ABSTRACT
The question of how economic growth affects women in developing countries has been attracting much recent attention. For example, an increasing proportion of scholarly publications focus on the role of women, the United Nations created a Decade of Women to call attention to women's issues throughout international agencies, and women's groups around the world have become more vociferous in their demands for change. These trends reflect not only the underlying need to address a neglected subject, but also a new vogue. According to Rogers (1980: 9), "women have been discovered!" It is still unclear whether this will translate into significant contributions to the improvement of the lives of women in developing countries, but the assessment of their present condition is quite clear. Throughout developing countries, there is evidence of varying degrees of gender-based inequalities, such as access to resources, skills and the means of production, which are dynamic and change in response to stimulus. One of these stimuli is the onset of rapid rates of economic growth. Following the pioneering work of Boserup (1970) on the effect of modernization on women's lives and work, numerous studies have identified trends present throughout many developing countries: as a result of the technology which underlies "modern" production, the female contribution to the market economy has decreased, while the contribution to subsistence production, labor intensive activities and domestic chores has increased. By analogy, male participation in mechanized or modern sector activities increased. In 70addition, overwhelming evidence seems to indicate that the increased burden of activities in women's lives was not accompanied by analogous changes in their remuneration. With respect to rural females, global trends indicate that as a result of changes in the quality and quantity of activities performed by females, there has been a decrease in their control of household income and, quite often, in their access to consumption. It seems therefore that economic growth, with its source in technological advance, is not always beneficial to women. 1
