Can Adjustment Programmes Incorporate the Interests of Women?

Abstract

The 1980s were a decade of economic crisis for many developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. They were also years of continuous adjustments, as governments with the support, and often following the dictates, of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB), tried to push their economies onto a more satisfactory path. Change, of course, is part of the normal process of development. Growing economies need to adjust ceaselessly to both exogenous and endogenous developments. But the acute problems faced by many countries in the 1980s — especially shortage of foreign exchange and often accelerating inflation — led to a special focus on the need for structural adjustment (SA). This chapter reviews how the policies aimed to bring about structural adjustment and the subsequent adjustments impinged on women in developing countries.²

This chapter relies heavily on work done for the Commonwealth Secretariat. I am grateful for their permission to use it. Much of the analysis-and more material than could be included here — has appeared in Commonwealth Group of Experts, 1989, Engenderimg Adjustment for the 1990s (London: Commonwealth Secretariat). The ideas in this paper were stimulated and influenced by discussions among the Group of Experts, and by background papers prepared by Susan Joekes, all of whom I would like to thank.