8. Institutionalising Gender Equity Goals in the Policy Process: International Development Research Centre

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8. Institutionalising Gender Equity Goals in the Policy Process

Document(s) 11 of 13

Introduction

This book has focused on gender equality, both as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in its own right, but also as a route to the more effective achievement of the other MDGs. Poverty reduction, in particular, occupies a central place in current development efforts and pro-poor growth has been identified as the key route through which it can be achieved. In this final chapter, various arguments put forward in the book are considered for their policy implications. One concern of the discussion has been with the relationship between gender equality and pro-poor growth. This chapter considers the extent to which the evidence implies a trade-off between the two or a synergy. Next, since current efforts to make poverty concerns central to national development policies are often organised around Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), it offers a gender audit of these papers. It also reviews the role of gender-responsive budget (GRB) analysis. Finally, it looks at the role that the institutionalisation of gender competencies in the policy process and an active constituency for gender equity interests could play in ensuring that gender equality as a goal in itself and as a route to the achievement of pro-poor growth remain at the forefront of efforts to achieve the MDGs.

Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Synergy or Trade-off?

Two contrasting conclusions have been drawn about the relationship between gender equality and economic growth:

(a) It is one of synergy – the promotion of gender equality leads to economic growth and this in turn will have a positive effect on gender equality (as suggested by Dollar and Gatti).

(b) There is a trade-off – higher levels of gender equality lead to lower levels of growth (as suggested by Seguino).

It is important to remember that the positive synergy between gender equality in secondary educational attainment and per capita income reported by Dollar and Gatti did not kick in until a certain overall level of education had been reached. Below that level, the relationship was not significant. The authors suggested that this was because places where secondary education was not widespread also tended to be poor, agrarian economies where economic returns to education were likely to be restricted to a small formal sector.

While this explanation is plausible in relation to secondary education, the evidence discussed in this book suggests that other forms of gender inequality might have a more direct bearing on economic growth in these cases. It has highlighted the barriers faced by women, particularly those from poor households, in achieving decent returns to their labour. These include:

gender inequalities in basic human capabilities (e.g. nutrition, health and skills), giving rise to gender inequalities in the productivity of labour;
gender inequalities in access to non-labour resources (e.g. land, equipment, finance and infrastructural support), leading to gender inequalities in capacity to generate a surplus;
gender inequalities in control over the disposition of own labour, giving rise to various forms of allocational inefficiencies; and
gender inequalities in returns to different forms of human capital and capabilities, reflecting gender discrimination in access to market opportunities.

This suggests that one reason why Dollar and Gatti did not find evidence of a positive relationship between gender equality and economic growth in poor agrarian economies relates to their choice of variable in measuring gender equality. Measures relevant to economic growth are likely to vary by levels of development, the structure of the economy and the kinds of livelihood strategies available to the general population. They

are also likely to vary between poor and less poor groups. In relation to human capital and capabilities, for example:

investments in improving basic health and nutritional standards are critical to those who rely mainly on their physical labour power to earn their livelihoods, mainly the poor in poor agrarian economies;
investments in primary education and basic skills are important for diversification into better-paid opportunities as economies become structurally differentiated; and
investments in secondary and higher education becomes increasingly important to take advantage of new opportunities, requiring more formal qualifications, that emerge as economies shift to knowledge-based production.

Measures of gender equality appropriate to the context of poor countries might have yielded evidence of a synergy. How can this support for the ‘synergy’ hypothesis be reconciled with Seguino’s conclusion that there is a trade-off between the two? One important reason is that Seguino’s measure of equality is wages, which measures market returns to the labour effort, whereas the synergy relationship relates to resources likely to directly improve labour productivity. Gender disparities in wages will only reflect differences in productivity in perfectly competitive markets. In the highly segmented labour markets that operate in the real world, gender disparities in wages may be a better measure of disparities in bargaining power than in productivity. The greater the gender disparity in wages, the more likely it is that women have historically been excluded from mainstream employment opportunities. When countries shifted from import-substituting industrialisation to the export of labour-intensive goods, their competitive advantage shifted from a protected and better-paid male workforce to an unprotected and less well paid female one. Consequently, it is precisely those countries that practised the greatest exclusion of female labour in an earlier period that have grown most rapidly with the shift to export competition. In relation to wages, then, there does appear to be a trade-off between gender equality and economic growth.

Gender equality and pro-poor growth: synergy or trade-off?

This conclusion, however, has to be qualified in a number of ways. If the focus is pro-poor growth rather than economic growth per se, the trade-off is less stark. This can be illustrated by looking at variations in the relationship between economic growth and human development achievements in different countries. In general, there is a synergy between them. Economic growth permits investment in human capabilities while investment in human capabilities in turn feeds into economic growth. There is thus a ‘standard’ relationship between the two. A number of countries at the higher end of the per capita income scale enjoy high rates of both economic growth and human development (‘positive synergy’) and others at the lower end of the income scale report low rates of both factors (‘negative synergy’).

However, there are also countries that deviate from the ‘standard’ relationship:

Some deviate in a positive way, achieving far higher rates of human development than predicted by their per capita income levels. These used state policy early on in their development process to invest in the basic human capabilities of their population rather than waiting to achieve ‘take-off’ into economic growth.
Others deviate in a negative way, with human development achievements that fall significantly short of the expected levels. These countries prioritised economic growth in the early phase of their development. Some (e.g. Brazil) did little to ensure that this growth subsequently improved the living standards of the poor. Others used the fruits of growth to expand human capabilities (a ‘growth-mediated’ approach. They were then able to reap the benefits of the ‘virtuous’ cycle between the two at a later stage of their development.

Many of the countries that report higher rates of economic growth as well as higher gender disparities in wages in Seguino’s study are in East Asia. The Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan all adopted a ‘growth-mediated’ approach to development. The state intervened actively to shape the growth

trajectory. It suspended free trade union activity and repressed workers’ rights, but its involvement in income redistribution and welfare programmes was small by international standards (although it did invest in basic education). It also drew on cultural norms about female docility and secondary worker status to reinforce patriarchal controls over female labour and ensure a compliant work force. While there has been a rise in overall real wages, the female to male wage ratio in both manufacturing and services in the Republic of Korea remains among the lowest of the countries covered by UN data (around 45 per cent in 1997).

The story on gender equality from countries that initially prioritised human development is somewhat different. Costa Rica, for example, had lower gender disparities in wages than the Republic of Korea (around 70%) as well as lower levels of growth. However, the apparent trade-off between equality and growth in the former has to be viewed in the context of its human development achievements. There was a state-mediated expansion of human capabilities, including social protection and public health care, and a number of supportive measures were instituted for women in their capacity as mothers as well as workers. Thus while it may have grown more slowly than the Republic of Korea, Costa Rica’s growth rates imposed lower costs on its poorer and more disadvantaged sections.

