Moderator 

• Shereen Talaat, MENAFem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice.

Panelists 

• Imene Cherif, MENAFem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice.
• Maren Duvendack, University of East Anglia 
• Marc Gurstein, Office of the Executive Director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean
• Jane S Nalunga, Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI)

A recording of this CSPF event can be watched here.

Introduction by moderator: The World Bank released its Evolution Roadmap last year. After having 150 indicators, we now have only 22. One of the most important aspects of those indicators is the gender ones. Most are focusing on the economic empowerment for women and financial inclusion. We are here today to know more about the gender indicators and the Corporate Scorecard. We also want to discover if that is applicable to the country of operations. We have feminists here from the Global South, and also World Bank staff. It is very important to have those voices to understand the rationale and approach. We are honoured to have Emanuela from the gender team at the Bank. 

Emanuela: I will highlight a few points. I want to say at the outset that the issue of financial inclusion is only one small part of the broader gender strategy. Three strategic objectives: ending Gender Based Violence (GBV), elevating human capital, and enhancing and enabling economic opportunity. If we want to improve economic opportunities for women, we need to ensure GBV is addressed. Strategy includes a results framework to hold us accountable to reach outcomes. The results framework is public: its components focus on scale, which is what the gender indicator is about. The broader gender indicator is about the number of people who benefit from actions on gender inequality. That indicator is divided by six sub-indicators focused on childcare, GBV, digital inclusion, etc.  The Scorecard is about scale. It is not about economic inclusion specifically. CS indicator is about the number of people benefitting from gender equality: it is broader. There is now a firm disaggregation between male and female. Another component is about spurring more transformative changes, in response to IEG concerns: the capacity to monitor the gender focus, tracking policy and institutional changes. Finally, including effectiveness to allow us to monitor project at completion. We realise we will see results if operations get implemented as desired, so we will track how they are achieving results. Allowing us to monitor projects at completion. We realise we’ll see results if operations get implemented…we will track the results. 

This is a really broad, ambitious strategy and it integrates a fairly comprehensive results framework and we would be really happy to address questions. I have colleagues here working on the results framework. 

Shereen: We are here to know if the Scorecard in the gender context can be the only measure of success in in-country operation. What is the Global South reality? We know that some of our problems with the policy are about how women are impacted by policies, and how projects interact with the needs of women in our countries. And the programmes, are they really addressing gender issues?

Imene: What is the feminist economist perspective to the Scorecard? It is that financial inclusion is not the answer to the problems we are facing. My intervention will focus on the Global South. If we look at the indicators, we can see gender cross-cutting everywhere, but when we look deeper at the gender targets: the two ‘gender equality’ indicators included are, “Millions of people benefitting from actions to advance gender equality, of which (%) from actions that expand and enable economic opportunities,” and “Millions of people and businesses using financial services, of which (%) are women.” We don’t think this is the answer for the MENA region, full of inequalities in the labourforce. We see the Bank reducing these problems to cultural problems. Women don’t go to work because there is no infrastructure to travel to work. Only wealthier women can have a job due to care responsibilities. Access to healthcare for women needs big reforms; we need health facilities, and more finance for social services. What is our critique to the Scorecard? There is no structural economic challenge in the Scorecard; it is not transformative. The Scorecard neglects long term goals. What the WBG is offering is gender-blind reforms. 

Shereen: It is important to hear each other. The voices of women from the Global South must always be present. I want to give the floor to Maren. I want to hear your perspectives on financial inclusion.

Maren: I want to talk about the evidence base on financial inclusion. I take the point that the gender strategy contains just a small element of financial inclusion. But the question is, should we have any focus on financial inclusion as part of the gender strategy? It is a massive project supported by governments, donors, and the financial services industry. Is the focus on women’s empowerment justified? Financial exclusion is also the reason for digital financial inclusion in some countries of women; it is actually in the digitising aspect in my recent research. 

We have done a big study with my colleague Phil Mader. There have been a lot of systematic reviews on the impact of financial inclusion, and it warrants a review or reviews. We find financial services have some positive impacts, but there is a lot of variation of impact, and most effects are mixed and not transformative. It doesn’t tell us anything about long term impacts at all. Effects on incomes, assets, etc. are very small and inconsistent. Generally positive but often reflect non-financial programme features; exposure to women’s rights, varied by social norms. They vary by context, no evidence on behaviour changes. Impacts on health and other social indicators are small or non-existent. On the plus side, there are some positive effects to savings. We don’t know much about indebtedness patterns. Contrary to claims by financial scholars, there is no evidence to show the longer term macroeconomic development. 

Hardly any meta studies are focused on the digital side of things. Digital financial services (including fin tech): evidence gap, vast majority of studies focus on payments and money transfers; savings and credit not featured much. Most focused on the individual level. Exclusion of women in the digital sphere is limited, access to phones limited. 

