the conventional ideology of women's images of "good wife" and "good mother, which

are a part of popular culture and permeated official political decisions of both national

and international development agencies (French and James 1997).

 Women's activities at home deprived them of the opportunity to work for

economically accumulation or productive purposes, but at the same time that work at

home was not seen as something valuable and socially necessary. Since household work

was outside of capitalist relations of production, women were considered "unoccupied"

and "economically inactive" by the official understanding. Only when women leave

home to work in paid activities does their work become "real" and as a result considered

relevant for development (Charseworth & Wright 1991). Recognizing money as the only

official measure of labor is a masculine biased concept, because most men do not work at

home. But domestic work is in fact labor and it takes its toll on the people who do it.

According to Nufio Gomez (1999) women spend between 9 to 10 hours per day in non-

paid tasks that are completely essential for family reproduction.

 Charseworth and Wright (1991) assert that women were seen as merely responsible

for domestic tasks like caring for children, providing food and running the households or

they were portrayed in an elaborate metaphor, as "the guardians of national culture,

indigenous religion, and family traditions". The main consequence of this unconscious

and prevailing reasoning is that, because of gender inequality and social exclusion,

women were largely ignored by development plans. Moreover, literacy and job-training

programs were designed for men only. Therefore the whole concept of modernization

and development was biased to award men access to income generating work (Harding

1998). By "leaving women out" of paid work, national economies took advantage of