IDA AT WORK Gender: Working Towards Greater Equality …

     IDA AT WORK

     Gender: Working Towards Greater Equality

       Beginning in the 1980s, the Bank made progress in integrating
       gender issues into operations, particularly in education. Between
       1995 and 2000 the Bank lent more than US$3.4 billion for girls'
       education programs, and was also the single largest lender in the
       world for health, nutrition, and population projects, three-
       quarters of which contained gender-responsive actions.
       In 2001, in response to a request from IDA donors, the World Bank
       adopted a gender mainstreaming strategy, setting the stage for
       integrating gender concerns into all IDA operations. In fiscal year
       2004/05, 85 percent of all World Bank credits approved for IDA
       countries included attention to at least some gender issues in
       project design.
       Gender progress has been greater in health and education than in
       agriculture, infrastructure, private sector and finance. For
       instance, while average life expectancy for women has increased
       by 15 to 20 years in developing countries since 1970, women's
       formal labor force participation still trails by 37 percent.
       In an effort to better integrate gender concerns in lagging sectors,
       a new World Bank Group Gender Action Plan ­ Gender Equality as
       Smart Economics -- was launched during the Annual Meetings in
       September 2006. It will guide the Bank's gender equality work in
       the coming four years, with most of the operations under the plan
       expected to occur in IDA countries




IMPACT                                      education have made a major contribution
                                            to    reaching     the   third     Millennium
IDA countries have succeeded in reducing    Development Goal (gender equality). World
the gap between girls' and boys' school     Bank-financed        education        projects
enrollment from 16 percentage points in     incorporate a variety of activities including:
1999 down to 10 percent in 2004. Average    providing stipends to families to cover the
life expectancy for women has also          educational cost of school attendance for
increased by 17 years since 1960.           girls; training and hiring more female
                                            teachers; building and improving school
Education                                   sanitary facilities; and providing a clean
Recent activities conducted by the Bank     water source for girls who need to carry
and its client countries to reduce the      water home after school.
gender gaps in primary and secondary


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Through the Girls' Education and Education       percent in 2003. Moreover, women in
for All initiatives, IDA has supported access    developing countries still earn on average
to good quality basic education, with a          about 22 percent less than men after taking
special focus on girls and on the poorest        into account differences in observed skills.
groups. Examples include the IDA-financed        Women in Africa receive less than 10
Bangladesh Female Secondary School               percent of all credit going to small farmers
Assistance      Project,    which    provided    and 1 percent of the total credit to the
incentives to keep girls in schools, resulting   agricultural sector, while they make up a
in higher enrollment levels, increased           majority of agricultural workers.
marriage age, and more women employed
with higher income. Girls' share of              Restricting economic opportunity
enrollment increased from 33 percent in          for women is bad economics
1991 to 56 percent in 2005; Secondary            This is problematic because it is unfair: life
School Certificate pass rates for girls          chances should not be pre-ordained at
increased from 39 percent in 2001 to 46          birth. But it is also problematic because
percent in 2006.                                 restricting economic opportunity for
Health                                           women is bad economics: under-investing
                                                 in women limits economic growth and slows
In health, too, there has been steady            down progress in poverty reduction.
progress. The Multi-country HIV/AIDS             Consequently, countries with greater
Program Operations in Africa has focused         gender equality tend to have lower poverty
particular attention on addressing the           rates.
gender dynamics in its response to the
pandemic, with operations in a series of         There can be many reasons for this. For
countries. In Chad, IDA funds a project to       instance, there is strong evidence linking
reduce the transmission and socioeconomic        increases in women's productivity and
impact of HIV/AIDS by supporting education       earnings to lower household poverty and
and income-generating activities for             better health, educational and nutritional
women. In Rwanda, IDA has financed rural         outcomes for children, eventually leading
access to AIDS care: 5,000 poor patients,        to higher productivity. In Brazil, the
mainly women, benefit from antiretroviral        survival probabilities of a child increases by
therapy (60 percent of those in need). In        about 20 percent when income is in the
Africa generally, IDA has financed services      hands of the mother instead of the father.
to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission      In labor markets, there are good examples
for more than 1.5 million women, and             of women's employment in manufacturing,
helped distribute 1.3 billion male condoms       and of the benefits women, industries and
and 4 million female condoms.                    economies draw from their participation.

