New Smarties of World Bank: Competitive Women
by - 15.05.2007 17:26
A critique by Christa Wichterich, December 2006,
published in WIDE Newsletter, December 2006
The New 'Smarties' of the World Bank: Competitive women
"Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women".
Under this quote from "The Economist", the World Bank presents its new gender action plan for the fiscal year 2007-10 and thereby anticipates the key objective of its women and gender policy: growth. The political message for women is: we will improve market opportunities so that you, women, can compete efficiently. A critique by Christa Wichterich.
Smartly entitles the World Bank its gender action plan: "Gender Equality as Smart Economics". In doing so, the Bank continues to follow its central lines of argumentation and its 30 years old motivation: In 1975, the Bank aimed at integrating women as "under-utilised human resources...into development" in order to promote productivity, efficiency and growth and consequently, reduce poverty.
In 2006, the Bank wants to support the "economic empowerment" of women, in order to promote shared growth and accelerate the implementation of MDG 3". In 1975, the mantra was "integration", today it is "competitiveness" of women. According to the Bank, the gap between women's capability as it is now phrased in the jargon of Nobel Price Winner Amartya Sen and their economic opportunities is inefficient. By closing this gap through women's labour force participation and earnings, poverty is expected to be reduced and growth fastened. "The business case for expanding women's economic opportunities is becoming increasingly evident", in other words: women's economic empowerment pays off. "This is nothing more than smart economics" explains the Bank.
The language and the reference concepts of the WB might have changed, but the relationship between purpose and means in the WB's women/gender policy did not. And this despite of three decades of intensive women's rights struggles at multilateral and national level, last but not least struggles for economic and social rights. Regardless of this, the women's rights/human's rights paradigm is not used by the WB as normative framework, it is not even mentioned in the action plan.
30 years ago as well as today, the Bank's crucial concern was and is a market-conform economisation of the women's question. At that time as it is today, the main aim of increasing "investments in women" was to use female labour force and female human resources for markets in order for them to function "smarter", meaning avoiding market failure and distortion of competition. According to the Bank, "market failure" that hinders efficiency and growth occurs when "resources are not allocated where returns are highest."
For these reasons, the gender action plan focuses on women's proper allocation and empowermentin four markets: land, labour, product and financial markets. To implement this, the Bank developed a two pronged strategy: on the policy level, the Bank wants to address market access barriers and discrimination against women, thereby "making markets work for women". On the agency level, the Bank wants to support business activities, integrate women's initiatives and increase the "compatibility between women's productive and reproductive role" in order to "empower women to compete in markets".
For years the WB has mainly focused on the development of women's human capital and the utilisation of their social capital. Now the focus lies on removing discriminatory factors through legislative regulations, especially with regard to property titles, titles of inheritance, land rights as well as on improving competitive opportunities to access markets. Market access and participation are the key words concepts, not concepts of livelihood-, income-, food or social security or implementation of human/women's rights.
As necessary and important it is to promote gender equality in the market, as one-dimensional is the rationale of the World Bank's action plan in defining women's roles in the neoliberal market model as independent actors, namely as entrepreneurs, as landowners, as costumers of financial services or as flexible part-time workers. In contrast, concrete economic activities of women as farmers, small-scale traders, service providers or export workers vanish behind these functions as market agents. Self-help groups and informal work shall be pulled deeper into the business system.
Also the complex causes of poverty which keep women in addition to their unpaid work in marginalized, low paid, precarious and insecure jobs are not mentioned. Even so the action plan places the economic empowerment of women in the framework of achieving the MDGs, it does not refer to women-specific poverty or the so-called feminisation of poverty. Therefore the question remains, how the planned removal of market barriers and distortions, e.g. the planned reduction of "time and monetary costs of formalization of enterprises" could be instrumental in reducing the poverty of 100 millions women small-scale farmers.
In order to achieve a smart gender-equal economy the Bank plans activities in three areas in selected countries (20 low-income countries, 10 middle-income countries and 3 fragile states):
1) Development of "analytical knowledge" and gathering of gender-disaggregated date and statistics aiming at avoiding market failures according to the claim to be a "knowledge bank".
2) Engendering of World Bank Group operations and economic and sector work according to the claim of gender mainstreaming.
3) Implementation of result-based initiatives according to the claim of "aid effectiveness".
The plan is neatly set up as a log frame from the programme cradle to the grave with manifold "commitments" of the WB and quantitative indicators. It will be monitored and evaluated by the WB's own quality control system. In this framework, it is planned for example to engender investment climate assessments and to carry out gender and growth assessments. But which concrete political conclusions would be drawn from such impact assessments, is not said. Are for example, cheap, compliant, female workers "smarties" for the investment climate? Are hard-working remittance-paying female migrants, who work underpaid as household keepers or nurses, "smarties" for the economic growth of the sending and receiving countries?
It is not to be expected that the Bank's action plan would critically analyse market strategies, business interests or trade rules that produce continuously and systematically social inequalities and divisions among people. However, this silence about discriminatory economic structures which inform market mechanisms results in a big question mark: how does the Bank plan to improve the market opportunities for women significantly without changing the structures that again and again push subsistence farmers, street vendors, care workers, local industries, informal workers, household economies as well as migrants in marginal and precarious positions and poverty.
What impresses most when reading the action plan is the one-dimensional thinking which places markets central and not human beings or the economic rights and potentials of women. Distortion of competition to the disadvantage of women shall be removed, in order for women to compete on a levelled playing-field. However, elements of reciprocity, social obligation or moral economy that are of great importance in the economic context for women, are systematically ignored. This one-dimensionality and blindness to economic alternatives makes the Bank's concept of gender equality in global markets a smart version of the dogma of competition and growth with the market-totalitarian message underlying: There is no alternative!
http://server2.matematici.com/wide/index.jsp?id=233
http://www.wide-network.org
"Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women".
