ABSTRACT
What is most needed is not a series of special projects for women which perpetuate their segregation: it is vitally important that development planners who are concerned about Third World women should seek to eliminate discrimination against them in all development planning. This would mean, in the agricultural sector, that land registration would treat all working adults in a family as equal co-owners of family resources. There would have to be careful consideration of the impact on women’s work of mechanization and other planned innovations. In particular, ways should be found to save women’s labour and raise the returns on a given amount of time and energy expended. Depending on the needs of the area, these might include such basic facilities as wells, fuel stores or tree plantations, local markets, small grain mills, and improved tools and equipment for the cultivation of crops and the processing and cooking of food. Care should also be taken to ensure that incentives for increased production are channelled to the women as well as the men, in proportion to the contribution made by each. These measures all relate to the specific problems of rural women, the great majority; however, poor urban women suffer many of the same problems of overwork and lack of resources. It is important that discrimination against
women at all levels of education and employment, formal and informal, be eliminated in urban and rural areas alike.
