ABSTRACT
This chapter will demonstrate that the so-called WID regime, as implemented by international development agencies, has its origin in two distinct yet overlapping strands of modernist discourse: the colonial discourse and the liberal discourse on markets. The colonial discourse based on the economic, political, social and cultural privileging of European peoples, homogenizes and essentializes the Third World and Third World women. The liberal discourse on markets, based on a negative view of freedom (Chowdhry 1993), promotes free markets, voluntary choices and individualism. Its epistemological premises and practical implementations disempower Third World nations in the international political economy. Moreover, as it intersects with colonial discourse, liberal discourse paradoxically tends to disempower poor Third World women (despite its stated objective of helping women to “develop”). In this chapter I argue that this disempowerment of Third World women is exemplified and embodied by the WID regime, because it is situated at the intersection of these two (modernist) discourses.