However, women continue to trail men in          There is plenty of empirical evidence that
terms of formal labor force participation,       giving women access to credit boosts health
access to credit, entrepreneurship rates,        and education outcomes. But it is also good
income levels, inheritance and ownership         business, because repayment rates are
rights, and number of seats in parliament.       higher. When credit is provided directly to
                                                 the woman, it has a significant effect on
Employment                                       consumption      expenditure,    children's
                                                 schooling, and her labor supply. Studies
Overall, women in IDA countries have even
                                                 also show that when credit is in the hands
less access to formal jobs now than they
                                                 of mothers, children's nutrition increases,
had 25 years ago: the female labor force
                                                 and they grow 17 percent more than when
shrunk from 53 percent in 1980 to 49
                                                 fathers control the credit.
percent in 2005, while men continue being
employed at roughly the same level,              In agriculture, meanwhile, a sustained
around 86 percent.                               productivity increase of basic food crops is
                                                 one of the most vital factors in achieving
The share of women in non-agriculture
                                                 income growth for the poorest households.
wage employment barely budged in IDA
                                                 There is compelling evidence from Burkina
countries since 1990, from 23 percent to 25


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Faso    and    Kenya    that    agricultural    For example, in Timor Leste, the World
productivity could be raised by as much as      Bank-supported Community Empowerment
20 percent, simply by reallocating existing     and Local Governance Project introduced
agricultural inputs more equally between        quotas for female representation in new
men and women.                                  local governance structures. In many Bank-
                                                supported water and sanitation projects,
Transport                                       women have constituted half or more of
Transport offers a striking illustration of     local water management committee
the interdependence between public policy       membership, something that research
and household economics, and the                suggests enhances project effectiveness
associated time problem for women.              and sustainability.
Studies in the 1990s indicated that women
in sub-Saharan Africa transported more on
their heads in volume than was transported      Empowering women in Indonesia
in vehicles. Time spent by an average
household on domestic transport activities      In Indonesia, through the World Bank-
can translate into a daily input per woman      supported Kecamatan Development Project
of hours.                                       (KDP), villagers receive grants for
                                                infrastructure projects that they have chosen
Community development                           after assessing the community's needs.
The World Bank increasingly supports            KDP developed several rules and processes
approaches that put the local community at      to ensure that women's voices would be
the center of development. To this end,         heard when selecting village projects.
the Bank is funding community-driven            KDP also helped liberate women from time-
development (CDD) projects that work            consuming tasks such as walking and water
directly to help poor women and men             collection. In one village, a gravel road was
empower themselves, economically and            built to the local rice paddies and created
socially.                                       access for motorcycle taxis, making the
By    empowering      local    communities,     transport of rice easier and reducing the
encouraging participation and inclusion in      time women spent traveling to and from the
decision    making,       and    developing     paddies. In a nearby village, a three-
accountability mechanisms, CDD projects         kilometer-long water pipe was built through
support the development of communities          a dense forest and up the steep sides of a
that are more socially integrated, inclusive,   volcano to pipe water directly into the
and cohesive--and thus, better able to          village, thereby reducing the time women
ensure that community development meets         spent collecting water. Over the course of
local needs. As of end-June 2006, the IDA       three Kecamatan projects, women's status
portfolio of CDD lending for activities         has progressively improved.
financed between 2000 and 2006 totaled          Where previously women's roles were
approximately US$9.1 billion.                   confined to the household, KDP has
Several community-based World Bank-             promoted       women's     participation  in
supported projects specifically focus on        community decision-making and used
empowering poor women. For example, the         women facilitators in council meetings; it
Andhra Pradesh District Poverty Initiatives     also initiated a special planning stream for
Project in India supports women's self-help     women's groups, a competitive reward for
groups that use collective action to            promoting women's participation, and a
generate higher incomes and reduce              women engineers program. Women initiated
harmful social conditions such as child         6,170 proposals (or 55 percent) of the
marriage, rape, and men's abandonment of        11,275 proposals funded across 23
their families.                                 provinces.

The World Bank is also supporting several
projects that reserve positions or set
quotas to ensure women's participation.



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IDA CONTRIBUTION                                Gender Equality as Smart Economics seeks
                                                to increase the productivity and earnings of
IDA is well suited to provide strategic         women producers and their access to
support for gender equality work, a             formal financial services. It helps young
complex task which spans a variety of           women's transition to quality employment
sectors and often requires sustained efforts    and increases the number of women
over long periods of time.                      starting agribusinesses and engaging in
                                                high-value agriculture. And it boosts
First, changing attitudes, traditions and
                                                women's access to essential infrastructure
behaviors related to gender identity
                                                services, particularly transport, water and
unfailingly takes a long time and requires
                                                energy.
unrelenting support and capacity building.
IDA has the ability to sustain activities       Spanning fiscal years 2007-11, Gender
through its lending instruments and through     Equality as Smart Economics finances
its analytical and advisory services, which     activities in four areas:
can help deliver results on targets such as
gender     equality,    where    entrenched     Operations
practices can take a long time to change.       Examples of future projects include:
Second,      by    its    nature,     gender    Finance. In Tanzania, where women have
mainstreaming        requires      organized    very poor access to financial services, a
assistance across many sectors. Progress on     line of credit for women at a commercial
key gender indicators ­ such as girls'          bank will be established. Women will
enrollment rates, maternal mortality, labor     receive training to help increase their
force participation and asset ownership ­       "bankability," and regulatory and legal
also depend on investments in water,            reforms will be supported to give women
sanitation, transport and access to financial   better credit access. Gender and Growth
services. So far, relatively little of IDA's    Assessments, in Tanzania and Ghana, will
support to gender equality comes from           identify constraints to women's access to
cross-sectoral lending instruments. This is     financial services and define policies to
unfortunate since IDA is perhaps uniquely       lower them.
positioned to encourage better planning of
cross-sectoral investments and policy           Infrastructure,       transport.    Secondary
actions.                                        education in Pakistan. Girls' dropout rates
                                                after primary school increase when the
Finally, IDA supports the poorest countries     secondary school is outside the home
where women's levels of well-being are the      community, often due to concerns about
lowest, but also where their contributions      girls' safety. A pilot will identify
matter the most to improve the situation of     interventions to address safety concerns
families and communities. They are also         through        provision     of      improved
countries where interventions can have the      transportation       and    assess    whether
quickest results, both in terms of improving    subsidized school transport or offering
gender equality and reducing national           households with female students a stipend
poverty levels.                                 tied to school distance is most effective in
A new Gender Action Plan                        facilitating girls' secondary enrollment.

The Bank's new Gender Action Plan,              Entrepreneurship and product markets.
Gender Equality as Smart Economics,             Market-led smallholder development in the
incorporates the lessons from the               Zambezi valley, Mozambique. To transition
implementation of its previous gender           from subsistence agriculture and help raise
mainstreaming strategy, and works to            rural income levels, smallholder farmer
establish a solid empirical rationale for       groups, women producer's organizations
gender equality activities. It assigns staff    and other supply-chain participants will
with gender expertise to different sectors      receive direct support in marketing, credit,
and strengthens the measurement of sex-         and     agribusiness     development.     A
disaggregated impact of Bank assistance.        Community Investment Fund will be set up




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to provide resources for infrastructure to         successful, this RBI will be replicated and
increase agricultural productivity.                scaled-up elsewhere in Liberia, and in
                                                   other parts of the world.
Infrastructure, energy. Meeting women's
energy needs in Bangladesh and Ethiopia by         Policy research and data
facilitating fuel substitution. securing land
tenure and enabling access to credit               Gender Equality as Smart Economics
services. In Bangladesh, a pilot Technical         supports research to identify existing
Assistance Project is being prepared to test       market failures and other factors that
an improved stove program and to test              inhibit women's economic empowerment,
credit schemes for their purchase. It will         as well as interventions that can help
evaluate health benefits from reduced              remove these barriers. A first research
exposures to toxins. In Ethiopia, a rural          stream will focus on the macro links
energy services project will provide secure        between gender equality and growth, and
land tenure to women for the sustainable           on the micro foundations of such growth. A
use of woodlands to provide fuelwood for           second research stream will examine the
home use and for sale.                             impact of policy reform on women's and
                                                   men's welfare, focusing on the key
Results-based initiatives                          markets: land, labor, product, and financial.
                                                   This research program will be carried out in
Results-Based Initiatives (RBIs) are designed
                                                   partnership with research institutes in
to     increase      women's        economic
                                                   developing countries.
empowerment at relatively low cost by
leveling the playing field and increasing          The Plan also improves the availability of sex-
women's ability to access and compete in           disaggregated statistics--the basic building
markets. RBIs are relatively small and             blocks for measuring results--at the national
designed to be scaled-up considerably and          and international levels.
replicated if successful. An example is the
RBI launched for Agricultural processing           Communications
and marketing in Liberia, through which            A communications campaign has helped
the 500 members of the Ganta Concern               ignite a global initiative on women's
Women's Group receive assistance with              economic empowerment. Gender Equality as
farm practices, transportation, processing         Smart Economics communicates the rationale
and marketing for produce grown on plots           for women's economic empowerment in
of land, recently accessed after the               developing countries, harmonizes efforts
country's long conflict. The intervention          among donor partners, and supports in-
will be evaluated and lessons learned. If          country operations.




The implementation of the Gender Action Plan will face several important challenges. High-level
political leadership, technical expertise and financial resources are key elements to ensure that
gender policies are in fact implemented in both donor agencies and in recipient countries.
Financial resources, in particular, are needed upfront to enhance the capacity of donors and
implementation agencies to mainstream gender. In addition to these challenges, the successful
implementation of gender equality policies is largely contingent on client countries' interest and
institutional capacity, and will require sustained support and attention.




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