ABSTRACT
This chapter assess the ways in which history has produced changes in the status of women, both within and between households, and across cultures and levels of development. The limitations on the economic power of women that characterized the early stages of economic development and industrialization were confined neither to the United States nor to the western world. Women's issues per se have been largely neglected since colonial and early post-independence periods, and until recently very little if any attempt has been made to integrate women into the broader development picture. The frequent inability of development policies to improve or even maintain the status of women has not been limited to colonial periods or post-independence regimes, however. Ware's contention is that many of the shortcomings of development policies to date have been the result of to their proclivity for confining women to the "second, agricultural stage, even when men have been moving into the industrial stage".