The trade-off between gender equality and economic growth thus looks less stark if it is recast in terms of gender equality and pro-poor growth. It is even less stark when looked at in the long-run. The ‘support-mediated’ expansion of human capabilities in the early phase of development appears to be more likely to lead directly to a virtuous cycle in the long run than strategies that prioritise economic growth. Investment in female education appears to play a critical role here. A study using data from a sample of 35–76 developing countries (depending on availability of data) over three periods of time (1960s, 1970s and 1980–1993), found that about a third of the countries that had prioritised human development in earlier decades were able to move over time onto the virtuous cycle between human development and economic growth. However, the overwhelming majority of countries that had prioritised economic growth reverted to ‘vicious cycle’ category over time. Very few countries managed to go directly from vicious to

virtuous, but some succeeded in moving to a focus on human development, from which it was possible to move into the virtuous category. The analysis concluded that it was not possible to move directly into the virtuous cycle via an emphasis on economic growth.

The effects of economic growth on gender equality

Along with the positive effect of gender equality on economic growth, Dollar and Gatti also suggest the converse: that economic growth has positive effects on gender equality. Again, this only happens above a certain level of per capita income and is more marked for some regions and religious groups than others. For countries below this level, the effect of economic growth appears less clear-cut. Once again, the absence of a positive relationship between economic growth and gender equality at lower levels of national income might reflect the measures of gender equality selected in the analysis. For example, cross-country analysis suggests that economic growth through participation in global trade may be gradually closing the gender gap in wages, particularly in the traded sector of national economies, a measure not included in the Dollar and Gatti study.

However, there are also a number of reasons why the effects of economic growth on gender equality may be weak below a level of national income. First of all, countries attempting to grow in the present era face a far more competitive global economy than countries that grew in an earlier period. Global competition has weakened the bargaining power of workers vis-à-vis employers. The international mobility of capital means that businesses can threaten to relocate if workers resist exploitative working conditions. While genuine trade unionism, as opposed to state-controlled trade unions, was associated with a closing of the gender gap in wages in an earlier era, today’s trade unions are increasingly helpless to confront globally mobile capital with demands for better working conditions. Moreover, in many parts of the world, they have not proved particularly responsive to the needs of women workers. Thus, while women face more opportunities for work, their working conditions have not improved to an equivalent extent.

A second reason why economic growth has not succeeded in eradicating gender inequality to the expected extent across the world relates to differences in regional patriarchy. The evidence cited in earlier chapters suggests that improvements in women’s access to paid work – one result of economic growth – has increased their bargaining power in the household, helping to reduce gender disparities in food, health care and education. Maternal mortality has declined in much of the world and women’s life expectancies relative to those of men have improved. However, in regions of extreme patriarchy, economic growth has failed to address some forms of discrimination and seems to have made others worse. An example is the highly imbalanced sex ratios in the fast-growing economies of East Asia. At the same time, however, the gender gap in education has been closing in these countries. It is thus possible for countries to show progress in certain aspects of gender equality while failing to tackle discrimination in the most basic areas of human rights: the right to survival, nutrition and health care.

Box 8.1 Women’s Key Role in Achieving Developmental Goals in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh, women have been at the forefront of three major ‘revolutions’ of the past three decades. In a country where population growth rates had been identified as the country’s ‘number one development problem’, women spearheaded one of the most rapid declines in fertility rates the world has ever seen. Women have also led the ‘micro-credit’ revolution, proving to the world that the poor are indeed ‘bankable’. And finally women make up the overwhelming majority of workers in the country’s newly emergent export-garment industry, earning the bulk of its foreign exchange and contributing to recent declines in national poverty.

Achieving gender equality, in other words, is as much as a question of social values, political commitment and public action as it is of the availability of resources. While economic growth may lead to improved legislation on gender equality, it

is not likely to change patterns of inequality in a society without dedicated public action to counter deep-seated prejudice. For macroeconomic strategies to reduce poverty and address gender inequality, they must be based on an understanding of the various synergies and trade-offs as well as the deep-rooted prejudices that operate in different contexts rather than on ‘one size fits all’ formulae. Women’s interests and agency, if analysed correctly, are one of the most powerful means available to policy-makers to achieve a variety of developmental goals (see box 8.1).

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Gender Audit

There is now an explicit commitment to both poverty reduction and gender equality by various national and international development actors – and much greater understanding of the links between the two. This suggests that the development community is well placed to ‘mainstream’ gender and poverty concerns in all aspects of policy. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), which have rapidly become an integral component of aid co-operation in a wide range of countries, provide an opportunity to explore the extent to which this commitment has become part of the policy process.

The content and process of PRSPs

PRSPs consist of a number of core components:

an analysis of the poverty situation in the country;
a strategy for poverty reduction, based on this analysis;
the commitment of budgetary resources to implement the strategy;
a monitoring framework to assess the achievement of strategic goals; and
consultations at every stage with primary and secondary stakeholders to ensure broad-based national ownership of the strategies.

Each of these is critical to ensuring that the strategy is relevant

to the poverty situation in the country and that efforts to address it will be effective. The analysis sets the boundaries within which priorities are identified and policy formulated. This gives rise to the strategies (the identification of key sectors for action and the nature of the actions to be taken), the resources to be made available and a system to monitor progress. If the gender dimensions of the poverty situation are not picked up in the analysis, they will either be absent from its translation into policy or else brought in as an afterthought. On the other hand, they may be part of the analysis but not followed through in the subsequent stages.

However, apart from the ‘content’ aspect of the PRSPs, there is also a ‘process’ aspect. This holds out considerable promise that these pitfalls will be avoided. Both governments and donors have committed themselves to building and strengthening participatory approaches to poverty assessments and to wide-ranging stakeholder consultations. These should enable researchers, practitioners and activists with knowledge of the relevant empirical linkages to ensure that these are incorporated and acted on. The consultative process also provides a valuable opportunity for different interest groups, including those representing marginalised constituencies, to learn about the nuts and bolts of policy-making in their countries. This will strengthen citizenship as active practice rather than as formal status.

Gender issues in the PRSPs

The picture emerging out of the first round of PRSPs is not very encouraging in relation to gender. A review by the World Bank’s Gender Division of 15 Interim PRSPs (I-PRSPs) and three PRSPs completed by early 2001 found that less than half discussed gender issues in any detail in their diagnosis of poverty. Even fewer integrated gender analysis into their strategy, resource allocation and monitoring and evaluation sections. Gender issues were, predictably, better integrated into the ‘health, nutrition and population’ sectors (the reproductive sector) and to some extent in education (a quasi-social sector). Elsewhere, if mentioned at all, it was “often a passing reference or a vague intention”. If gender issues are not brought up at the diagnostic stage, it is very unlikely that they will appear in the ‘action’ or ‘monitoring’ stages.

