responsibilities, and gentle lines of authority that flow from the wise dad and understanding mom to the obedient children (Kutalas, 2005). Examples of these types of shows between 1947 to 1990 that constructed more than 60% of family sitcoms included: The Cleavers, The Cosby Show, Father Knows Best, Family Ties, and Growing Pains (Morgan & Signorielli, 1990). The original nuclear families portrayed in shows such as Father Knows Best, were also defined as having a father who was the breadwinner, the rule maker, and the mediator of disputes, a mother who was socia ble, witty, and good natured, and an average of 2.2 children that mostly consisted of boys that were obedient, and when confused, they would find out that father did know best, even about their personal childhood problems. These conventional sitcoms worked as a formula that changed the expectations of viewers who would find these families not only amusing, but instructional and taught moral lessons each episode (Tueth, 2003). And by non-conventionalist ways of life, I mean families which were â€Å"non-nuclear†, such as single parent families and gay families. These types of families made up 40% of the family sitcoms and included shows such as: Who’s The Boss, Kate and Allie, and Modern Family (Morgan & Signorielli, 1990). Making up more than 80% of the dramatic ... ...thin 22-minutes, but they may also view it in a way to learn how to handle certain family or marital problems (Morgan & Signorielli, 1990). Works Cited Bartlett, K. T. (1994) Rethinking Parenthood As an Exclusive Status: The need for Legal Alternatives when the Premise of the Nuclear Family has failed. (pp. 879) Kutulas, J, (2005) Who Rules the Roost?: Sitcom Family Dynamics from the Cleavers to the Osbournes (pp. 49-58) Morgan, M., Sinorielli, N., (1990) Television and the Family: The Cultivation Perspective (pp. 333-347) Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Skill, T., Robinson, J., (1994) Four Decades of families on television: A demographic profile 1950-1989, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Vol. 38, Issue 4 Tueth, M. V., (2003) Back to the Drawing Board: The family in animated television comedy (pp. 133-146)