Shereen: My repeated question with gender policies is always about the macroeconomic impact and the debt situation we will face. Jane will give us a perspective from Africa, with a feminist perspective.

Jane: Emanuela raised that it’s just a small part of the strategy, but Maren highlighted that it’s a massive project. It is a key tool in the World Bank’s toolbox. Broadly, not just for gender, but for poverty reduction and economic development. For my country, Uganda, the WBG has put funded programmes in place on financial inclusion. One was very problematic: the ‘Competitiveness and Enterprise Project’; improving land administration. People can get titles for land so they can access finances. It was a disaster. Women were dispossessed, titles going to men. Men were selling land to get loans. The WBG should consider whether things are really working or not. When you look at the indicators of the Corporate Scorecard and the gender strategy, the issue around using financial services including women, it’s interesting for Uganda. For Uganda, in 2021, they achieved 77.4 million people, the women were 35 million, yet they expected 95.2 million women to access financial services. You can’t say someone has gender equality because they opened a bank account. Many people open bank accounts to get loans. The moment the transaction is done, the bank account is closed. A bank account really shouldn’t count as gender equality. 

Financial inclusion pushed by the Bank has led in Uganda to household debt increases. Men tell their wives to borrow money. The contradiction between WBG policies: today there is the financial inclusion project, but in Uganda the WBG told the country to sell off its commercial bank. The government sold it off. Now the WBG comes back with financial inclusion. The GROW project: generating growth opportunities for women enterprises. This project, $270 US million, $49 million is for the infrastructure, which was already destroyed by privatisation. Women are borrowing mainly to address issues of health and education. We go back to the issue of austerity measures. The WBG should address the contradiction and stop projectising these things. 

Shereen: It is common not just in Uganda, but also in Egypt and Morocco. The Scorecard comes from when the Bank was discussing the Evolution Roadmap. I want to hear more about the process of the Board in coming up with the 22 indicators. 

Marc: You talked about the Scorecard and Evolution. Within the board, our constituency is strong on gender equality as a goal.  It’s not perfect, but I think the new Strategy is a step in the right direction, gender disaggregated data that we’ve pushed for, is a step in the right direction. On financial inclusion;  it is important that the Bank does this well. Secondly, we should ensure it’s measurable. There are a lot of Bank interventions where we can measure outputs. I get that the data is not overwhelming on poverty alleviation. From my mind, it is useful to have a bank account, useful to be able to pay for things in a different way, it is useful not to have money stored in a mattress. Perhaps it is not the main intervention, but it is still important. We recognise problems with debt, loss of land, etc: they are problems. Lots of businesses do require money. We are a Bank, we are primarily in the business of lending money. The Bank is a Bank. We are a development institution, but the way we are able to be self-sustaining is through generosity of donors and the lending feature. A lot of the heavy lifting was done in the last ten years. If you look at the Scorecard, now the shift is that we’re doing more through IFC. We are, through IFC, lending more money to Banks (commercial, because they were privatised which is what we were doing in that period, it’s already done). We push the IFC to ensure they will include measurement of gender targets. It then becomes a self-financing thing. 

Shereen: Microcredit has left women in debt and in jail. We don’t want another policy that leads in the same direction. We need a just, fair, objective understanding. I have to keep saying “reality”. I will open the floor for questions. 

Questions:

Elliot: For us back home in Uganda. Maybe women need to look at the Scorecard, and understand why we need the Scorecard now when the commercial bank is already sold. We may need to unpack what inclusion means. With the WBG, we have so many documents but women don’t know how to read and write. Is it possible to look at the Scorecard without financial literacy?

Charity: I want to pinpoint three things: we focused on financial inclusion but the report now shows there’s no evidence for behavioural change as a driver of impact. No evidence that it leads to macroeconomic development. High indebtedness for women. I think we are focusing on something, while we are missing out on financial literacy. What is the place of financial literacy in the Scorecard? That will drive macroeconomic development and behavioural change. It’s not enough to give women access to capital.

Economist from Gender Group of WBG: I hear from all of  you, it’s not really a question on whether financial inclusion is important or not, but how we implement it. When we tailor savings accounts to the needs of women, when we target things. If we try to understand which big interventions reduce poverty, I don’t think there is a global study that says GBV reduces poverty but we still include that. If digital is the promise, we must make sure women have IDs, internet access etc.  

Jon Sward: This gets to the heart of the CSO concern; the WBG is not just a commercial bank. Core question: here we have a process that was supposed to streamline indicators, and we are making the assumption the most important ones were chosen. The rationale seems pretty unclear. We’re concerned that the Bank is cherry picking things it can measure or know it can achieve, rather than focusing on things we know could lead to achieve economic transformation. 

