This volume oers a critical overview of the current perspectives on women and development. The authors deconstruct the analysis of some of the `key social institutions that were the building blocks of traditional theory' ( p. 3) and critically review many of the central concepts and crucial arguments that have dominated the debates and have been embedded in the literature. The use of the term women as opposed to gender is discussed as is the location of power, the site of actions and the process of struggles by interested groups are revisited by some of those who had coined the terminologies.
Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz take on the dicult task of disentangling the con¯icting discourses on gender. They note that the institutionalisation of gender in the formulation of development policies may have helped to depoliticise the term and cut it away from its feminist roots. Maxine Molyneux revisits the debate on women's representation and gender interests. Deniz Kandiyoti returns to the question of power and agency. Diane Elson notes that feminists should transform the conceptual tools rather than seeking to ®t women into existing paradigms. Elson argues convincingly that integrating an analysis of power relation in gender and economic growth models would provide a better understanding of the process and facilitate a restructuring of gender relations, paving the way towards balanced and human development.
For me the most challenging part was the dismantling of some of my most dearly held views about women and work and resources. Baden and Goetz break asunder the commonly accepted assertions that `Women [account] for two-thirds of all working hours, receive only one tenth of the world income and own less than one percent of the world property' (quoted from the United Nations). Apparently this is merely a guesstimate by a UN worker who thought that it was a fair re¯ection of gender inequity at the time (1980). Pearson looks at the debates on the feminization of the labour market and states that although female employment has increased in some countries in Asia, elsewhere, such as in Mexico, there is an increase in masculinization of production in certain sectors. Clearly it is time that some of us revised our views.
There are, however, areas in which some of the conclusions in this volume are at variance with ®ndings by other third world authors. In particular the question of women and their familial positions where quest for equality may throw a dierent light on the evidence from that shed by the pursuit of complementarity. A good example is Goetz (1994) quoted by Jackson ( p. 42), about the impact of the Grameen bank loans on the lives of rural women in Bangladesh. Goetz concludes that lending money to rural women merely makes them into loan payment ocers'. This is at odds with the view that access to credit from the Grameen bank has gone some way towards empowering poor rural women in Bangladesh by improving . . . their perceived contribution to the family and their breakdown position . . . the borrowers have gained greater autonomy . . . and better access to food and non-food consumption' (Osmani, 1998, p. 82).
We as feminists must ®nd a way of accommodating these diering perspectives without losing the political momentum of unity. On the other hand I totally agree with Jackson's conclusion that `the subordination of women is not caused by poverty' ( p. 60). To argue that poverty is feminised can become a means of allowing policymakers to collapse gender and poverty and identify women as the victims rather than the bene®ciaries of development. This