ABSTRACT

To celebrate changing global attitudes to gender relations, the United Nations (UN) declared the years 1975—1985 to be the Decade for Women. Gender-based discrimination is still very much present in contemporary social relations. Feminist scholars define gender as: as a set of socially constructed characteristics describing what men and women ought to be. Feminists have long observed that, since theory and practice of international relations had been built by mainly men, the problems of women, including the "feminization of poverty," economic inequality, sexual violence, and political marginalization have been conveniently ignored. Nussbaum's feminist contribution to the field of development enriches the capability approach of Amartya Sen by focusing on women. Gender based violence and discrimination are symptoms of a fragmented and dysfunctional society. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) gender equality strategy acknowledges the existence of structural barriers to gender equality that need to be eliminated.