it arose from calls from women s rights scholars and activists as well as the women s and feminist movements to address the power and patriarchy that lie at the root of discrimination and inequality this introduced a need to broaden and deepen the development focus beyond women to address gender roles and relations differential access to resources and control of them and ultimately the power imbalance between men and women in doing so it opened an opportunity to question how traditional social roles norms and expectations formed the basis for inequality in the private and public spheres as ensconced in unequal institutions whether in families communities schools the professional sphere politics or beyond