While Boserup outlines a number of interesting dynamics in terms of the impact of development on women in poor countries, and her book is worth reading simply due to the fact that it had such an academic impact, there are a number of problems with her analysis.
One of these include the use of sweeping statements about entire continents based on evidence from only one place or sometimes based simply on her own assumptions. The most disconcerting problem, though, is that in the end her entire thesis implodes on itself. She subscribes to a model of modernization theory in which the less capitalist and the more agrarian a society is, the more “primitive” and “backward” and bad for women it is—while at the same time making the general point that modernization and capitalism have had a negative impact on the status of women in these so-called “backward” societies. These points make no sense together.
You can’t call a society backward and primitive and point to the status of women in that society, and then say that even though modernization has a negative impact on women it still makes these societies more “advanced.”
In short, her work would be much stronger if she, first of all, discussed the issue of class. Second of all, she should have ditched the modernization theory framework she uses by acknowledging that it’s simply an economic version of previous models of Western cultural and racial supremacy. In other words, she seems to make very valid points about the negative effects of capitalism on non-capitalist societies, but at the same time seems to assert that this process is an inevitable part of a mythical economic evolution, in much the same way that colonialists saw non-Westerners, especially Africans, as being on a lower rung of the cultural or racial evolutionary ladder. In the end, this sort of condescending tone makes her analysis difficult to read or take seriously, even where she may be making a valid point.
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