User:Sie77a/sandbox

Draft- Gender and Development page lead section
Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender, class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to development views a country’s development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation control, and high employment – all of which aim to improve the ‘economic wellbeing’ of a country and the subsequent quality of life for its people. In terms of economic development, quality of life is defined as access to necessary rights and resources including but not limited to quality education, medical facilities, affordable housing, clean environments, and low crime rate. Gender and development considers many of these same factors, however, gender and development emphasizes efforts towards understanding how multifaceted these subjects are in the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Accounting for this need, gender and development implements ethnographic research, research that studies a specific culture or group of people by physically immersing the researcher into the environment and daily routine of those being studied, in order to comprehensively understand how development policy and practices affect the everyday life of targeted groups or areas.

The history of this field dates back to the 1950s, beginning when the studies of economic development first brought women into its discourse, focusing on women only as subjects of welfare policies – notably those centered on food aid and family planning. The focus of women in development increased throughout the decade, and by 1962, the United Nations General Assembly called for the Commission on the Status of Women to collaborate with the Secretary General and a number of other UN sectors to develop a longstanding program dedicated to women’s advancement in developing countries. A decade later, feminist economist Ester Boserup’s pioneering book Women’s Role in Economic Development (1970) was published, radically shifting perspectives of development and contributing to the birth of what eventually became the gender and development field.

Since Boserup’s assertion that development affects men and women differently, the study of gender’s relation to development has gathered major interest amongst scholars and international policymakers. The field has undergone major theoretical shifts, specifically from Women in Development (WID) to Women and Development (WAD), and finally to the contemporary Gender and Development (GAD). In addition to these frameworks, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have implemented policies, programs, and research regarding gender and development, contributing a neoliberal and smart economics approach to the study. Examples of neoliberal policies and programs include Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), microfinance, outsourcing, and privatizing public enterprises, directing focus towards economic growth and suggesting that advancement towards gender equality will follow. These approaches have been challenged by alternative perspectives such as Marxism and ecofeminism, which respectively reject international capitalism and the gendered exploitation of the environment via science, technology, and capitalist production. Marxist perspectives of development advocate for the redistribution of wealth and power in efforts to reduce global labor exploitation and class inequalities, while ecofeminist perspectives confront industrial practices that accompany development, including deforestation, pollution, environmental degradation, and ecosystem destruction.

Gender and Development Wikipedia Evaluation
Wikipedia’s Gender and Development page offers readers an informative perspective on the topic’s history and progress since its establishment as Women in Development in the 1970s. It covers the major framework shifts, from the initial Women in Development (WID), to Woman and Development (WAD), and to the current Gender and Development (GAD). This page explains in detail the characteristics that distinguish each framework from one another and provides a decent number of insightful sources for this information. In addition to describing these frameworks, the Wikipedia page also includes neoliberal and alternative approaches to the study of gender and development. All the information on this page is arguably relevant and creates a strong foundation of content. However, the page fails to maintain a consistently neutral tone and does not present the information in a clear, straight forward manner.

Beginning with its intro paragraph, Gender and Development lacks a clear definition explaining what it is. Given that this is an encyclopedia entry, I argue that providing a simple, yet comprehensive definition of the topic is one of the most crucial aspects to the entry. In addition to this, the first half of the first sentence is questionably phrased: “The pre-World War II period saw flourishing movements of various forms of feminism”. For the purpose of providing clear information, this sentence is convoluted in word-choice and, for the purpose of relevant information, this sentence misleads readers to associating GAD (and all of its earlier forms) to pre-WWII feminism, otherwise known as first-wave feminism. While some connection surely exists, the direct relationship is not clear nor relevant to the article, especially as the first sentence of the page. Also, the quoted sentence is not neutral – was pre-WWII feminism flourishing?

Additionally, the first subsection on WID also presents questionable information. After the first paragraph of this subsection, which explains characteristics of WID and liberal feminist influence on WID, the contributor states “The focus of the 1970s feminist movements and their repeated calls for employment opportunities in the development agenda meant that particular attention was given to the productive labour of women, leaving aside reproductive concerns and social welfare.” While this sentence is hard to understand, it falsely simplifies feminist efforts of the 1970s and also fails to describe the lack of focus development/economist feminists put towards reproductive rights and experiences of gender across different cultures. The provided criticism is important information, but it is in need of clear articulation and clarification.

Another concern regarding neutrality is in the sub-section on WAD and its criticisms, where the author writes “While an improvement on WID, WAD fails to fully consider the relationships between patriarchy, modes of production, and the marginalization of women.” Again, this perspective is relevant and valuable; however, it would be more credible existing within an online encyclopedia if it began with the disclaimer “Some critics argue that…”. This suggestion would allow readers to see this as a viewpoint rather than a contributor’s opinion. Moreover, it would be beneficial to cite specific activists, groups, or organizations that were critical of WAD.

