what do you mean by unpacking gender?
Answers
Answer:
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Explanation:
Gender is an old word which has taken on a new meaning. It is a 'portmanteau' word, containing a set of inter-related ideas. Because this use of the word is new, a kind of shorthand, it is difficult to translate. The friend of an Oxfam worker in Ethiopia was both curious and amazed that Oxfam appeared to be spending three days 'discussing sex'. In fact, the workshop in Addis Ababa examined the distinction between sex and gender. Understanding this difference, and the concept of gender, is essential to our understanding of how development processes affect men and women, girls, and boys, in different ways.
Sex is a fact of human biology; "we are born male or female; it is men who impregnate, and women who conceive, give birth, and breastfeed the human baby. On this biological difference we construct an edifice of social attitudes and assumptions, behaviours and activities: these are our gender roles and identities. Questioning them may feel threatening, attacking the very foundations of our understanding of ourselves, our personal and social relations, our culture and traditions.
Yet is important to understand how we learn to be boys and girls, to become women and men; how we define masculine and feminine behaviour; how we are taught activities regarded as appropriate for our sex, and the way in which we should relate to one another. What we learn depends on the society into which we are born, and our position within it, our relative poverty or wealth, and our ethnic group. For unlike sex, gender roles are variable. In some societies women are fanners, own oxen, plough their own fields; in others this is 'against God and nature'; in yet other instances where war, migration, or other factors have left many women entirely responsible for their households, custom has been modified to enable them to have the means of production to provide for their families. So, gender roles are not only different but also change over time.
Gender analysis looks not only at roles and activities but also at relationships. It asks not only who does what, but also who makes the decisions, and who derives the benefit, who uses resources such as land, or credit, and who controls these resources; and what other factors influence relationships, such as laws about property rights and inheritance.
This reveals that women and men, because of their different gender roles and responsibilities, have different experiences and needs. Both men and women play a role in the sphere of productive work and community life, but women's contribution may be less formal. While men's agricultural work may result in a cash income, women may be producing food for family consumption, and the cash value remains hidden. In community life, men generally have the role of public representation; women's role of organisation may be crucial, but less visible, particularly to outsiders. Underlying both productive work and community life is the work of biological and social reproduction. This is the foundation of human society: the care of children and family, the maintenance of the household, collecting water, and fuel, preparing, processing and cooking food, keeping people and home clean and healthy. These tasks can be arduous and time-consuming — and taken for granted. Generally they fall to women. The result has been that this work is not valued and is not included in development planning, often with disastrous consequences. For example, failure to take into account both women's role as the mangers of water, and also the many and varied tasks of their working day, has resulted in water supply projects which may be technically sound but are socially inefficient; providing water at too great a distance, at the wrong time of day for women, who already have to juggle a series of different activities to meet their practical needs.
Development programmes which have not been gender-aware have not only not benefited women; sometimes they have further disadvantaged them, adding to their workload and failing to recognise their roles in reproductive work and community life.
Gender analysis reveals the roles and relationships of women and men in society and the inequalities in those relationships. The much quoted UN statistics remain as true today as they were when they were formulated over a decade ago:
women perform two-thirds of the world's work
women earn one-tenth of the world's income
women are two-thirds of the world's illiterates
women own less than one-hundredth of the world's property.
Work on gender issues brings women out of the background and into sharp focus. We can classify women's situation in two main ways:
the social condition of women: the material conditions they face of poverty, heavy workloads, poor health care, etc. and
the social position of women: the social, political, economic and cultural position of women relative to men