The Quintuple Crisis? Addressing the missing crisis of care in the Alternative Development Strategies for a post-2015 era

We are currently undergoing a period of flux, in which the hegemony that the Washington Consensus held regarding structural adjustment and market-based strategies for international development is being challenged on multiple fronts. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), developed on the dawn of the new Millennium and with a target date of 2015, galvanised efforts across nations to meet the needs of the world's poorest. However, with the conclusion of the MDG era in 2015, a development strategy for the future is required, capable of critically reflecting on the shortcomings of the past 15 years. The United Nation's Committee for Development Policy has recently provided such an alternative international development strategy, taking into consideration the challenges brought about by what it calls the 'multiple and interrelated economic, food, energy and environmental crises' . These interrelated crises, termed the 'Quadruple Crises' by the Committee for Development Policy, are analysed in the light of the asymmetries and shortcomings of the globalization process which has largely contributed to their emergence. However, side-lined when presenting solutions to address the four crises outlined above is a fifth systemic crisis, which lies outside of mainstream constructions of development that only quantify progress through increased growth and productive labour output. At its root are the same shortcomings of our globalised economic system. This fifth 'crisis of care' will be the subject of the research. More specifically, the research questions that will be answered are as follows:
1) Taking into consideration the 'crisis of care', how would the alternative development strategies for a post-2015 era change in a way capable of overcoming this crisis?
2) To what extent are women's advocates in the development discourse pursuing policy that works within the current economic framework, legitimising an economic system in which production is valued higher than social reproduction, and conversely to what extent is this hegemony being challenged?
3) How do projects which aim to empower women in market terms, through promoting an ideal of 'Economic Man' (Mellor, 1997), affect gender relations and power structures in the societies they aim to help, in contrast to projects which aim to support and enable social reproduction?