The World Bank Group (WBG) released its final 2024-2030 Gender Strategy in mid-June, following over a year of public consultation. With little significant change from the draft shared with stakeholders in October 2023 (see Observer Autumn 2023), followers of the process await details about the strategy’s implementation plan and a clearer picture of how it will apply to the International Development Association (IDA) 21st replenishment (see Observer Autumn 2024, Summer 2024) and the new Corporate Scorecard (see Observer Autumn 2024). Thus far it seems that the Bank’s new Gender Strategy will end up watered down to a limited number of indicators on ‘financial inclusion’ in the Scorecard and a gender ‘lens’ in IDA21 – despite civil society repeatedly calling for a more holistic, rights-based and wellbeing-centred approach throughout the Gender Strategy consultations. Bank staff have stated that gender will be a key theme of this year’s Annual Meetings in Washington DC in October. Yet, there are warning signs that real substance behind the gender push will have regressed.
In the current polycrisis, with global political instability, rising debt and subsequent austerity measures, numerous violent conflicts and worsening climate change, gender equality and women’s rights are falling behind. Commitments on gender must be ambitious and transformative. As the strategy was being developed, civil society called for ambitious and transformative commitments from the Bank that would centre a gender lens and provide adequate financing across its operations (see Briefing, Civil Society calls for rethink of World Bank’s ‘evolution roadmap’ as part of wider reforms to highly unequal global financial architecture). Long awaited references to women’s rights as human rights were included in the new Gender Strategy – a first for the Bank – and the value of public services to women and girls was also emphasised, with the strategy stating it “supports public sector financing for core services.” However, a more holistic view of what it takes to achieve gender equality is missing from both the draft IDA21 policy package and the recently launched Corporate Scorecard.
Corporate Scorecard: where is the Gender Strategy?
It has been difficult to understand how the gender strategy applies to the morphing structure of a reforming World Bank via the implementation of its Evolution Roadmap. Throughout this year, a series of gender-relevant processes have emerged. The formalised strategy indentifies what the Bank believes are barriers to achieving gender equality, but its implementation plan is still being developed, with comparatively little civil society consultation to date. The Bank has developed a new Corporate Scorecard – which management claims will make the Bank accountable for quantifiable development outcomes (see Observer Autumn 2024). At the same time, the IDA21 replenishment policy package is being finalised in the lead-up to the Annual Meetings in October, presenting a key opportunity for the Bank to put crucial financing behind the priorities outlined in the strategy (see Observer Autumn 2024).
Rather than addressing civil societies’ and deputies’ concerns related to gender, the Bank has put forward an approach that fails to integrate gender across focus areas, which poses significant risk for further setbacks to hard-fought gender equality gains.Fiana Arbab, Oxfam International
The Bank’s newly developed Corporate Scorecard is hailed as a “strategic management tool to drive action for results,” which will replace more than 150 indicators for each WBG institution with one cross-cutting set of 22 indicators. However, the Scorecard proposes a shockingly narrow conceptualisation of how gender equality gains should be measured. As one of the 15 outcome areas, 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.”
These outcomes are gravely insufficient to measure the Bank’s impact on gender equality – and would appear to vindicate civil society’s fears about the Bank’s ‘pinkwashing’ of its ‘business as usual’ approach (see Observer Autumn 2023). Moreover, the financial inclusion model has been heavily criticised for its tendency to increase indebtedness, deepen financialisation of essential public services and prioritise corporate profits, while failing to address the structural causes of gender inequity (see Observer Spring 2023).
IDA21: gains made, only to be lost again
Throughout this year, civil society has sought to ensure that gender is not deprioritised in IDA21. Gender has been a special theme of IDA since IDA16, with the most recent IDA20 replenishment offering policy commitments on funding childcare initiatives and tackling gender-based violence. Gender activists urged the Bank to translate the new strategy’s strengths of valuing public services, recognising different forms of the care economy, and fostering women’s human rights. Instead, the draft IDA21 policy framework released in June has relegated gender to a ‘lens’ which will reportedly apply across all areas, but with few tangible policy commitments.
Feminists have long been wary of ‘gender mainstreaming’ as an approach – one that the Bank has championed over the years (see Inside the Institutions, The World Bank’s approach to gender mainstreaming). The UN Women’s Handbook on Gender Mainstreaming for Gender Equality Results notes, “gender mainstreaming has limited value unless it is explicitly focused on promoting and monitoring positive gender equality results in all development interventions.” Fiana Arbab of Oxfam International expressed “deep concern with gender being de-prioritised even further in the IDA21 policy framework. Rather than addressing civil societies’ and deputies’ concerns related to gender, the Bank has put forward an approach that fails to integrate gender across focus areas, which poses significant risk for further setbacks to hard-fought gender equality gains.”