Evaluating the overall organization of this page, I think that the contents could be broken down further, showing all subtopics for each section, and the included subtopics of related sections should be consistent. For example, in the first section “Early Approaches,” each subsection (WID, WAD and GAD) should include their own subsections on the content list (“Theoretical Approach”, “Practical Approach”, and “Criticism”) and should consistently include all three. As of now, only WAD has all three sections, where as WID and GAD are lacking the “practical approach section.” Additionally, distinctions between theoretical and practical approaches should be made clearer, either by a direct statement or by clear distinctions within their content. With my background knowledge in the subject, I can make inferences upon the differences, but for a user with limited knowledge, the content of these sections seems to overlap.

The sources for the information on Gender and Development appear to be relevant and plentiful. After checking all of them, I found that the source for citation 10 “cannot be found,” and that citation 30 and 31 link you back to the Gender and Development page itself. These seem to be minor errors that can be fixed easily. Also, I noticed that one source was cited five times. This lead me to questioning if there is an ideal number of times a single source should be cited, as I imagine our class will be citing our textbook frequently.

Concluding my analysis on the content of this Wikipedia page, I argue that there is a lot of useful and critical information on the subject of gender and development, however the content needs to be presented in a more concise and digestible manner. This can be achieved by using simpler sentence structure, providing definitions, and presenting the information of each section with more consistent organization. Also, adding additional content to this page could further strengthen it, for example by including more background information on the subject of “global development.” This background information could include its origin and goal as a study of economics and could then compare this to the perspective of feminist economists. Also, the limitations of the Western perspective regarding development is crucial to the comprehensive understanding of Gender and Development, and including perspectives and experiences from those living in “developing” countries would further substantiate the page.

Conducting such an extensive evaluation of this Wikipedia page has aided my understanding of how Wikipedia operates, and how it can be improved by users such as us. It is a powerful concept to have an entire database of information most entirely created by the common people.

Citation and Edits on GAD
The Gender and Development (GAD) approach focuses on the socially constructed differences between men and women, the need to challenge existing gender roles and relations, and the creation and effects of class differences on development. This approach was majorly influenced by the writings of academic scholars such as Oakley (1972) and Rubin (1975), who argue the social relationship between men and women have systematically subordinated women, along with economist scholars Lourdes Benería and Amartya Sen (1981), who emphasize the impact of colonialism on development and gender inequality. They state that colonialism imposed more than a "value system" upon developing nations, it introduced a system of economics 'designed to promote capital accumulation which caused class differentiation'.

^^^ My edited version of the first paragraph on the GAD Theoretical Approach section on the GAD wikipedia page.

Cause for Edits
For my first contribution to Wikipedia, I edited the first paragraph of the GAD Theoretical Approach section on the GAD wikipedia page. My edits included grammar adjustments to the first sentence as well as an additional clause with citations about GAD's approach towards development. I also condensed the second and third sentences while adding additional information. Lastly, I added a sentence supporting the new information I included in the second sentence.

In the first sentence, I contributed more information regarding GAD's approach to development, specifically its consideration of class differences across nations and their development. I condensed the second and third sentence because they were redundant and very closely related, and I contributed two authors that acknowledge colonialism's impact on class differences. I added an entirely new sentence after this which includes a quote from Gender, Development, and Globalization (Benería, Lourdes, et. al. 2016) that briefly describes how colonialism has impacted class inequality in other nations.

Reflecting on these edits, I would definitely like to see the WID, WAD, and GAD sections of this page cleaned up and organized. They are convoluted with information that appears redundant and lacks digestibility.

Assigned Article and Topic
For my Wikipedia contribution, I plan to add to the Gender and Development page. I am considering adding a section titled "Concerns and Objectives" below the lead paragraph.

I believe this would be an important contribution because there is not a clear description of why Gender and Development exists opposed to "just" Development or how it differs in its objectives. The "why" of this would be described as the concerns that have lead to the emergence of the field and its endurance since then, and the "how" would be described as the objectives of GAD studies. In this section, I plan to include brief descriptions of how the concerns and objectives have changed over time, specifically marked by the eras of WID, WAD, and now GAD. This section would differ from the "Approach" sections of WID, WAD, and GAD because it would focus upon the goals of the field rather than its approach and implementation.

Also, I believe it would be a supportive section to have after the lead paragraph, given that it provides further summary for what exactly the field is, and how it differs from more mainstream perspectives of economics and development. Moreover, it would serve to unify the three perspectives (WID, WAD, and GAD)  in their efforts to advance the quality of life for women and to consider their unique experience of development before the page elaborately details their differences in the immediately following sections.