Limited integration of gender issues: the PRSP from Burkina Faso

The PRSP from Burkina Faso exemplifies some of these problems. In terms of poverty, the analysis here suggests that low levels of productivity in farm and off-farm activities, together with fragmented and imperfect markets for goods and services, are critical causes of rural poverty. In terms of gender, the analysis refers to:

disparities in school attendance between girls and boys;
women’s high rates of fertility and maternal mortality;
high levels of HIV sero-prevalence among certain sections of the population (including truckers, military personnel, prostitutes and single women, especially very young single women); and
a decline in the proportion of women delivering in a health facility.

A special section entitled ‘Women and Poverty’ suggests that unequal educational opportunities have held back women’s employment in the modern sector. It also draws attention to their poor health status and the limited availability of health care, lower literacy and limited access to credit and participation in national political life and decision-making. However, there is no indication of how these inequalities fit into the overall poverty analysis.

This unevenness is reproduced in the strategy section. There is a broad statement that strong growth in the rural development sector would help reduce poverty and increase the income of small farmers and rural women, but no discussion on whether rural women would benefit automatically from economic growth or would need specific measures to ensure that benefits occurred. Explicit references to women and girls are confined to sections on education and health, particularly in the context of AIDS. The strategy here includes actions targeted at specific groups, and the fact that there are specific budget line items for these activities suggest they may be implemented.

Much of the language of the paper is gender-neutral, using terms such as small farmers, traders, poorer segments, service

users, vulnerable groups and rural producers. However, very little thought seems to have been given to whether these categories include women as well as men and, if so, whether the policies and measures in question might need to take account of possible gender differences in constraints and opportunities. For example, there is no attention to how the design of transport, infrastructure and water provision might be relevant to the relationship between gender and growth. There is no clear indication of what the ‘socio-cultural’ constraints that are said to limit women’s livelihood options consist of or how they can be addressed. And while the promotion of export-oriented industry is identified as a route to future growth, little thought appears to have been given to skills training for the women who are likely to be a major source of its labour. In addition, while AIDS is clearly a key development problem in the country, addressing this through a focus on prostitution without tackling the underlying poverty that leads women into this work is likely to have limited results. Finally, the absence of gender concerns in strategies to promote good governance suggests either that the steps outlined in the paper are considered sufficient to involve women along with men in the democratisation of the society or, the more plausible explanation, that this is not considered a priority. Given these omissions, the repeated assertions about the relevance of gender to the achievement of economic growth or poverty reduction take on the status of a meaningless mantra.

Making the links between gender and poverty: PRSPs from Vietnam and the Gambia

One example of papers that have tried to tailor their analysis and strategies to local links between gender and poverty, rather than grafting on token statements, is the Vietnam PRSP. Poverty is seen to be largely rural in the country and higher in some regions than others. Among its causes, the report singles out high dependency ratios, lack of employment opportunities, female-headship, lack of education and capital, vulnerability to seasonal difficulties, land-poverty, inability to diversify out of a single crop, remoteness and lack of market access. The challenge for the government is seen to be the creation of employment opportunities, access to basic social services and greater security of livelihoods.

Sorting fish in Vietnam
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION

The analysis of the links between gender, poverty and pro-poor growth is thus largely confined to the recognition that poor and hungry households have high dependency ratios and are either headed by women or are reliant on their earnings to make ends meet. However, it does at least recognise the relevance of gender issues to both production and reproduction in the formulation of its strategy. The poor, especially those in rural areas, ‘with priority given to women’, are mentioned in relation to the goal of improving access to credit. This – refreshingly – is not equated with micro-credit. Strategies to improve training, extension services and skills development in relation to business, agriculture, forestry and fisheries also stress “the poor, especially women”. Women and children are singled out in the context of strategies creating favourable conditions for the poor to access education, health and social services. The policy matrix outlined in the appendix includes the promotion of gender equity and the enhancement of women at all levels of leadership as part of the policies and measures planned to ensure equitable participation in economic growth.

The Gambia I-PRSP is another example that attempts to consider women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities in tandem. It notes that the gender division of labour can act as a constraint on women’s access to public services. It identifies the primary activities of rural women, the overwhelming majority of whom are subsistence farmers, and points out that they have less access to the forms of mechanisation that have improved men’s agricultural productivity. It notes that women in general work longer hours than men fulfilling traditional household tasks as well as farming. The lack of basic services in rural areas, such as a reliable water supply, dependable health centres, transport and stores, are seen to add considerably to women’s workloads. Proposals that comes out of this analysis are the promotion of labour-saving devices to help women in their farming, post-harvesting and domestic duties, and activities to create employment and income generation for women.

Gender inequalities in voice, power and influence in the PRSPs

If little attention is paid to women’s role in the productive economy in the PRSPs, there is even less to gender inequalities in voice, power and influence. Issues such as domestic violence, political education, legal literacy and promotion of women’s participation in local government to ensure to its responsiveness to their needs are apparently not considered relevant to poverty reduction strategies by most countries.

There are a number of exceptions. For example, the Nicaragua I-PRSP is one of the few to address gender-based violence directly. It notes the likelihood that the highest incidence is among poor urban women and among the least educated. Although the most common risks that poor women face are prostitution and sexual and physical abuse, the poorest communities usually lack the formal structures to protect them. The actions proposed include activities to prevent and penalise family violence and assist victims. In addition, a national action plan will be developed on the topic of domestic violence. This is expected to lead to draft legislation.

The Rwanda I-PRSP is one of the few to include legal issues related to gender. Specifically, it discusses the recent revision

of the matrimonial code, which now offers couples a choice of property regimes, including ownership of assets in common. In addition, it proposes a new labour code and land legislation that would remove restrictions on women’s ability to work and own property.

The Tanzania PRSP provides the most thorough discussion of inclusive consultations. To ensure active participation, villagers were grouped according to religion and gender, with women accounting for 22 per cent of participants. The PRSP states that one-sixth of the focus groups identified gender discrimination as an obstacle to poverty reduction, especially in regard to customary ownership of property, wage employment and decision-making at the national and household levels. It also noted concerns about male alcoholism raised by female focus groups.

