During the early 1980s, as Third World women were calling for new theories of development that embraced feminism, related conferences were urging the empowerment of womaen as agents, rather than depicting them as problems, of development (Bunch and Carrillo 1990). During this period a key event was the founding of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) in Bangladore, India, in 1984. DAWN is seen as essentially adhering to the WAD perspective. Grassroots organizing experiences had led the founders of DAWN to link the microlevel activities they were engaged in to macrolevel perspectives on development. As Gita Sen and Caren Grown (1987:9-10) point out in a later study produced by DAWN: