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UGC NET Women Studies study materials
UGC NET Women Studies study resources

UGC NET Women Studies: Gender, Development, Environment and Governance

UGC NET Women Studies · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Gender, Development, Environment and Governance

This domain tests development paradigms, environmental politics and women's participation in governance. Questions often ask you to distinguish WID, WAD and GAD and to apply gender mainstreaming to policy.

Core concepts

  • WID: Women in Development, a 1970s approach focused on integrating women into development projects.
  • WAD: Women and Development, emphasising women's work and structural inequality.
  • GAD: Gender and Development, analysing power relations between women and men and challenging institutions.
  • Gender mainstreaming: integrating a gender perspective into all policy stages, not adding a separate women's component.
  • Gender budgeting: a tool to assess budgetary priorities against gender outcomes.
  • Ecofeminism: links women's subordination and environmental destruction (Shiva, Mies), but is criticised for essentialising women as 'natural' carers.
  • Governance: 73rd and 74th Amendments; PRI reservation; Kudumbashree; forest and land rights; climate justice; SDG 5 and 13.

Worked example

A rural water project invites women to meetings but does not change who controls the pump committee. Is this GAD? Reasoning: no. Inviting women is integration, closer to WID. GAD would examine decision-making authority, unpaid labour and institutional rules that keep control male-dominated.

Traps that cost marks

  • Treating WID, WAD and GAD as synonyms.
  • Assuming women's presence in local bodies equals effective power.
  • Ignoring the caste and class politics of environmental movements.