These are scattered example, however, rather than part of a systematic consideration of gender issues in the analysis of poverty or in strategies for poverty reduction. As the Bank review notes, most documents simply contain pro forma references and vague intentions (e.g. to increase girls’ access to education). While actual actions taken have not yet been assessed, the review comments that the low level of attention to gender in the diagnosis suggests that the proposed actions are unlikely to address poverty reduction optimally or most efficiently. Furthermore, the fact that gender issues are least visible in the monitoring sections of the papers suggests that progress towards gender equity goals is considered irrelevant to the achievement of poverty reduction and will not be tracked over time in monitoring efforts.

Some lessons from the PRSP experience

A review of the PRSP papers produced so far thus makes for depressing reading but also provides some important insights.

PRSPs are heavily influence by World Bank/IMF approaches

While much of the discussion in the preceding section draws from a ‘gender audit’ of the PRSPs produced by the Gender Division of the World Bank, the biases and omissions described faithfully reproduce those of the Bank’s own poverty

assessment in the 1990s (see Chapter 4). In fact, the treatment of gender in the PRSPs is entirely consistent with the practices – as opposed to the rhetoric – of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs). Evaluations of MDB investments show that, aside from those in girls’ education, reproductive health and micro-finance, they rarely pay any attention to gender disparities.

The overlap in the analysis contained in PRSP and World Bank poverty assessments is not confined to gender, nor is it coincidence. While the PRSPs have been presented as independently produced and ‘nationally-owned’, questions have been raised as to the extent to which this is indeed the case. There is concern that countries are reluctant to consider approaches other than those advocated by the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because they know the limits to the kinds of policies that the international financial institutions are prepared to accept. As a result, there is heavy reliance on external technical advice to assist governments in preparing the appropriate analysis. This tends to displace local experts and weaken capacity. It also means that PRSPs from very different countries use similar vocabulary, form and content and come to similar conclusions.

External factors constrain national policy efforts

In addition, the range of options available in the PRSPs is influenced by factors that cannot easily be addressed by national policy efforts, but that limit the capacity of poor countries to grow out of poverty.

The most important of these relate to the global rules of trade. The current trade regime remains one of the most powerful factors curtailing the capacity of poor countries to take advantage of the promise of globalisation. Despite rich countries’ rhetoric about commitment to free trade, global markets are regulated by a confusing plethora of bilateral and multilateral trading agreements, tariff and non-tariff barriers, global labour standards and corporation-specific codes of conduct. The upshot is that when developing countries export to rich country markets, they face tariff barriers four times higher than those encountered by rich countries. These barriers cost them $100bn a year, twice as much as they receive in international aid.

When rich countries lock poor people out of their markets,

they close the door to one of the most important escape routes from poverty. The last of the MDGs dealing with global development partnerships commits the international community to providing duty- and quota-free access to the exports of the least developed countries. While steps have been taken in the right direction by a number of Commonwealth countries (Australia and Canada) and by the European Union, much more could be done to promote market access for the exports of the world’s poorer countries.

Orthodox thinking constrains national policy efforts

A further factor constraining the capacity of policy-makers to develop effective poverty reduction strategies is the powerful biases that exist in orthodox economic thinking, including the ‘deflationary’ bias, the ‘marketisation’ or ‘commodification’ bias and the ‘male breadwinner’ bias.

1. The ‘deflationary bias’, which characterises orthodox economic thinking, has entrenched itself in the world view of the World Bank and IMF. ‘Sound’ economic policies are associated with price stability and avoidance of high inflation, elimination of financial deficits, privatisation and the creation of a climate favourable to foreign investment. Any deviation from this constitutes ‘profligacy’ on the part of governments. A concern with ‘sound’ economic policy constitutes one of the leading chapters in the handbook developed by the Bank to guide developing countries in preparing PRSPs and is reproduced in the overwhelming majority of them. The dominant policy discourse presents this as the ‘common-sense’ of economics, but the soundness of macroeconomic policy has to be judged from the point of view of social justice, not simply of economic growth. A concern for price stability and avoidance of high inflation does not rule out the expansion of public provision of health care, education and social security. Similarly, a concern for deficit reduction does not justify user fees for public services, irrespective of the effects of such fees on the well-being and freedom of the entire population, and especially the poor. There may well be a trade-off between the reduction of budget deficits and achievement of longer term or pro-poor, gender-equitable growth.

2. The ‘marketisation’ bias reflects the widespread failure of policy-makers to give value to any form of activity that does not command a price in the market place. There is clearly a gender subtext to this since it renders invisible the unpaid work, both productive and reproductive, that is primarily the responsibility of women – particularly women from poor households in the world’s poor countries. The marketisation of public services places many of them out of the reach of such households, intensifying workloads for women who have to combine increased responsibility for social reproduction with extensive hours of work in productive activity.

3. The ‘male breadwinner’ bias, which has been looked at in some detail in earlier chapters, is seen when policy-makers design measures, including those to promote and protect livelihoods, on the assumption that it is the male household head whose earnings provide for the cash needs of a set of dependent family members (women, children, the sick, disabled and elderly). This has led to the exclusion of women from a range of economic entitlements, including those intended to provide a safety net in times of crisis, despite the fact that they play a key role in household livelihoods and coping strategies.

These biases, taken together, lead to policies that seek to promote economic growth through market forces and individual efforts without any recognition of inequalities of access to market opportunities. Such policies are unlikely to promote the pro-poor, gender-equitable forms of growth that the MDGs demand from the international community. The case has to be made to growth-minded policy-makers that not all forms of public expenditure that promote human capital and human capabilities can be justified in terms of short-term economic gains. Some may feed into economic growth in the longer run, but others may be necessary on other equally valid grounds such as poverty reduction and social justice.

New opportunities for gender advocacy

Since such claims go against the grain of received wisdom in orthodox circles, it is clear that – along with compiling the evidence to back them up – collective action needs to be taken by women’s advocacy groups and their allies to mobilise around them. The PRSPs, with their emphasis on consultation,

participation and national ownership, would seem to offer a unique opportunity to do this. However, it is evident from accounts of actual processes in different countries that the rushed timetables attached to many have prevented full participation by civil society, even where this was intended.

Nevertheless, agreement on the principle of consultation is a critical step in the right direction. It opens up possibilities for participation by a wider range of stakeholders than in the past. PRSPs are available on the World Bank’s website for public scrutiny and cross-country learning. Lessons from experience can be disseminated and utilised strategically to ensure an improved voice in the future. Indeed, the critical role that an active constituency can play in championing gender equity in the PRSP process is one key lesson from the process so far (see box 8.2).

