The four main crises that Gita Sen and Caren Grown discuss in the book of Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions were the food-fuel-water crises, the balance and debt crises, militarization and violence, and a crises of culture. The impact of the listed crises is detrimental to queer and trans women as they are recognized to have a lower standing than women who are already living under patriarchal oppression.

           

The food-fuel-water crisis points out that even though women are often the main producers of food crops, they have little to no control when it comes to ownership of their personal properties. The women are also the ones collecting fuel and water but, because queer or trans women are generally not accepted socially, the ability and access to collect fuel and water becomes limited. They will be pushed out from the society and fall into the sidelines of the community where, unlike the women that are discussed in Sen and Grown’s book, it is more difficult to bear children to provide additional labor (Sen & Grown, p.57, 1987). This is important to recognize as it tackles the idea of a traditional family and expected gender norms that oppress women, queer women, and trans women.

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The balance and debt crisis is significantly worse for queer and trans women compared to poor gender-conforming women. The gender-conforming women are still able to find employment even if they are in service, commerce, and sex work. According to Stonewall,

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Discrimination can lead to poverty, but the reverse is also true. The poorer someone is, the more they are discriminated against in daily life and the less they can afford the means of escape, such as migration to a safer neighbourhood or more secure accommodation. (Stonewall, p.2)

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Due to the initial discrimination against one’s identity, the window for opportunity for queer and trans women gets drastically smaller. The support of a family is often missing due to the rejection of their identity which makes it likely that they will need to carry out the second shift on their own (Sen & Grown, p.63, 1987). The process of doing work of multiple people limits the time that they can spend on themselves to improve their situation or to take care of themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. This brings light to the inadequate programming of governmental services, budgeting, and public policies in regards to queer and trans women.

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The queer and trans women are placed in extreme vulnerability when it comes to militarization and violence. Sen and Grown mentions that women during the time of conflict, ‘sexual abuse and rape are standard methods of terrorizing female prisoners, refugees, and the civilian populations in affected zones’ (Sen & Grown, p.73, 1987). Queer and trans women, except for the rare population that stand in the average socioeconomic status or higher, the majority will be the lower class that limits them from resources to use as a form of protection. In areas that have strong gender stereotypes, those who are deviant from that becomes an easy target for gender-based violence (Stonewall, p.5). Alternative development policies need to expand and work towards recognizing that violent behaviors are unlawful and harmful to all.

           

The crisis of culture involves different aspects such as religious ideologies and colonization. During the processes of colonization, the idea of ancestry was reinforced which was based on ‘Daughter of Eve, Tempter of Adam’, the idea that there are only males and females while reinforcing patriarchy in the forms of ‘Victorian notion of separation of the sexes’ (Desai & Nair, p.356, 2005). The analysis made by Mohanty also mentions that ‘[O]n the one hand women attain value or status within the family, the assumption of a singular patriarchal kinship system is what apparently structures women as an oppressed group in these societies!’ (Mohanty, p. 61, 1991). The traditional structure of patriarchy that was embedded in many societies through colonization still lingers in many, which then affects everyone negatively as everyone ends up playing a role as they are expected to. These ideologies box individuals into a category which erases the individuality of queer and trans women by disregarding their identity. There needs to be a change to recognize that there are no binaries that define a human being to one or the other.

The importance of creating alternative development policies that are inclusive and considerate of all is important because no matter what gender, sexuality, class, status, religion, etc. an individual is, they are still human beings that deserve to be regarded for. As Mohanty puts it, ‘Development policies do not affect both groups of women in the same way’ (Mohanty, p.63, 1991). Therefore, the hegemonic ideas of a group of individuals need to be dismantled and an intersectional perspective needs to be developed to recognize that a policy change that should benefit ‘all women’ in fact, does not apply to ‘all women’.