<P> Chant emphasize that "The smart economics approach represents, at best, pragmatism in a time of economic restructuring and austerity ." Smart economics can have a wider acceptance and legitimacy because now is the time when efficiency is most demanded, not because its utilitarianism has universal appeal . She further warns that feminists should be very cautious about "supporting, and working in coalition with, individuals and institutions who approach gender equality through the lens of smart economics . This may have attractions in strategic terms, enabling us to access resources for work focusing on supporting the individual agency of women and girls, but risks aggravating many of the complex problems that gender and development seeks to transform ." </P> <P> Other approaches with different paradigms have also played a historically important role in advancing theories and practices in gender and development . </P> <P> The structuralist debate was first triggered by Marxist and socialist feminists . Marxism, particularly through alternative models of state socialist development practiced in China and Cuba, challenged the dominant liberal approach over time . Neo-Marxist proponents focused on the role of the post-colonial state in development in general and also on localized class struggles . Marxist feminists advanced these criticisms towards liberal approaches and made significant contribution to the contemporary debate . </P> <P> Dependency theorists opposed that liberal development models, including the attempt to incorporate women into the existing global capitalism, was in fact nothing more than the "development of underdevelopment ." This view led them to propose that delinking from the structural oppression of global capitalism is the only way to achieve balanced human development . In the 1980s, there also emerged "a sustained questioning by post-structuralist critics of the development paradigm as a narrative of progress and as an achievable enterprise ." </P>

Discuss the relationship between gender and development pdf