Gender Action continuously monitors and pressures the IFIs
to match their gender rhetoric with actions. For example,
Mapping
Multilateral Development Banks' Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS
Spending reveals that despite firm IFI commitments to
address population, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS, less
than half of the nine IFIs invest in these issues. The four
IFIs that do invest spend on average a mere 0.3 percent of
their budget on these themes annually. And the World Bank—the
largest IFI funder addressing these challenges—is cutting
its funding particularly for crucial HIV/AIDS programs. Since
all Gender Action projects track IFI gender implementation,
please see other Programs and Themes pages for additional
examples.
In 2005 Gender Action updated its study on the World Bank’s
investment track record on gender in, Reforming
the World Bank: Will the Gender Strategy Make a Difference?
A Study with China Case Examples. It reveals that gender
experts compose less than a fraction of one percent of Bank
staff and that most non-gender experts lack incentives to
address gender disparities. Through a gender analysis of the
Bank portfolio in China through 2005, Gender Action demonstrated
that large investments tend to ignore major gender problems
including the feminization of poverty and agriculture, exploding
trafficking of poor rural women and girls and the world’s
highest female suicide rate.
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