Emanuela: I found the discussion extremely useful. All of us want the same thing. Every context is different; we are aware of that. One solution does not work everywhere. There isn’t a magic bullet. We have just finalised the implementation plan of the strategy. It starts by saying we need to foster an effective strategic country engagement. Ensure gender is integrated in core country diagnostics. We can understand the constraints. We have another indicator tracking women benefiting from safety nets. 

Marc: My main takeaway on financial literacy, the question on financial literacy, it is absolutely valid. Don’t know the extent to which they’ve been mainstreamed in the past. On ‘why financial inclusion’, maybe it was a little light, some have argued today that the evidence for financial inclusion as a driver of development is not strong. But not many are saying it is not useful in and of itself. If we’re looking at addressing extreme poverty, access to financial services is not the be all and end all, but it generally doesn’t hurt. It’s a thing we know how to do. From my perspective, it doesn’t come at the expense of interventions elsewhere, it seems a reasonable goal. We’ve come this far, why not try to completely end financial exclusion. 

Jane: I think the issue is not whether financial inclusion is important or not. We know it is important. We’re talking about the macroeconomic situation, in Uganda almost 80% of women, they are small scale producers. WBG interventions should take the context into consideration. It is not an issue of implementation. What do we want? Marc, it does hurt. Resources are limited. They should be going into economic structural transformation. Inclusion comes naturally when that happens. What does a woman in the village need insurance for? Let us be clear what can work for many African countries. There is commodification of health services, austerity, etc. 

Maren: One has to be cautious about financial inclusion; we have seen studies that in fact violence against women does increase with financial inclusion; based on patriarchal norms etc. One should not gloss over the downsides. We need to use this responsibly in the first case. One has to be cautious on the promotion of financial inclusion. 

Imene: We are not limiting ourselves to financial inclusion, we need a transformative economic approach. This should address the origins of poverty, and should include gender aspects to designing every development policy. 

Shereen: It should include a standalone policy as well as cross-cutting. One more round of interactions. 

Blessing: Founder and CEO of the Care Gap. I don’t think we listened enough to Jon. When we care enough about the needs of women. We forget what is the difference between men and women, it is about reproduction and care-giving. When we design solutions saying “let’s include women”, we forget the impact of caregiving, and women having time. We have gained nothing in the last twenty years when it comes to closing the gender gap; we have rolled back all of the gains because we are not paying attention. In Africa, 80% of unpaid labour is done by women; these are the same women we want to sit through financial literacy, going into debt, etc. 

Fiana: Hearing the Bank responses today left me feeling concerned about the problem analysis, is 80 years not enough to understand the problem about gender? Gender is about systems, macro. Understanding the root problem is a structural analysis. Access to services, systems, social protections. How much longer do we have to wait for the Bank to take a macro approach that is aligned with gender equality? 

Women’s 7: Importance to match financial education and digital education. Regarding the proposal by WBG regarding real inflation: all other variables not included – digital, property taxes, gambling activity, etc. 

Moses: Are we implementing financial inclusion alone without other factors? E.G, agriculture. What is the Bank doing to address issues that take money; health and education? Parents can’t leave their children. 

Chaste: Maren should get a job consulting the Bank. Women need to be supported; technology, text messaging, etc. Fintech: artificial intelligence, women need to understand how to assess funding the way VCs are approaching them. 

Elaine: We heard a lot about women getting indebted through financial inclusion. Microcredit etc. can charge high rates. Does the WBG in its financial inclusion projects have anything at the concessional level on this? 

Closing Remarks:

Emanuela: The scorecard indicator is not about access, it is about use. Totally agree with the observation on women’s health, SRHR, and the importance of the care economy. In terms of the care economy, it is one of the strategic objectives of the new gender strategy, which highlights very clearly that a critical component of economic opportunity is that the enabling services are there. Maybe I wasn’t clear when I spoke about constraints. Strategy puts forward core strategic engagements…macro diagnostics. Not to be shy towards institutional policy reforms. Not only speaking about the micro level. 

Imene: It is time for the WBG and IMF to take responsibility for structural problems. 

Marc: The world has problems and they are very big. They are ultimately systemic. We have many tools; we have discrete tools, we can make interventions by direct lending activities and consultations with governments and companies. We’re going to do what is possible to chip away at the very real and large problems we face. To the extent that FI chips away at the gender issue, I will take away the points made and try to do better. 

Jane: Going back to the issue Jon raised about the Bank’s development mandate. My proposal is that maybe we talk about financial intervention rather than financial inclusion, so we can look at structural transformation broadly. 

Maren: Something Moses said with regard to safeguarding women, there is a big discussion about the role of regulation in the Global South. Reigning back in irresponsible lending. There is a role for the Bank to play in that.