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Economic policy reforms in the form of Structural Adjustment
Loans or Programs (SALs or SAPs) are large IFI investments
that require countries to restructure their economies. SAPs
require painful restructuring of poor country economies. The
common prescriptions include: price and trade "liberalization",
public expenditure cutbacks, public service and enterprise
privatization including privatizing basic needs like water
and health, introducing regressive taxation like VATs, and
other economically difficult measures. Often these measures
raise unemployment by pushing the new jobless and the already
poor into deeper poverty. Multinational corporations benefit
most from these measures, for example, from privatizing water
and requiring unreciprocated unilateral trade tariff removal.
Poor people suffer from these measures carried out in the
name of poverty reduction.
SAPs have also been known as Sector Adjustment Loans, Economic
Recovery Credits, Structural Adjustment Facilities (SAFs),
Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) and Development
Support Credits (DSCs). Due to pressure from civil society
groups regarding the negative human impacts of SAPs, often
they have been renamed Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs)
in the case of the World Bank and Poverty Reduction Growth
Facilities (PRGFs) in the case of the IMF to indicate their
close tie to Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Despite
their poverty reduction names, PRSCs and PRGFs perpetuate
classic structural adjustment programs that undermine poverty
reduction.
Gender Action monitors the gender impacts of these programs
and carries out advocacy with local partners to mitigate harmful
effects of donor-driven structural adjustments programs on
low-income women and men.
Women are the first to lose jobs and the last to be rehired in public sector downsizing because they are unfairly assumed to be secondary breadwinners although in reality increasing numbers of households are female headed. Their work at home tends to increase with the loss of child and health care programs. This squeezes out their time they can spend searching for new work and earning when they find jobs.
Men who lose jobs often turn to drinking and domestic violence rises. The IFIs have barely addressed these destructive trends.
With local partners, Gender Action launched its first Structural Adjustment's Gendered Impacts program in Serbia and Montenegro where over 80 percent of World Bank investments have supported SAPs. Our Serb partners, the Belgrade-based Association for Women's Initiatives, found the privatization program did not consider any data on the social profile of employees who lose their jobs in restructured enterprises. They concluded, "Without such data it is not possible to create specific support programs to increase self-employment, SME development and, job creation."
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