Women and Development: A Radical Political Economy Perspective

For decades, development policy treated women as if they had been sitting on the sidelines of the economy, waiting to be invited in. The Women and Development (WAD) approach turned that assumption on its head. Emerging in the late 1970s from a radical political economy tradition, it argued that women were never outside development at all. They had always been inside it, holding up the system through their labour while receiving almost none of its rewards. This perspective shifts the question from “how do we include women?” to a sharper one: “why has the work women already do remain invisible and exploited?”

Where WAD came from
The neo-Marxist foundation
The central argument: women were always part of development
Why WAD is not just WID with a new name
Class, capitalism, and the exploitation of women’s labour
The problem of invisible reproductive labour
What WAD looks like in the Indian economy
Exploitation within the informal sector
The limits of the WAD approach
Why this perspective still matters

Where WAD came from

To understand WAD, you first need to understand what it was reacting against. By the 1970s, two ideas dominated thinking about poorer countries. The first was modernization theory, which held that countries would develop by following the path of industrialized nations. The second was the Women in Development (WID) approach, which argued that earlier development programs had simply overlooked women and that the fix was to integrate them into existing projects.

WAD rejected both. It developed as a response to the shortcomings of modernization theory and the WID approach in explaining why women were excluded from the benefits of growth. Crucially, the approach drew its theoretical base from dependency theory, which argued that the failure of Third World states to develop was not an internal flaw but a result of their subordinate position within a global capitalist system dominated by wealthy nations. WAD took that structural lens and applied it to gender.

The neo-Marxist foundation

WAD is best described as a neo-Marxist feminist framework. By the late 1970s, many scholars felt that classical Marxism could not fully explain modern society, and neo-Marxist approaches emerged in its place. These thinkers argued that underdevelopment was caused by external structural conditions rather than purely internal ones. Feminist scholars working within this tradition added a vital dimension by bringing women’s reproductive labour and the role of class in women’s lives into the analysis. The result was a way of thinking that connected the oppression of women directly to the workings of global capitalism.

This is what makes WAD a political economy perspective rather than a welfare or charity perspective. It does not treat women’s disadvantage as a misfortune to be corrected through better programs. It treats it as a structural feature of how production and accumulation are organized.

The central argument: women were always part of development

The heart of WAD is a deceptively simple claim. The approach begins from the position that women have always been an integral part of development processes within a global system of exploitation and inequality. Women did not suddenly appear on the development scene in the early 1970s because a few scholars and agencies “discovered” them. They had been working all along, in fields, factories, markets, and households.

This reframing matters enormously. If women were never absent, then the problem is not their exclusion. The problem is that the system extracted their labour while denying them recognition, fair returns, and power. WAD aimed to explain the relationship between women and the process of capitalist development in terms of the material conditions that contribute to their exploitation. In other words, women’s inferior status is rooted in their position within structures of production, not in any inherent backwardness or in being left out.

Why WAD is not just WID with a new name

WAD is frequently confused with WID, but the difference is fundamental. WID accepted the existing economic system and simply wanted women added into it. WAD questioned the system itself. What sets WAD apart is its specific focus on the relation between patriarchy and capitalism.

Consider the implications. WID asked how women could be more efficiently integrated into ongoing development initiatives. WAD asked whether integration into an exploitative system was even desirable. According to WAD proponents, it is women’s work both inside and outside the household that is crucial for maintaining societies, and this is also the root cause that sustains the structures of inequality. The very labour that keeps families and economies running is the labour that traps women in subordinate positions.

Class, capitalism, and the exploitation of women’s labour

For WAD, the exploitation of women is bound up with the exploitation of the working class as a whole. Women are not simply oppressed because they are women; they are exploited because their labour is positioned in a particular way within capitalist production. This is why WAD pays close attention to how class and capital shape women’s experiences across the global economy.

The approach recognized that both women and men faced disadvantages within oppressive global structures based on class and capital. Women’s work, paid and unpaid alike, was understood as essential for maintaining societal institutions and economic systems. Yet this work was systematically undervalued. WAD advocates were concerned with the consequences of capitalism on women and the poor, observing that many women had been pushed into poverty traps, leading to what is called the feminization of poverty.

The problem of invisible reproductive labour

One of the most powerful contributions of this radical political economy tradition is its attention to social reproduction, the work of bearing and raising children, cooking, caring for the sick and elderly, and maintaining the home. Marxist feminists argued that women’s unpaid domestic labour sustains the capitalist system by reproducing the workforce at no cost to employers. Each day, an employer receives a worker who has been fed, rested, and cared for, all without paying for that care.

The development establishment ignored this entirely. Scholars noted that planners tended to assign no economic value to household tasks, treating childbearing, child-rearing, housework, and care of the ill and elderly as belonging to a “private” domain outside the purview of development projects. This invisibility is not accidental. It is precisely what allows the system to benefit from women’s labour while refusing to count it.

What WAD looks like in the Indian economy

The WAD lens fits the Indian situation with uncomfortable accuracy. Women’s labour has always been central to the economy, yet it remains among the most undervalued and least recognised forms of work. From sustaining agriculture and informal manufacturing to performing unpaid domestic and care work, women contribute massively to economic and social reproduction, but these contributions are treated as natural extensions of gender roles rather than as labour deserving recognition and protection.

The numbers are striking. A 2023 State Bank of India report estimated that unpaid work contributes roughly Rs 22.7 lakh crore, about 7.5% of GDP, none of which appears as income for the women who perform it. This is the WAD argument made concrete: enormous value extracted, almost no recognition given.

Exploitation within the informal sector

The informal economy shows the same pattern. The vast majority of women workers operate outside formal employment structures, without contracts, social security, or legal protection. According to one estimate drawing on International Labour Organisation data, around 81.8% of women in India are concentrated in the informal economy. They roll bidis and incense sticks, work as domestic helpers, vend on the streets, and labour in fields, frequently as unpaid family workers rather than as recognized earners.

This is not a story of women waiting to be brought into the economy. They are already deep inside it. The issue, exactly as WAD predicted, is the terms on which they participate. Women in informal employment face significant income insecurity, lack of legal protection, and limited access to social benefits, which deepens gender inequalities. Their labour holds up the economy while their position within production keeps them poor and powerless.

The limits of the WAD approach

WAD was a major advance, but it was not the final word, and being honest about its weaknesses is part of understanding it. Critics pointed out that the approach focused heavily on women’s productive, work-related activity while paying insufficient attention to the relationship between patriarchy, modes of production, and women’s marginalization in the home. Like WID before it, WAD tended to focus on women’s productive work while neglecting reproductive and care labour, and treated women as a unified class, overlooking differences of race, ethnicity, and other identities.

By concentrating so strongly on class and on working women, WAD made it harder to address the full range of inequalities women face, including those rooted in family structures and patriarchal relationships that cut across class lines. This is why, by the 1980s, attention shifted toward the Gender and Development (GAD) approach, which examined relations between men and women, took both productive and reproductive work seriously, and rejected the rigid public-private divide that had long been used to dismiss household work. WAD, in this sense, was a crucial bridge: it pushed the conversation from charity and integration toward structure and power, even if it could not complete that journey alone.

Why this perspective still matters

The enduring value of the WAD approach lies in a single insight that remains radical even today. Development is not something done to women. It is something women have always been doing, often without pay, recognition, or protection. The task is not to insert women into a system that already depends on their labour, but to confront the structures that extract that labour while keeping women subordinate.

Movements that fight for the recognition of unpaid and informal work carry this logic forward. Organizations like the Self-Employed Women’s Association have long campaigned for women in agriculture, construction, and domestic work to be formally recognized as contributing to the national economy, even when they work outside the formal employment system. That demand, that women’s existing contributions be counted and valued, is WAD’s most direct legacy.

What do you think? If the economy already depends on women’s unpaid and informal labour, what would it actually take to value that work rather than simply asking women to take on even more? And is it possible to address women’s exploitation through class-based economic reform alone, or does genuine change require challenging patriarchy within the household as well?

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Table of Contents

Where WAD came from 🔗

The neo-Marxist foundation 🔗

The central argument: women were always part of development 🔗

Why WAD is not just WID with a new name 🔗

Class, capitalism, and the exploitation of women’s labour 🔗

The problem of invisible reproductive labour 🔗

What WAD looks like in the Indian economy 🔗

Exploitation within the informal sector 🔗

The limits of the WAD approach 🔗

Why this perspective still matters 🔗