Women as Marginal Social Actors, the Case of Economic Development

The field of economics has been historically a discipline that emphasises men as the primary social actors within the economic sphere of the world and national developing economies. Although women make an extraordinary contribution given the paucity of economic resources available to them in developing societies, they continue to be dealt with as marginal elements within the discipline. Development studies having reached a theoretical impasse in general is being revived by the issue of the incorporation of gender into the mainstream of development debate, especially in sociology. We suggest a missing element in the economic development literature is a micro-macro analysis that takes into account multi-level linkages which would facilitate inclusion of women into the debate, as the bulk of women in developing economies engage in some form of production largely within the sphere of the family or household. In the course of the review and criticism of the relevant literature within the two basic schools of modernisation and historical-materialism, we conclude that women are a necessary vehicle of analysis as is a multi-level methodology that takes into account the level of the household/family unit if economic development theory is to progress beyond its current state of stagnation and narrow scope of assessment.