Box 8.2 The Role Played by Active Mobilisation in Rwanda and Kenya
The I-PRSP in Rwanda contained scattered references to gender issues, typical add-on paragraphs and ad hoc references but demonstrated very little attempt to mainstream gender concerns. This was partly because the short time period in which it was produced allowed for only a single round of consultations with the Ministry of Gender, Women and Development. However, the close relationship between the Ministry and women’s organisations in the country gave strength to women’s voices in the decision to undertake a more gendered analysis in the PRSP itself. A workshop was conducted to bring in representatives from a broad range of governmental and non-governmental sectors, an inter-agency PRSP committee was set up to ensure oversee the work and a consultant with gender expertise was brought in to work with the Ministry in preparing the PRSP. Another example is the experience of the Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development in Kenya in the lead up to development of the budgetary framework that had been outlined in the PRSP. It kept a clear ‘women’s agenda’ parallel to the so-called ‘common agenda’ to prevent it from getting lost or submerged. This paid off in increased budget allocations to women and gender issues in the final paper.

The chapter on gender in the World Bank’s handbook on preparing PRSPs underlines the importance of preventing gender issues from being lumped together with a range of issues, leading to a loss of focus. It notes that, while there is a need for explicit attention to gender issues at all stages of the PRSP process, it is particularly crucial to ensure that it is integrated into poverty analysis. Otherwise the scope for mainstreaming gender in the resulting strategies will be limited. One way that this can be achieved is through the development of a national Poverty Reduction Strategy Gender Action Plan. This would ensure that key gender gaps, problems and shortfalls identified by the poverty analysis are reviewed, their causalities analysed and assessments carried out of various policies, programmes and projects that could address them. Some of the more pressing gender-specific constraints and shortfalls could then be integrated into the main body of the PRSP in a strategic way.

Box 8.3 Using the PRSP to Improve on National Polices
Financial sector reform in Uganda has introduced a number of new statutes to rectify weaknesses in previous banking acts and to bring the legal framework for Ugandan banks up to international standards. While the Ugandan Chapter of the Council for the Economic Empowerment of Women in Africa considers such prudential controls to be necessary, it also suggests that they take no account of gender differences in access to credit. The new legislation has imposed difficulties on micro-financial institutions (MFIs), often the only source of credit for the majority of women, poor as well as not-so-poor, in the country. Capital adequacy standards have created barriers to entry by non-governmental organisations that may wish to grow into alternative formal credit institutions or banks. The risk weighting formula for bank assets penalises institutions with assets in the forms of advances and discourages bank investment in microfinance lendings. A PRSP could highlight these issues in ways that have an impact on the shape of financial legislation.

It is also important to bear in mind that the PRSP is one component of larger national policies in which public action is located. If gender issues are totally subsumed within a poverty agenda, there is a danger that gender inequalities in the wider sense of the word will remain intact in the institutions of society. On the other hand, if there is participation and ownership of the PRSP process, it can be used to move gender beyond the given national framework of priority topics or sectors. Especially in a context of very limited gender policies, a PRSP with potential for greater participation may help to improve on national policies (see box 8.2).

Sectoral strategies for poverty reduction

There is further scope for participatory processes when priorities and strategies are being translated into sectoral policies and programmes. This is important to ensure that the analysis captures key opportunities and constraints within, and across, the different sectors. Insights into interlinkages at the sectoral (or ‘meso’) level can be provided by combining: (a) micro-level analysis of livelihood strategies, with its stress on the range of ways poor people meet their needs and secure their future; and (b) macro-level analysis of broad-based growth that recognises the importance of human, social, financial, natural and physical capital.

Poverty reduction strategies that considered gender-related synergies, both within and across sectors, would be more effective. For example, time constraints were identified earlier as an important limitation to the productivity of women’s farming efforts in Africa. Poor productivity in farming and poor returns to off-farm enterprise reduce the incomes available to women and their ability to hire in labour and purchase other agricultural inputs. Instead, it is men who are most able to use their incomes from farming to diversify into off-farm enterprise, the profits from which can be ploughed back into improving farm productivity. Clearly men may choose to share their profits with female family members. Where they do not, however, women’s time constraints could be addressed in variety of ways, including the (subsidised) distribution of labour-saving technology and improved access to credit.

Alternatively, women would benefit along with men from

various kinds of infrastructural support that reduced demands on their labour. One example would be improving the supply of clean water and sanitation. Recent estimates suggest that an African woman spends an hour a day on average (up to 100 minutes in rural areas) collecting water, and walks a distance of over one kilometre in rural areas to fetch it. Lack of clean potable water and safe sanitation increases the likelihood of disease and illness and hence imposes additional demands on her time. When women spend long hours caring for sick members of the family due to cut-backs in health services, this reduces the time they could put into farming – another connection between agriculture and health. The existence of synergies across sectors is illustrated by an evaluation of public works programmes in Bangladesh (see box 8.4).

Box 8.4 Gender-related Synergies at the Sectoral Level
A public works programmes in Bangladesh designed to increase all-weather use of feeder roads was found not only to provide employment for destitute women but also to facilitate other achievements that are relevant to the MDGs. Household incomes rose because of more roadside business, the improvement in the marketing of agricultural goods and the generation of waged employment in non-agricultural activities (because of the increased mobility of labourers). In addition, the evaluation also found increased access to schooling, to NGO programmes and to various government services, particularly by women and girls.

Without explicit gender analysis, however, the synergies and trade-offs between and within sectors that are relevant for reducing gender inequalities are unlikely to be appreciated. Gender-disaggregated data are clearly crucial to such an appreciation but needs to be guided by, and grounded in, gender-aware poverty analysis. This analysis needs to look beyond immediate causes and effects to the underlying structural inequalities that gave rise to them as well as to their longer term effects. The distinction between gender-specific, gender-intensified and gender-imposed shortfalls and constraints can provide a

useful set of guidelines for translating analysis into goals and action, separating those intended to address women or men directly and those intended to address the relationships between them. The health and education sectors provide examples of this.

Health

Unequal health outcomes may reflect the fact that health services are imbalanced. Certain health needs are likely to be gender-specific, and are often linked to reproduction in the case of women. Maternal mortality is one key example and has been included in the MDGs. Another is access to contraceptives, failure in which penalises women more than men. Others stem from the kinds of jobs that men or women do. For example, men develop certain types of ill-health due to their responsibility in some cultures as the main providers. For women, particular categories of health hazards have been documented for work on labour-intensive assembly lines, for example, or prostitution. In addition, certain health needs may be shared by women and men but take on a gender dimension as a result of greater inequalities in access and provision. Thus while the poor and disadvantaged enjoy less access to health care services generally, women may be at a greater disadvantage because their well-being is culturally discounted within the family, because men make the key decisions about health consultations and expenditure or because women’s mobility in the public domain is restricted. Women may also suffer from imposed disadvantages in access if their constraints are not taken into account, if the behaviour of providers discriminates against them or if the gender of providers is a constraint.

