Moderator: Patricia Miranda, Global Advocacy Director Latindadd
Panelists:
- Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Senior Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina, National University of Rio Negro
- Shereen Talaat, Founder, MENAFem Movement
- Penelope Hawkins, Senior Economic Affairs Officer at UNCTAD
- Monique Newiak, Deputy Unit Chief, Inclusion and Gender Unit, IMF
Patricia: This discussion will be based mainly on an upcoming book, Feminism in Public Debt: a Human Rights Approach. We will expose a deeper understanding of the gendered impacts of responses to public debt problems, including austerity, and look at actionable solutions to issues like debt sustainability, emphasising the need to proritise, as Latindadd said in our recent campaign, sustainability of life over sustainability of debt. Juan Pablo, please start by presenting the main elements of the book.
Juan Pablo: Thanks to Iolanda Fresnillo for putting this panel together. I want to explore how orthodox economic policies to address debt affect women. Criteria to access economic reforms for debt are mediated by politics. Everyone should aim at understanding the causal effect between policies and outcomes, and also how power is created with a bias, which is a result of interdependent dimensions. We found positional factors – how people are placed in structures – and interpretative factors. These factors determine social order. The conceptual family has a big effect on how it is believed domestic care should be distributed and compensated, and then how binding the repayment of debt is considered if it contradicts the obligations to ensure the right to care.
A female director of the IMF promotes the gender approach, takes attention out of the adjustment persistence, and the intrinsic importance of gender equality. She presents gender equality as a means to grow more, while adjustment still occurs and affects gender equality. Policies on gender budgeting strengthens the perceived neutrality of debt repayment.
Human rights challenge the idea that debt should always be repaid, even when doing some implies material hardship.
Patricia: Thanks for highlighting gender equality not as a means but an objective. Penelope, in the chapter you wrote in the book, on how gender discrimination from sovereign relations is not limited to times of crisis.
Penelope: My point of departure is the 1961 UN General Assembly Resolution that called on member states to implement policies that lead to an increase in the flow of resources – public and private – into developing countries. We know, six decades later, it’s clear the financial architecture has failed to deliver on the pricing of this model. One factor is the debt angle of this growth model. Financial markets increasingly drive the debt situation of countries. There is currently an emphasis on short term prioritisation of creditors rather than long term goals. At UNCTAD, we will consider what is the financing gap, and look at the first four Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
We consider development finance as a whole: The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) portfolio, remittances, private and public external debt. We showcase possible alternatives – not ping pong between acquisition and austerity. There is a need for countries to reduce external shocks. Think of debt acquisition of capital inflows, reserves accumulation, etc – these factors can undermine competitiveness. In the austerity phase, they are obliged to prioritise repayment to creditors. Debt sustainability is seen as the ability to honour current and future payments without exceptional arrangements or default. This becomes a pain threshold for governments and their citizens. In our chapter, we’re trying to link this story to gender. We are interested in the different stages of a womens life, and we look at it comparing to three roles of women: Citizens, caregivers and employees. Then we look at government expenditure on health. WHO shows us austerity results in lower spending on healthcare. Even in the debt acquisition phase, we see debt servicing dampens type of spending in the health environment. Although the country may not be under pressure as in austerity, but still there is pressure to adopt certain systems, and women fall out. There is a tendency for women in poorer nations to borrow more for health, even though they have lower levels of financial inclusion, so it adds a layer of private indebtedness.
There’s a lot to be said if the state stepped in and valued the women’s care role. Women are also overrepresented in the healthcare and education sectors, where they are paid less. This is about understanding links between debt mechanisms and gender, it is a systemic problem so it needs a systemic solution. We have a real request to rekindle multilateralism, and see the staunching of illicit financial flows.
UNCTAD has been working on the Sustainable Development Finance Assessment Framework where we emphasise that up until now the approach has been on short term prioritisation of creditors instead of development goals. We consider the financing gap, should countries try to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We consider all sources of financing – foreign direct investment, remittances, public and private. We showcase alternatives to countries to target the ping pong effect.
Patricia: It’s not just public debt, women increase their own debt during crises. This is systemic. Shereen, from a Global South perspective, what are the impacts of the IMF policies relating to this?
Shereen: Global South countries asked International Financial Institutions (IFIs) for reforms. The IMF changed the name of ‘austerity’ to ‘fiscal consolidation’. At the end of the day, it means more cuts on public spending. In Jordan, public spending has gone from over 5% in 2006 to less than 3% now. Women are the breadwinners and the service providers. In the Atlas mountains in Morocco, women are spending their day looking for water. Imagine the burden of the climate crisis falling on these women. It’s time for a revolutionary approach. Time to add a care economy in the middle of the economic structure. UNCTAD is working on its beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) approach.
Patricia: The IMF gender strategy does not include debt. How can the IMF include a gendered perspective in their analysis of debt?
Monique: In a lot of points, there isn’t a lot of divergence in our views. When financing is tight, we take an economic perspective and the ones who are loudest are successful. How do we advocate to make sure that doesn’t happen? How do we ensure it doesn’t fall on women? How to prioritise debt payments, whether that should be relief.
I’ve worked in low-income countries (LICs) in the past 11 years. It’s important to find concessional financing – grants. This could be through Poverty Reduction Growth Trust (PRGT) which is 0%, the better alternative is to find free money. Unfortunately, financing has become much tighter. How would private sector financing then evolve? What’s the solution? Debt relief? What does it do to future financing of the country? Is it not a better solution not to have ping pong between debt accumulation and fiscal consolidation…we don’t want to see countries in debt. We are a lender of last resort.
Usually when countries are in debt and consolidation is not happening…the country is in a very difficult macroeconomic situation. Going to the domestic market, the government is borrowing. There will be a lot of domestic debt and inflation increases.
I’ve been in situations advising countries. How do we effectively advocate for prioritisation of spending? A lot of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) have an earmark for prioritising health, public services, etc. I find civil society extremely important to advocate for that.
Poverty reduction is a key element, that’s why we took the job. We talked about systems change…our system as it is, is often unfair to women. We have been criticised in the past for instrumentalising women, that’s not the objective. The criticism has been a lot on our labour force participation focus, we’re looking beyond that. We’re looking more into the care economy, time use surveys. It’s a path. I’m asking for help.
It’s often unfair to women when consolidation happens.
Questions and Answers
Elaine: Do you really believe that the international financial architecture can be reformed so it’s not embedded in neoliberalism and creating corporate gains? Monique, you talked about Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), we know there was a release and that the majority of funds went to better off countries. Do we actually have evidence that SDRs helped the financing of education and care, etc?
Angela (American University): We do an exercise every year where we do a regional average of what women should be paid for what they do at home. Even though austerity measures come in, paid labour would not shrink. It may sound outlandish, but if you’re paid for your labour, it could make a shift, as a possible solution. Everyone else is paid for labour, why not women?
Patricia: Thanks, I do the same exercise at home.
Joanna (Christian Aid): I know the IMF representative mentioned how we do joint advocacy, to whom do we do joint advocacy? We are expecting solutions from different stakeholders, how do we do the joint advocacy? Monique, you mentioned the goal is for low-income countries (LICs) to reduce poverty and increase sustainable development. What tangible changes are you seeing from a women’s human rights perspective from these policies? From my context in Sierra Leone, I see rich regression, backwardness. When we look at poverty indicators, there’s nothing to talk about. What has recently changed that is evidence based?
Juan Pablo: Consider how public perspective is received by governments. This is why it’s so important for civil society to feed discussions at the country level, on how financial architecture has material impacts on the people. Illustrating how gains and losses are perceived by each country. This is related to geopolitics.
Penelope: Monique, you mentioned we should avoid debt. What is the alternative? There has to be some element of debt in the mix. I think of the 1953 agreement with Germany post-war. As a consequence of how badly WWI reparations had been handled, they realised they had to be compassionate to Germany. They forgave 51% of Germany’s war debt. On the rest of the debt, they agreed to buy Germany’s exports. This was an example of the international community deciding they could change the international architecture.
Monique: I’m not saying debt is bad. Look at our report and Action Aid’s report to see where SDRs have had an impact. Has there been a gender lens on the IMF’s macro policy over the past twenty years? No. Should there be? Yes.
Mae: Many of the countries in my region have had privatisation of services, caps to public sector wages. In my mind, I’m asking what are the assumptions of the IMF in these policies? If you are using gender as a central category of analysis, it would not happen. IF you used gender as a central category of analysis for GDP.
Plan International Canada: I appreciate the analogy of debt acquisition and the move to austerity. How can we mitigate the impacts of climate change?
Iolanda: On the gender strategy and guidance note, debt is not mentioned even once. It should be explicit. The gender analysis is never explicit. We have gone through many country documents, the gender analysis is invisible or doesn’t exist. The IMF is getting better at including social protection floors in their advice and conditionality. There is a contradiction, e.g. in Zambia: You need to increase the number of doctors, but then they also ask them to reduce spending by 9%. No country can make that happen.
Monique: Good point on debt not being in there. It is indirectly mentioned by ‘fiscal’, it is very prominently in there. On conditionality, programme success is about macro stability and fulfilling the balance of payments. There have not been many conditionalities on gender. By looking at distributional impacts of policies, we can get there. We are working on tools – e.g. looking at fuel subsidy reform, how are they affecting households?