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Gendered livelihoods in diverse global contexts: an introduction

Gendered livelihoods encompass the material realities and ideological processes that shape and are shaped by economic strategies in diverse geographical locations. The articles in this theme issue examine women’s multiple gender identities and livelihood strategies in rural and urban environments within the context of global restructuring. They reflect an in-depth understanding of gendered livelihood strategies that stem, in part, from rich fieldwork experiences in places as diverse as India, West Africa, the United States and South Africa. As such, these articles constitute an important contribution to both feminist geography and development studies by examining how gendered economic strategies are situated in diverse cultural and geographical contexts. The livelihoods approach to understanding development processes—first introduced in the mid-1980s by Chambers (1983) among others (see Chambers & Conway, 1992; Bernstein et al., 1996)—has become increasingly common in academic research and practice over the past decade (Rakodi & Lloyd Jones, 2002; Schafer, 2002). Although frameworks for livelihoods analysis differ in their detail, the basic elements consider resources (what people have), strategies (what people do), and outcomes (the goals people pursue). According to Ellis (2000), livelihoods may be defined as ‘the assets (natural, physical, human, financial and social capital), the activities (strategies of use), and the access to these (mediated by institutions and social relations) that together determine the living gained by the individual or household’ (p. 10). Central to this definition is an understanding of the way in which social institutions and ideologies define access to resources and inform the strategy options available to different members of a community. As its proponents assert, a livelihoods approach offers a people-centered perspective that allows detailed insight into the impacts of changing macro-level