Under this quote from "The Economist", the World Bank presents its new gender action plan for the fiscal year 2007-10 and thereby anticipates the key objective of its women and gender policy: growth. The political message for women is: we will improve market opportunities so that you, women, can compete efficiently. A critique by Christa Wichterich.
Smartly entitles the World Bank its gender action plan: "Gender Equality as Smart Economics". In doing so, the Bank continues to follow its central lines of argumentation and its 30 years old motivation: In 1975, the Bank aimed at integrating women as "under-utilised human resources...into development" in order to promote productivity, efficiency and growth and consequently, reduce poverty.
In 2006, the Bank wants to support the "economic empowerment" of women, in order to promote shared growth and accelerate the implementation of MDG 3". In 1975, the mantra was "integration", today it is "competitiveness" of women. According to the Bank, the gap between women's capability as it is now phrased in the jargon of Nobel Price Winner Amartya Sen and their economic opportunities is inefficient. By closing this gap through women's labour force participation and earnings, poverty is expected to be reduced and growth fastened. "The business case for expanding women's economic opportunities is becoming increasingly evident", in other words: women's economic empowerment pays off. "This is nothing more than smart economics" explains the Bank.
The language and the reference concepts of the WB might have changed, but the relationship between purpose and means in the WB's women/gender policy did not. And this despite of three decades of intensive women's rights struggles at multilateral and national level, last but not least struggles for economic and social rights. Regardless of this, the women's rights/human's rights paradigm is not used by the WB as normative framework, it is not even mentioned in the action plan.
30 years ago as well as today, the Bank's crucial concern was and is a market-conform economisation of the women's question. At that time as it is today, the main aim of increasing "investments in women" was to use female labour force and female human resources for markets in order for them to function "smarter", meaning avoiding market failure and distortion of competition. According to the Bank, "market failure" that hinders efficiency and growth occurs when "resources are not allocated where returns are highest."
For these reasons, the gender action plan focuses on women's proper allocation and empowermentin four markets: land, labour, product and financial markets. To implement this, the Bank developed a two pronged strategy: on the policy level, the Bank wants to address market access barriers and discrimination against women, thereby "making markets work for women". On the agency level, the Bank wants to support business activities, integrate women's initiatives and increase the "compatibility between women's productive and reproductive role" in order to "empower women to compete in markets".
For years the WB has mainly focused on the development of women's human capital and the utilisation of their social capital. Now the focus lies on removing discriminatory factors through legislative regulations, especially with regard to property titles, titles of inheritance, land rights as well as on improving competitive opportunities to access markets. Market access and participation are the key words concepts, not concepts of livelihood-, income-, food or social security or implementation of human/women's rights.
As necessary and important it is to promote gender equality in the market, as one-dimensional is the rationale of the World Bank's action plan in defining women's roles in the neoliberal market model as independent actors, namely as entrepreneurs, as landowners, as costumers of financial services or as flexible part-time workers. In contrast, concrete economic activities of women as farmers, small-scale traders, service providers or export workers vanish behind these functions as market agents. Self-help groups and informal work shall be pulled deeper into the business system.
Also the complex causes of poverty which keep women in addition to their unpaid work in marginalized, low paid, precarious and insecure jobs are not mentioned. Even so the action plan places the economic empowerment of women in the framework of achieving the MDGs, it does not refer to women-specific poverty or the so-called feminisation of poverty. Therefore the question remains, how the planned removal of market barriers and distortions, e.g. the planned reduction of "time and monetary costs of formalization of enterprises" could be instrumental in reducing the poverty of 100 millions women small-scale farmers.
In order to achieve a smart gender-equal economy the Bank plans activities in three areas in selected countries (20 low-income countries, 10 middle-income countries and 3 fragile states):
1) Development of "analytical knowledge" and gathering of gender-disaggregated date and statistics aiming at avoiding market failures according to the claim to be a "knowledge bank".
2) Engendering of World Bank Group operations and economic and sector work according to the claim of gender mainstreaming.
3) Implementation of result-based initiatives according to the claim of "aid effectiveness".
The plan is neatly set up as a log frame from the programme cradle to the grave with manifold "commitments" of the WB and quantitative indicators. It will be monitored and evaluated by the WB's own quality control system. In this framework, it is planned for example to engender investment climate assessments and to carry out gender and growth assessments. But which concrete political conclusions would be drawn from such impact assessments, is not said. Are for example, cheap, compliant, female workers "smarties" for the investment climate? Are hard-working remittance-paying female migrants, who work underpaid as household keepers or nurses, "smarties" for the economic growth of the sending and receiving countries?
It is not to be expected that the Bank's action plan would critically analyse market strategies, business interests or trade rules that produce continuously and systematically social inequalities and divisions among people. However, this silence about discriminatory economic structures which inform market mechanisms results in a big question mark: how does the Bank plan to improve the market opportunities for women significantly without changing the structures that again and again push subsistence farmers, street vendors, care workers, local industries, informal workers, household economies as well as migrants in marginal and precarious positions and poverty.
What impresses most when reading the action plan is the one-dimensional thinking which places markets central and not human beings or the economic rights and potentials of women. Distortion of competition to the disadvantage of women shall be removed, in order for women to compete on a levelled playing-field. However, elements of reciprocity, social obligation or moral economy that are of great importance in the economic context for women, are systematically ignored. This one-dimensionality and blindness to economic alternatives makes the Bank's concept of gender equality in global markets a smart version of the dogma of competition and growth with the market-totalitarian message underlying: There is no alternative!
http://server2.matematici.com/wide/index.jsp?id=233
http://www.wide-network.org