Education

Gendered needs and interests in education also reflect inequalities in access and provision. For example, a study of sector-wide approaches to education policy in Uganda found that, despite a strong commitment to closing the gender gap in education at the level of national policy, practical measures were based on a very partial gender analysis. In particular, gender concerns were largely confined to equality of access rather than equality of outcomes. In terms of the latter, the educational plan noted the need to screen textbooks according to

various quality and equity criteria, including gender-related ones. It had incorporated an information, education and communication component, intended to reach parents and communities directly. There was also recognition of the need to encourage girls to take non-traditional subjects and to train women teachers to improve access in the post-primary levels. However, there was no analysis of the underlying causes of gender inequalities in access to, and benefits from, educational provision. This would have looked at, for example:

the implications for long school day for poorer children, particularly girls, with higher work loads;
how outreach efforts could be used to promote greater awareness of gender within the community; and
the extent to which issues of sexual harassment within schools, by teachers as well as male pupils, had been addressed by the teacher development management systems.

Moreover, achievements at the level of ‘access’ are unlikely to be sustained without greater attention to gender at higher levels of management and to building capacity within the sector.

In terms of both health and education, the evidence cited in this book suggests that women’s empowerment may lead to the kinds of outcomes promoted by the MDGs. Poorer women who are empowered are more likely:

to seek out contraception and maternal health services;
to ensure the survival and health of their children and other family members;
to promote the education of their children;
to reduce gender discrimination against daughters in health and education and seek a better life for them than they may have had themselves; and
to negotiate successfully for ‘safe sexual practices’ both within and outside marriage so as to reduce the risks of HIV-AIDS.

Gender-responsive Budget (GRB) Analysis

The critical importance of ensuring that gender issues are addressed in all parts of the PRSP and at all stages of the process was noted earlier. Clearly the resources made available to put the strategy into effect, and their implications for the poor (poor women in particular), will play an important role in both its effectiveness and gender sensitivity. Looking at the budget of the PRSP shows whether gender commitments in analysis and strategy are backed by appropriate financial resources. In fact, the gender-responsiveness of budgets has been coming under increasing scrutiny in a number of countries, independently of the PRSP process. Budget analysis can play a number of different roles, depending on how it is conducted:

It can promote greater transparency of policy processes, helping to demystify what has been seen as a secretive and closed aspect of official decision-making.
It is a way to match policy intent with resource allocation and see whether policy commitments to gender issues by the government are rhetoric or reality.
It can strengthen accountability by making it more likely that officials and citizens will try to find out what is actually done with public money.

Gender-responsive budget (GRB) analysis has been conducted at a variety of different levels: national, local, sectoral and even programmatic. It has sometimes been led by government, has sometimes been carried out in collaboration with it and sometimes been independent of it. While different approaches have been associated with different results, the importance of the political climate for such analysis to have any influence on the design of policy is very clear from different country experiences. In Australia, South Africa and the UK, for example, GRB analysis gained a place in the government through the coming to power of progressive political parties, suggesting that it was seen as associated with particular political platforms rather than as an essential aspect of development strategy.

For a number of Commonwealth countries, the fact that the Commonwealth Secretariat was mandated by its member

states to promote gender equality throughout the association has made it politically possible for Ministers Responsible for Women’s Affairs to work with the Secretariat to experiment with GRB at the government level. For the Secretariat itself, the task of ‘en-gendering’ government budgets provided a strategic entry point for making macroeconomic policies more gender aware. Since budget analysis involves all government ministries and departments, it provides a practical opportunity for officials across sectors to integrate gender into their areas of work. And finally, given the central role of the finance and planning in budget management and general policy decision-making, GRB initiatives could introduce gender issues into the heart of government operations and financial management.

The experience to date has yielded a variety of approaches and instruments for carrying out GRBs. The gender implications of decisions about overall levels of deficit or surplus can be explored by, for example, examining their likely feedbacks in terms of unpaid time or estimating the economic costs of various actions that might affect women and men differently (such as wage restraint in the public sector). Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models may be useful for making such estimates and can also be used to anticipate likely future scenarios and hence permit forward planning (see box 2.6). An alternative approach might be through soliciting the views of women and men in relation to proposed policy measures (see box 8.5). Beneficiary assessment exercises in developing countries have mainly been carried out in relation to specific programmes, but there is no reason why they cannot be ‘upstreamed’ to the assessment of policy measures.

The focus of most GRBs has been on the expenditure side, partly because direct impacts in terms of meeting needs and promoting opportunities were easier to assess. A three-way break-down of the government expenditures of different departments has been suggested:

1. expenditures specifically targeted at women (e.g. income generating projects for women);

2. expenditures intended to promote gender equality in the public sector (e.g. training of women managers or provision of childcare); and

3. the gender impacts of mainstream budget expenditure (e.g. how will the educational budget promote gender equality within society, aside from special schemes for women or girls? Who uses health care facilities? Who receives agricultural support?)

Box 8.5 Inviting Public Comment on Proposed Policy Measures
A study carried out by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) invited women to comment on their government’s budget allocations. WILPF initiated a Women’s Budget Project in the US in 1996 at a time when there was a great deal of public discussion about the national debt ‘crisis’ and the need to cut government expenditure in order to reduce the public deficit. Noting that very few women benefited from military spending, given their severe under-representation in the armed forces and military contractor jobs, the project estimated the costs of various defence-related programmes and compared them with the costs of a number of welfare-related programmes. Women were asked to choose how they would like to see public money spent. The project estimated how the savings from possible cuts in military expenditure could be used to finance services that would benefit women.

An important instrument for answering some of these questions is public expenditure incidence analysis or benefit incidence analysis. This calculates the unit cost (per person) of providing a particular service and the pattern of utilisation by women and men, girls and boys (see box 8.6). Other tools recommended for budget analysis include gender-aware policy appraisal of various policies and programmes (that could highlight the extent to which they would help to increase or reduce gender inequalities) and the production of GRB statements, summarising the main findings and drawing out the implications of different patterns of revenue and expenditure.

Box 8.6 The Value of Benefit Incidence Analysis in Assessing Government Budgets
A study in Ghana using benefit incidence analysis noted that government spending on education and health was partly offset by cost recovery that lowered the subsidy element in these services. In terms of utilisation, it found that girls received 45 per cent of subsidies at the primary level of education although their gross enrolment ratio was 67 per cent. This gender bias was more marked among poor households. Because the poor were less likely to go for treatment when they were ill, richer households were found to use both public and private health services to a greater extent. However, women were found to gain more of the public subsidy than men in health, partly because of the existence of gender-specific services targeted to their needs.

