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Gender Action continues to expand the list of countries where — with local partners — we analyze IFI investments and advocate for women’s rights and gender equality. In this work, we support and mentor citizen groups in developing and transition countries in building their capacity to deconstruct IFI documents and pressure their governments to target resources towards women.
Here is a snapshot of some of our key country collaborations:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
In 2005 Gender Action worked with Bosnians to address the
gender impacts of PRSP macroeconomic reforms at a workshop
for PRSP macroeconomics and gender team members and other
PRSP stakeholders. Elaine Zuckerman facilitated the discussion
on how macroeconomics often ignore women’s work in the
unpaid care economy; gender differences in paid employment
and in policies affecting consumption, savings and investment;
macrostability and social needs; revenue sources including
taxation; PRSPs and related structural adjustment measures;
and the gender impacts of trade. Elaine also conducted a training
on Gender
Budget Initiatives to help the former socialist transition
country engender and maintain social safety nets in the face
of IFI-imposed economic reforms. For example, local organizations
in Bosnia and Herzegovina oppose the IFI-mandated value added
tax, which places a relatively higher burden on poorer women
and men.
Central and Eastern Europe
In 2006 Gender Action partnered with Central and Eastern
European Bankwatch Network (CEE Bankwatch) to expose the tragic
gendered impacts of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD) and International Finance Corporation (IFC)-financed
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and IFC-funded Sakhalin II pipeline projects.
The report, titled "Boom-time
Blues: Big Oil's Gender Impacts in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and
Sakhalin", challenges EBRD and IFC claims that they
promote gender equality and combat HIV/AIDS. Instead of bringing
prosperity, the pipelines are increasing poverty and human
trafficking, reducing access to natural resources, increasing
the occurrence of still births, pushing more women into sex
work, and raising rates of HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
China
Gender Action spotlights China, the most populous World Bank
client and one of its largest borrowers in dollar terms. We
regularly conduct gender analyses of World Bank loans to China.
Our analysis has found that the Bank’s heavily infrastructure
and environment-weighted China portfolio has hardly recognized
women’s roles or considered gender-differentiated project
impacts.
One of our remarkable findings is that Bank rural poverty projects
in China have not acknowledged the well-documented feminization
of poverty and agriculture, nor its record of having the world’s
highest female suicide rate and one of the most rapidly proliferating
patterns of trafficking in women and girls.
To learn more click below to see relevant publications on
China:
Reforming
the World Bank: Will the New Gender Strategy Make a Difference?
A Study with China Case Examples (Updated Version)
The Gendered Impacts of
World Bank Environment and Infrastructure Projects in China
Learn more
about what Gender Action Board member, Wu Qing is doing to
empower migrant women in China
The World Bank’s
China Country Gender Review, prepared by Elaine Zuckerman
with Alf Blikberg and Menglin Cao
Serbia and Montenegro
Gender Action launched its gendered impacts of structural
adjustment program (SAP) with its first case in Serbia and
Montenegro. Gender Action’s analysis of Serbia and Montenegro's
World Bank US$250 million "structural adjustment lending
program" describes differing impacts on poor women and
men. At the time of our analysis in 2004, SAPs composed at
least four fifths of Bank loans to these republics. Our analysis
found a distinct pattern of neglect of gendered impacts.
Serbia and Montenegro's structural adjustment objectives
consist of: public expenditure cutbacks and civil service
reforms including in the social sectors – in health,
education, labor and social protection programs; State Owned
Enterprise (SOE) closing, restructuring and/or privatizing;
and bank commercialization and downsizing.
Local citizen's groups are using this analysis to conduct
advocacy to mitigate negative effects and achieve social reforms
including to (1) pressure their government and the World Bank
to create employment, retraining and other compensatory programs
for single female parents and other vulnerable women who lose
employment through SAL programs; (2) obtain a US$7 million
public sector allocation to assist vulnerable women in the
national poverty reduction strategy; (3) achieve an increase
in women’s pensions; and (4) pressure the World Bank
Belgrade office to undertake a Country Gender Assessment to
identify gender gaps that future investments should try to
narrow.
See our publication presenting this analysis by Aleksandra
Vladisavljevic of the Association for Women's Initiatives
in Belgrade, and Elaine Zuckerman, Gender Action President,
called "Structural
Adjustment's Gendered Impacts: the Case of Serbia and Montenegro".
To learn more about Gender Action’s trainings with
civil society groups to engender Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers in seven countries, please see our Brief
Review of PRSP Collaborations by Country. To learn more
about why Gender Action no longer engages in PRSP processes,
see our Engendering Country Strategies
page.
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