WID, WAD and GAD Approaches: CSS Gender Studies Answer

Short answer

The WID, WAD and GAD approaches are the feminist theories sent into the field. WID, carrying Liberal feminism, includes women in development through programs, equity measures and resources, and inherits liberalism’s limitation of adding women to a structure it never questions.

Outline for quick revision

1. Introduction: three approaches, three feminisms
2. WID: Women in Development (= Liberal Feminism applied)
3. WAD: Women and Development (= Marxist Feminism applied)
4. GAD: Gender and Development (= Socialist Feminism applied)
5. Practical vs Strategic Gender Needs: the measuring rod
6. The three approaches face to face
7. Application to Pakistan
8. Conclusion

1. Introduction

The gender approaches to development are the feminist theories translated into development practice, and the mapping should open the answer: WID carries Liberal feminism, WAD carries Marxist feminism, and GAD carries Socialist feminism. Each approach answers the same question differently, what is women’s relationship to development?, and the answers escalate: WID says women must be included in development, WAD says women are already part of development but unpaid for it, and GAD says development itself must be restructured, because the problem is not women’s absence but the patriarchy-and-capitalism system they are absent inside. A critical review requires each approach’s principles, its evidence, and its limitations, and this answer supplies all three for each.

2. WID: Women in Development (= Liberal Feminism Applied)

WID’s premise is the liberal premise: women have been left out of development, and the remedy is to bring them in, through programs, laws, quotas and resources, without dismantling the existing structure. Rights and inclusion come from policy, exactly as the Liberal stance says rights come from the law.

(a) The principles

1. Women are part of development and must be included in its planning and its benefits.

2. Income-making and anti-poverty measures must target women, jobs, skills, special programs and quotas (including in the civil services), with NGOs training women’s labor skills.

3. Awareness must be raised so women know the programs and rights that exist for them.

4. State health initiatives must reach women: the Sehat/Insaf Card being the standing Pakistani example.

5. An active civil society must watch and push: as civil society did in the motorway case.

6. Equity must supplement equality: equality gives the same to all, while equity is a deliberate step favouring one gender so both benefit, the CSS women’s reserved seats and the provincial women’s quotas being the exact illustration, because jobs are open to all while women’s representation is deliberately boosted.

7. Resources must be provided to women: internet, laptops and phones for online work and classes, safe passage and female transport, machines and skill training, and baby-care centres, as the state’s duty, so women become a stronger part of the economy.

(b) The evidence line

• The World Bank estimates Pakistan’s GDP could rise ~25% if women entered the labor force 50-50 with men, WID’s entire case in one number.

(c) The limitations (the critical review)

• WID adds women to a structure it never questions: it fits women into existing development, which means the development that marginalized them is left intact.
• It ignores patriarchy: the Liberal criticism transferred whole: programs and quotas reach women on paper while the ordinary or poor woman remains blamed at home and ignored at the police station, because the structure beneath the program was never touched.
• It risks treating women as instruments: the ~25% GDP argument values women for what their inclusion does for growth, not for their rights as persons, efficiency reasoning wearing equality’s clothes.
• It serves the reachable: like the liberal feminism it carries, WID’s benefits collect among urban, educated women, while the periphery of the periphery stays out of reach.

3. WAD: Women and Development (= Marxist Feminism Applied)

WAD’s premise is the Marxist correction: saying “women need to become part of development” is wrong, because women are already part of it, the problem is that they are not paid or counted for it. The approach reads gender exploitation as capitalism’s product, on the stance that the man exploits the woman as capital exploits labor.

(a) The principles

• Women are already inside development: a housewife already performs the work of a cook, cleaner, laundry-worker, nurse, teacher, childminder and gardener, she is a part of the economy; the problem is that she is unpaid.
• The system runs on that unpaid labor: the point associated with Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations): removing a housewife would cost Rs. 2-2.5 lakh per month in hired help, and no return is given for it.
• The exploitation is structural, not accidental: the capitalist system produces gender exploitation exactly as it produces labor exploitation, with masculinity operating as a power structure over women the way capital operates over labor.
• The solution is structural too: challenge and overthrow the capitalist structure, a revolution, not a program.

(b) The evidence lines

• The ILO ranks Pakistan #1 in the world for the gender pay gap, the paid economy’s half of the exploitation.
• Women’s uncounted informal labor is estimated at around two to three trillion dollars if included in the economy, the unpaid half.

(c) The limitations (the critical review)

• the Marxist criticism transfers whole: exploitation existed before capitalism and inside communist states, so making capitalism the sole cause is incorrect, and an approach built on a sole cause inherits the error.
• The remedy is unusable: no development ministry can implement “overthrow capitalism,” which leaves WAD analytically brilliant and practically empty.
• Class swallows gender: by reading women’s oppression as a species of labor exploitation, WAD underweights the patriarchy that operates independently of any economy, the jirga and the inheritance-seizing brother are not employed by capital.

4. GAD: Gender and Development (= Socialist Feminism Applied)

GAD is the completed approach, carrying the Socialist stance: both capitalism AND patriarchy must be dismantled together, through social reforms. Its decisive move is to shift the unit of analysis from “women” to gender, from the victim to the relationship, because development cannot fix women’s position without restructuring the relations between the genders.

(a) The principles

• GAD rejects the public/private divide: the dichotomy that assigns men to the public sphere (earning, profession) and women to the private sphere (domestic work) is wrong, because the role is each individual’s choice, a man may stay home, and a woman may take a profession.
• The root cause is named: patriarchy produces the oppression, and it must be tackled together with capitalism, neither alone.
• The instruments are political and legal: women need political representation, and rights must be relied upon through legislation, as, after the motorway case, change was sought through law.
• Both genders are inside the analysis: because the unit is the gender relation, GAD programs address men’s roles too, which neither WID nor WAD could do.

(b) The limitations (the critical review)

• GAD is the hardest to implement, because it demands structural transformation, of households, laws, markets and mindsets at once, and states resist transformation while happily funding programs.
• It dilutes easily into rhetoric: “gender mainstreaming” can decay into a checkbox on every project document, gender becoming everyone’s job and therefore no one’s, the same everyone’s-job trap as integration without autonomy.
• It collides with the societies it enters: an approach that questions the public/private divide is resisted precisely as the Women’s March is resisted, because it challenges the distribution of power and demands equality.

5. Practical vs Strategic Gender Needs: the Measuring Rod

• Practical gender needs are the needs women have within their existing roles, the immediate necessities of daily life as currently lived: water, food, health care, income, childcare, shelter. Meeting them helps women survive their position without changing the position itself.
• Strategic gender needs are the needs that arise from women’s subordinate position itself, the needs whose satisfaction changes the position: legal rights, inheritance, equal pay, protection from violence, control over one’s body, and a share in decision-making. Meeting them transforms the gender relation rather than servicing it.
• The framework becomes a measuring rod for the three approaches, and this is the analytical payoff: WID addresses practical needs, it delivers the income, the health card and the skills within the existing structure; GAD addresses strategic needs, it targets the structure that produces the subordination; and WAD diagnoses the strategic problem while delivering no needs at all, since revolution is not a program.
• The one-line version for the short note: practical needs help a woman live her role; strategic needs help her leave it.

6. The Three Approaches Face to Face

• On the diagnosis: WID says women are excluded, WAD says women are exploited, and GAD says the gender relation itself is the problem.
• On the target: WID targets programs, WAD targets capitalism, and GAD targets capitalism and patriarchy together.
• On the feminism carried: WID = Liberal, WAD = Marxist, GAD = Socialist, the mapping.
• On the needs served: WID serves practical needs, GAD serves strategic needs, and WAD serves the analysis.
• On the verdict: each approach corrected its predecessor, WAD corrected WID’s blindness to exploitation, and GAD corrected WAD’s blindness to patriarchy, so the three are less rivals than three drafts of one idea, of which GAD is the final draft.

7. Application to Pakistan

• Pakistan’s actual policy mix is WID in practice: quotas, BISP and Ehsaas-style transfers, Sehat Cards, skills programs, inclusion instruments inside an unquestioned structure.
• The WAD diagnosis fits Pakistan’s numbers exactly, the world’s widest pay gap and the uncounted household economy, which is why the ~25% GDP figure keeps appearing in every World Bank assessment.
• The GAD agenda is Pakistan’s unfinished business: the public/private divide stands, political representation leans on reserved seats rather than won seats, and legislation exists while the patriarchal structure beneath it does not move, Pakistan, in the terms of this answer, meets practical needs while deferring strategic ones.

8. Conclusion

The WID, WAD and GAD approaches are the feminist theories sent into the field. WID, carrying Liberal feminism, includes women in development through programs, equity measures and resources, and inherits liberalism’s limitation of adding women to a structure it never questions. WAD, carrying Marxist feminism, proves that women were inside development all along, unpaid to the tune of trillions, and inherits Marxism’s limitation of a sole cause and an unusable remedy. GAD, carrying Socialist feminism, completes the sequence by targeting patriarchy and capitalism together through representation and legislation, and pays for its correctness by being the hardest to implement. Measured on the rod of needs, WID services the practical, GAD pursues the strategic, and the critical verdict follows: development that meets women’s practical needs while deferring their strategic needs, Pakistan’s current settlement, keeps women alive inside a position that development was supposed to change.

References

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, the system runs on women’s unpaid labor (WAD).
• ILO (Pakistan #1 gender pay gap) and World Bank (~25% GDP point), the evidence lines.
• The Moser/Molyneux needs framework, practical vs strategic gender needs.

More preparation: See all CSS Gender Studies past papers by topic.

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• Gender Analysis of Development Theories: CSS Solved Answer
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Last updated: 2 November 2026.

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