National experiences of GRBs

Experiences with GRBs in different countries have made important contributions to the understanding of gender-differentiated impacts of various budgetary decisions. For example, ‘the woman’s budget’ in Australia was first introduced in the Federal budget in 1984, making it one of the earliest. The initiative played an educational role in sensitising government departments to the implications of their policies for women and helped to reduce ‘gender-blindness’. The initiative was able to persuade the Department of Industry, Technology and Commerce, one of the ‘economic’ departments, of the disproportionate impact of macroeconomic reforms on women. Far more had been spent by government to cushion the effects of adjustment on male-dominated industries (e.g. motor vehicles) than on those that employed high percentages of women (e.g. clothing, textiles and footwear). A special retraining allowance was announced for married women clothing workers who would have otherwise have been ineligible on the grounds of their spouses’ income.

After Australia, South Africa was one of the first countries to set up a Women’s Budget Initiative (WBI). It was started as

a collaborative venture between women parliamentarians committed to gender equity issues and two policy-oriented research NGOs. It focused primarily on issues that affected the most disadvantaged: those who, in addition to being female, were black, rural and poor. For example, research in the country had shown that the considerable public expenditure associated with land reform was unlikely to directly benefit women, primarily because of legal restrictions on women’s right to own land and to conclude contracts. The Department of Land Affairs has now begun to integrate gender analysis into its monitoring and evaluation and provide training to its staff. The WBI has also taken up an issue that affects women across class, race and other divides: violence against women. Three aspects of government financing of initiatives to combat violence against women have been investigated and the research turned over to the parliamentary committee on the Improvement of the Quality of Life and Status of Women. This committee focuses on violence against women, poverty and HIV/AIDS as the most serious problems facing women in the country.

Gender budget analysis in Sri Lanka by the Department of National Planning found that downsizing the public sector did not have the expected disproportionate impact on women. Rather, the closure of semi-government institutions had a greater effect on male employment while women benefited from the expansion of professional occupations at both national and provincial levels. It also found that, although access and utilisation of social services were relatively equal, women were under-represented in economic services provided by the government in agriculture and industry. As the report pointed out, it was important that such services reached women if women’s improved education was to have an effect on productivity and incomes.

Policy options highlighted by GRB analysis

GRB analysis has highlighted a number of different policy options. These include:

reprioritisation rather than new initiatives, e.g. away from the tertiary level of education towards adult basic education

and training and pre-school initiatives (in South Africa these received only 1 per cent of the education budget but would have directly benefited poor women and children);

ensuring better distribution of given expenditure, e.g. giving public works programmes features likely to be conducive to the participation of poor women as well as poor men;
‘trimming the fat’, i.e. cutting salary extravagances and perks enjoyed by senior civil servants, the majority of whom are usually men, and using the resources released to improve terms and conditions of work among those responsible for service delivery (whose levels of motivation are critical to performance); and
focusing on the desirability of the size of military expenditures.

Mainstreaming Gender in Policy-making Institutions

Despite a much greater level of overall awareness on gender issues, and despite the solid body of research and analysis that now exists, policy and programmes continue to show very limited and compartmentalised concerns with gender equity. This was evident in the analysis of the PRSPs conducted so far. Among the various factors put forward to explain this, two in particular tend to feature most frequently:

Gender is not viewed as a ‘core competence’ of policy-making bodies, either in the international development community or at national and local levels. There is thus a lack of gender expertise in these bodies. Where such expertise exists, it tends to be found in either: (a) the sectors traditionally associated with gender and women’s issues; or (b) the programmes that directly address women’s concerns or gender equality efforts.
Limited consultation takes place with primary stakeholders. While having poor people participate directly in such consultations may take longer to achieve, the consultations have also failed to include, or have included in a very token way, organisations that work with the poor as well as those that work for gender equity goals. The ones consulted also

tended to be those who already had a relationship with governments and donors.

The need to institutionalise gender equity in the organisations responsible for making policy at national and international level has long been recognised. Progress on this has been uneven to date in both sets of organisations and in richer as well as poorer countries. Among the various barriers that have been identified are:

a lack of the elusive political will;
the under-funding of the units and ministries given responsibility for mainstreaming efforts;
the marginalisation and frequently shifting location of units within bureaucratic structures;
the institutionalisation of patriarchal interests in the norms, rules and practices of organisations; and
a deep-seated resistance by different divisions to taking on cross-cutting issues, such as gender, that would encroach on their budgetary allocations.

Even in some of the higher income countries, such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand – where women’s machineries have enjoyed cross-party support and hence survived conservative governments – the shift away from state responsibility for social justice to market-based solutions in the 1990s has limited the achievements of women’s machineries to ensuring ‘least worst outcomes’.

The Gender Management System (GMS)

Some of the lessons from these experiences are addressed in the Gender Management System (GMS) developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat. The GMS is a set of concepts and methodologies intended to build a comprehensive network of structures, mechanisms and processes for ensuring that a gender perspective is brought to bear on development policies, plans, programmes and projects. It suggests that central to the success of ‘gender mainstreaming’ within government is the creation

and implementation of a Gender Action Plan that:

provides a comprehensive analysis of gender inequalities in a given society together with an analysis of their causes and effects;
proposes a set of strategic interventions needed to address them, with attention to prioritising on the basis of likely synergies, complementarities and trade-offs;
costs the implications of these interventions; and
institutes a monitoring framework to track progress and promote accountability.

In addition, the success of gender mainstreaming also requires reviews of national development plans and the PRSPs as well as of the regular policy, planning and implementation cycles of different ministries.

However, in order for this to occur mechanisms need to be developed with the capacity, commitment and political backing to champion change across different institutions. While the GMS is mainly concerned with the development of national machineries for achieving this outcome, some of the lessons can be extended to other kinds of organisations as well. As the Secretariat points out, the GMS is intended to bring about fundamental and lasting change in society as a whole, but it starts with organisational change in government since it is the state that is responsible in principle for representing the interests of all its citizens. The institutional arrangements to bring this about are key:

a lead agency that takes responsibility for spearheading change, most likely the national women’s machinery;
a management team that brings together representatives of different departments as well as members of civil society to co-ordinate the implementation strategy;
a network of gender focal points, responsible for promoting gender concerns within their departments and liaising with other departments;
an inter-ministerial steering committee to oversee the links between different ministries;

a Parliamentary Gender Caucus made up of parliamentarians who are committed to gender equality goals and seek to lobby for them in the formal political arena; and
civil society interactions with this machinery to ensure a two-way flow of information and influence between government and the wider society.