Managing Business Problems Essay

What are the causes of poor productivity within large organizations and how can we look at trying to improve this? Productivity is the degree of output achieved in relation to a certain level of input. For example, in a call centre environment, productivity would be seen as the number of telephone calls answered per hour by a certain number of staff. The telephone calls are the output and the staff available to take the calls are the input. In order to improve productivity, one of the following has to occur: The level of input is decreased however the level of output remains the same, or, the level of output increases but the level of input remains the same. In relation to the example of the call centre, this would mean reducing the number of staff available to answer the phone but yet the remaining staff would still have to answer the same number of calls, i.e. they would have to answer more calls each to compensate for the decrease in staff. Or the other way to increase productivity in a call centre would be to keep the same number to staff available to take customer calls but the number of calls being answered in total would have to increase. Productivity is a major issue within any organisation but especially call centres. Call centres do try to forecast the number of calls they expect everyday and allocate resources accordingly to deal with these pressures, however there are still thousands of calls abandoned (where the customer hangs up before even getting through to an advisor) each and every day, this is sometimes referred to as â€Å"call leakage†. This is a growing problem for call centres across the country and it is surprising the amount of customers who will take their business elsewhere simply because they cant get through on the phone as they see it as poor customer service. In many cases it isn’t feasible for staff numbers to be increased in order to cope with the call volumes that are being received and so the only solution to reducing the call leakage is to increase the productivity of the existing staff. Working in a call centre environment myself I appreciate that this is a very challenging task as call centre agents generally feel overworked and underpaid already and trying to get more work out of them will be difficult. However my research into call centre life has thrown up some issues surrounding the task of increasing staff performance in order for your business to work smarter. My research examines the possibility of reward systems as a means of increasing productivity, how call centre staff view their own roles and changes they would like to see in order to help them perform better During my research I searched the Emerald website to find relevant journal articles to assist my studies. I came across an interesting one called † An exploration of managerial issues in call centres† by Colin Armistead, Julia Kiely, Linda Hole and Jean Prescott. This paper consisted of two case studies carried out in two large organisations; these will be known as Case Study A and Case Study B. I found this article useful as it explores why people work in call centres, how they feel about their jobs and this research is spread over all levels from call centre agent to general manager. Case Study A provides a good background to call centre life and will aid understanding of what it is like to work in a call centre environment. In Case Study A, a total of fourteen staff members of all levels were interviewed, interviews lasted one hour and were all taped and transcribed. The interviews explored the initial decision to work for a call centre, the expectations they had before they started and the extent to which their jobs had lived up to those expectations. The authors also examined company statistics; they found evidence of high turnover in staff who had been employed for a few months then reducing to comparatively low turnover after they had been employed for more than six months. I found the findings from Case Study A to be very surprising having worked in a call centre myself and not having had very many positive experiences during my time there. The overall impression from those interviewed was that they felt very positive about their workplace. There were inevitable differences in how different levels of employees viewed certain issued but there were more similarities than differences. I was interested to see how employees had spoke about productivity and performance targets. It became apparent that performance targets were related to the number of calls answered, the time in which it took to answer the calls and also the levels of call leakage. It is very easy to monitor call centre agents against an array of time-related measures and staff felt under a lot of pressure at times due to this. I can relate to this, as this is exactly how I felt working as a call centre agent. One manager interviewed in Case Study A stated that the most important thing in managing call centre staff was â€Å"motivation, motivation, motivation†, yet the manager in question admitted he had little idea of how to motivate staff. I do agree that motivating staff to perform well is an issue and I appreciate that highly motivated staff will be more productive but I also think that if staff working in call centres had a better understanding of the bigger picture and knew how their actions impacted upon the business as a whole they may change their attitudes and automatically perform better and more efficiently. This is just my opinion from my experience of working in a British Gas call centre for almost three years I have been privileged enough to have been given an insight into the deeper realms of the business, something which frontline staff rarely come into contact with and I do feel this would be of benefit to them. As it stand now, staff are being thrown tough performance targets by management and expected to meet them without question, they have no understanding of why the business needs them to perform at a particular level and what the consequences will be if they don’t. I believe business awareness to be a vital part of representing a company to the public and the company I work for do offer a business awareness course, however this is e-learning based and has to be completed in your own time. Needless to say, there are not many staff who take advantage of this opportunity to understand the business they work for due to the above conditions and a lot of staff are probably unaware that the facility even exists. If British Gas were to allow the time for staff to complete this course during working hours or even to be paid overtime for the time they spend on it outside their scheduled hours, they would have a massive response and although this would be time consuming and possibly quite costly, I believe that the positive effects on how employees work would outweigh the costs. Productivity is very poor in the call centre I work in after reading relevant sections in a book called â€Å"Remuneration Policy† by Patrick McCauley I am under the impression that a successful reward system can help to improve productivity. McCauley defines motivation simply as â€Å"goal directed behaviour† and he makes it clear that employees will only be motivated to increase their performance by goals that are actually of interest to them, for example if a manager said to his team one day that the person with the highest productivity that day would be rewarded with a family ticket to the local pantomime then you would get Sandra, the mother with 2.4 children, husband and nice semi-detached house working her socks off, however, Matt, Gary and Emma, the three students on the team and Harold the grandad of the team who is six months off retirement would not be interested in the slightest by the managers offer of reward. McCauley states that the three key questions we need to consider when devising a successful reward system are: * What goals will employees actually pursue? * What factors will determine their success or failure in achieving these goals? * What will be the consequences of achievement or frustration for the employee and the organisation? As I have already mentioned, it is important to offer rewards that are of interest to the staff and that will actually motivate them to perform better and drive them towards goals which involve meeting productivity and performance targets on the way. It is important to offer generic rewards that are appealable to all or a choice of a few different rewards in order to cater for all the different ages, cultures etc. I have dome some research in to reward systems whilst working on a service excellence team in the British Gas call centre and the rewards that were constantly being requested by staff were things such as an extra days annual leave, high street vouchers, deputising for a higher level role for half a day as a development opportunity etc. These were things that the frontline staff were telling management would motivate them to work harder and to a higher standard, however management declined these requests as they saw them as too ambitious and they were especially against the extra holiday which unfortunately was the most popular suggestion. It was a shame these suggestions were declined as staff then felt that they were being ignored which in turn lowered morale and saw a drop in productivity for a short while, it would probably have been cheaper for the company to have allowed a small number of desired rewards which would have increased productivity for while and certainly wouldn’t have reduced it. Staff are already aware of what their targets are on a day to day basis and we need to remember that there will be a percentage of staff who do consistently meet these targets, therefore when setting criteria for a reward system we have to set it higher than daily performance targets to show that staff are being recognised for going above and beyond the call of duty and not just being coaxed into doing what is already expected of them. Staff will have to meet daily performance and productivity targets and then some before they can achieve a reward. If an employee successfully achieves a reward for their performance then not only will their productivity have had to increase to achieve the reward in the first place but as that desired behaviour has now been rewarded, the employee will be conditioned into repeating it in order to gain further rewards. If an employee either attempts and fails to reach the goal required to achieve a reward or doesn’t make the effort and sees his colleagues around him being rewarded for their increased effort and performance it will have one of the two following effects upon him: * He will become de-motivated as he is feeling left out or a failure as his efforts are not being recognised because he fails to reach the required standard and his performance will drop further. * He will become determined to work to the required level to achieve a reward to prove to himself and his managers that he too can perform well. If the latter of the consequences occurs then the reward systems is still being effective in all areas as even failures are being motivated to continue to strive for the reward on offer. However if the company begins to see individuals experiencing a drop in motivation and performance they may need to consider addressing this with a reward for example for the most improved productivity each month, therefore even those whose efforts don’t bring them above the required productivity level for a standard reward have a chance of recognition for their efforts alone. McCauley examines Vroom’s expectancy theory and this supports the issues raised above. Vroom does state though that the criteria that needs to be met in order to achieve a reward has to be very clear cut and communicated thoroughly to all levels of staff so as to avoid woolly areas where decisions to reward or not may be disputed. Throughout my research I have identified underlying issues surrounding the productivity of call centre staff and how to improve this by encouraging motivation amongst staff and providing them with personal goals that at the same time guide them towards achieving the productivity levels required by the business. I have come to the conclusion that productivity can only really be successfully increased in the long term by providing something for the individual to work towards, not just setting targets and expecting them to be met. I also think that increased business awareness amongst frontline staff would be beneficial to any call centre so then at least they know and understand why there are certain pressures placed upon them and they may be more welcoming to the challenge of attaining higher targets. Bibliography An exploration of managerial issues in call centres. (Journal Article) Colin Armistead, Julia Kiely, Linda Hole & Jean Prescott. Remuneration Policy

Sin City Of Las Vegas Escorts - 1599 Words

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