ABSTRACT
The issue of the gender gap, and of the actual and potential roles of women in development, dominated conferences and symposia, research proposals and position papers, and came finally to be reflected, at least in rhetoric, in major donor foreign assistance programs. The United Nations declared a Decade for Women that closed in 1985 with an international conference in Kenya. Colonial governments in some respects improved the lot of Third World women. In some places they were responsible for drawing women into formal education systems. The potential for abuse was officially recognized, however, and the system was proscribed by the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. The act was almost universally violated, but it was not until the 1970s that accounts of brides being killed in bizarre accidents, particularly kitchen fires, became so common as to demand the attention of researchers and law-enforcement officials.