Organisational change requires a number of levers to ensure that it occurs. Three are identified in the context of the GMS:

The awareness lever: addressing the formal and informal norms, rules, attitudes and behaviour that institutionalise inequalities within an organisation. Gender training has been the conventional route to achieve greater awareness on this front. However, unless such training becomes a core aspect of organisational development, rather than made up of one-off, discretionary events, it will fall short of its objectives. The awareness lever should be utilised to identify blockages to gender equity on a collective basis in the organisation.
The communications lever: the timely flow of information and analysis across the system in order that all policies and programmes are designed from a gender perspective. This requires investment in building up gender expertise across an organisation so that it becomes an aspect of different sectors rather than the property of a stand-alone group of gender specialists who are required to address all the government’s concerns.
The incentives lever: there has been a move towards performance-based appraisal within government as a part of overall public sector reform. Staff are increasingly assessed on their success in achieving the goals of government and of their departments. Gender mainstreaming requires that all performance appraisal systems incorporate incentives and penalties in relation to the achievement of gender equity goals.

Some of the wider factors that would increase the likelihood of this machinery achieving its goal include a legislative structure that promotes women’s rights as human rights, a political envi-

ronment that encourages an increase of women in decision-making positions and the support of international agencies such as the Secretariat itself. A supportive relationship with civil society is critical since it is pressure from civil society in democratic societies that gives legitimacy to gender equity goals within government as well as the political clout needed to follow them through.

Mobilising Around Gender Equity Goals: Building Active Citizenship

As well as a lack of gender expertise in policy-making bodies, the second factor put forward to explain why policy and programmes continue to demonstrate very limited concerns with gender equity was a lack of consultation with primary stakeholders. This would be most effectively addressed through building up active and organised constituencies at the grassroots level to exercise pressure for gender equality goals and to hold governments, donors and international agencies accountable for their action or inaction.

The previous chapter offered several examples of bottom-up mobilisation around gender equity goals that, despite different aims and strategies, all challenged the grain of class and patriarchy in a particular situation. While an earlier generation of women’s organisations focused on consciousness-raising and self-reliance, and generally had an adversarial stance towards the state, there is increasing evidence in recent decades of organisational efforts that seek to engage with current policy processes in order to influence them. Part of this engagement has required developing civil society expertise in areas of general policy, as well as in analysis of the gender dimensions of policy.

For example, not all gender budget initiatives are bureau-cratically-led. The WBI in South Africa, for instance, can be largely seen as made up of civil society representatives (women parliamentarians and NGOs). It provides an example of how increasing the numbers of women in parliament can have a direct influence on pro-poor policies. Along with lobbying the state, the WBI has pursued a policy of active dissemination, producing materials written in a simple style and in a number

of different local languages. Another example of engagement by grassroots women with the policy structures of their country comes from Uganda (see box 8.7).

Box 8.7 Consultations with Grassroots Women in Uganda
In 1990, the national women’s machinery in Uganda launched an unprecedented process of consultation with women all over the country to solicit their views on the country’s constitution for submission to the constitutional commission. This was possibly the first time in history that the female citizens of a country were so closely involved in framing their constitution. Using simplified training manuals, it consulted with women from all walks of life to develop a series of recommendations that faithfully reported on women’s views, registering agreements as well as conflicting opinions. The heightened politicisation of women on constitutional issues led to 30 women contesting seats in the constituent assembly elections in 1994. It has also had a lasting effect on the Ministry Responsible for Women’s Affairs, giving it greater orientation to the concerns of its rural constituency than is the case in many countries.

In Bangladesh, a number of NGOs working with women’s or pro-poverty issues (Nari Pokhho, Nijera Kori, Proshika) have set out to monitor government service delivery at the local level. While this has alerted local providers to the need for accountability, their ability to respond has been thwarted by the lack of decentralisation to local government (so that decisions for tackling structural problems remain the responsibility of the centre). However, making this analysis clear gives strength to wider demands for democratic decentralisation.

In Mexico, the Grupo de Educación Popular con Mujeres, which works to promote the economic capabilities of women in poor communities, adopted a participatory learning process involving continuous reflection and feedback. Over time, community women involved with the group have moved beyond the early concern with skills training and income-

A family harvesting potatoes in Bolivia
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION

generation to activities aimed at policy change. Having successfully lobbied for an office for women’s issues in one of the state governments, they have been working with the state legislature to develop a two-year plan to address their gender concerns.

Elsewhere, UNIFEM has played an important role in bringing together civil society actors to promote GRB analysis. In the Andean region, the methodologies that emerged out of these efforts are building a public culture of understanding around national and municipal development plans and budgets. In Bolivia, for example, while civil society groups are expected to participate in budget formation as part of decentralisation reform, women’s groups had not been involved in budget implementation and monitoring. The initiative there has focused on spending plans associated with its PRSP. It seeks to empower women and women’s organisations to influence budget decisions and do advocacy work with different levels of government by building their technical budget expertise.

Conclusion

The road to gender equality is not a linear one. For each victory reported by gender advocates and grassroots activists across the world there are many setbacks. While patriarchal oppressions are still very much in evidence, however, looking back on three decades of research, advocacy and activism in the field of development suggests that there has been important progress on a number of fronts. It is important to acknowledge these if the movement for equality is to be remain vigorous and hopeful. For example:

there has been a closing of gender gaps in survival chances, in health and in education;
women now play a far more visible role in the economies of their countries, and if these jobs do not have the levels of protection that male workers enjoyed in a previous era, they have still helped to challenge the myth of the male breadwinner and lessened women’s economic dependency; and
women are more aware of their rights, not only among the educated middle circles that enjoy some degree of access to the corridors of power, but also increasingly in poorer communities.

The one overarching lesson for policy-makers that emerges out of the analysis in this book is the central role that women’s agency can play in achieving many of the MDGs. Enhancing women’s access to various resources and ensuring that greater social value is given to their contributions lies within the domain of policy-makers and its pay-offs are likely to be enormous.

More progress needs to be made on bringing men in as allies, but giving up privileges of any kind has always been difficult – particularly if this is bound up with a core sense of identity and does not appear to hold out any immediate gains. Nevertheless, here too many more men are speaking out, moved by humanitarian concerns, by efficiency considerations or simply out of solidarity with an oppressed group.

It has become evident that while authoritarian regimes may be effective in addressing welfare aspects of gender equality, democratic space is far more conducive to the self-organisation of oppressed groups and the pursuit of rights than charity. There is evidence of growing concern by gender equity activists to engage more directly with the policy processes. The new stress on participation that is being attached to current policy efforts can thus be seized as an opportunity, however cynical the motivations might be that have given rise to them. Yet engagement at the national level can bring only limited gains in a world that is characterised by increasing global interdependence and where actions taken in one country have ramifications for others. The major challenges for gender advocates and activists in the twenty-first century will be to form alliances with others who seek a more equitable international order and to make sure that gender equity interests remain at the forefront of the struggle.