GENDER ISSUES AND DEVELOPMENT

The world has for many years been caught up in a conceptual trap where issues of justice, fairness, human rights, and gender have not come to the fore as human concerns in society and societal relations. Today, gender and gender relations are concepts that have take centre stage in different fora and in the academia. We cannot discuss development today without looking at issues concerning the relations of the male and female gender and how each of these groups are situated in the discussion on national and international development. Gender equality is a core development issue-a development objective in its own rights. A number of other gender concerns and realities form part of gender studies and gender interventions. Gender and development as a course seeks to pick all the issues that have a bearing on how men and women should stand, on how and to what extend should they take part in the development discourse and benefits to both the male and female gender, are thus calibrated to be in development planning and realization in order to bridge the gender gap in all areas of human life