Lourdes Benería

Her work and publications have focused on issues related to labor and the informal economy, women’s work, gender and development, globalization, and Latin American development. More recently, her research has concentrated on the feminization of international migration and the care crisis in Europe.

Some of her most important works include Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered; Global Tensions: Challenges and Opportunities in the World Economy; Rethinking Informalization: Poverty, Precarious Jobs and Social Protection; The Crossroads of Class and Gender and many articles in journals, edited books, and the popular press.

Benería is a champion of intersectional feminist economics having consistently advocated for both class and gender considerations in development policy. She notes that “a woman’s class position structures the concrete meaning of gender for her”; due to class differences, there are as many variations in the experience of being a woman in any given society (1982). Class position can define and additionally complicate womens’ relationships among themselves, as women of different socioeconomic classes may have opposing ideas about social organization or policy.

Here we look at two of her works that exemplify this.

The Crossroads of Class and Gender:

Along with Martha Roldán, Benería explored the intersection between economic processes and social interactions in Mexico City.

It is a disturbing account of how women survive in urban conditions brought about by new international divisions of labor. Their fieldwork in Mexico City during 1981-82 has enabled them to provide important empirical data on industrial piecework performed by women as well as intimate glimpses of these women’s lives which place that piecework in context. The authors demonstrate the way in which they work and the lives of these women are connected through subcontracting to the national and often international system of production. Tracing the stages of production, they document the expansion of sub-contracting in Mexico City, with large multinational corporations sitting on top of the food chain followed by factories, workshops, and homeworkers. Homework, performed largely by lower-class women, is part of the production chain and operates in both legal and illegal work settings. They find that homeworkers are paid substantially less, are less protected.

“Class and Gender Inequalities and Women’s Role in Economic Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications."

Benería and Sen critique International Development Policy of the 1970s by bringing to light how much of the burden was placed on women to carry out development. They argued that both gender and class needed to be considered and understood in creating economic development policies. This lack of recognition often created a double-burden on women to shoulder.

They analyze gender and class in the context of three development approaches -

The “basic needs” approach in international development – focused on meeting minimum living standards in areas ranging from food, shelter, and infrastructure to health, education, and “individual freedoms”. Women were responsible for executing this policy because the work of fulfilling a family’s basic needs often fell on the woman – to find clean water or food, to keep her children well-fed and healthy – without adequately accounting for the structural challenges she may face (lack of clean running water or a sewage system, malnutrition, lack of access to a doctor or contraception, etc.). The fault with this approach, according to Benería and Sen, was not that women were not included at all – but that they were included at the bottom, and unequally burdened with the responsibilities and consequences.

Benería and Sen also critique the “equal partners” approach, which acknowledges the faults of the “basic needs” policy, and calls for making women “equal partners” in the production process. The authors argue that capital accumulation is a social process, and the benefits gained depend on the person’s role in production, and who owns the means of production.

The last approach the authors examine is a socialist egalitarian model, which emphasizes class contradictions, collectivization, and redistributing resources, and focuses in particular on bringing women into the workforce; work, for women, is seen as a “means to emancipation”. They challenge this model as superficial: gender equality is not a primary goal, but rather the by-product of a socialist society, and issues such as the sexual division of labor within and outside the home are not addressed.

Reading List:

Beneria, L. & Sen, G. (1982). "Class and Gender Inequalities and Women’s Role in Economic Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications." Feminist Studies, 8(1), 157-176.

Benería, L (1987). The crossroads of class & gender: industrial homework, subcontracting, and household dynamics in Mexico City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Benería, L & Bisnath, S (2001). Gender and development: theoretical, empirical, and practical approaches. Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Pub. ISBN

Benería, L (2003). Gender, development, and globalization: economics as if all people mattered. New York: Routledge.

Benería, L & Bisnath, S (2004). Global tensions: challenges and opportunities in the world economy. New York: Routledge.