Notes from the Civil Society Policy Forum session on 12 April on the changing international tax landscape from a feminist perspective and challenging IFIs’ role in shaping it at the World Bank and IMF's 2019 Spring Meetings.
Macroeconomic policy
Conditionality
Commentary
Unsustainable? The IMF’s approach to the Sustainable Development Goals
As the IMF publishes new SDG site, meaningful policy realignment remains lacking while business-as-usual continues at IMF.
Gender
Analysis
The IMF and Gender Equality: Operationalising Change
Latest IMF guidance on gender issues raises more questions than answers as it opens the door to impact assessments and alternative macro policies.
Conditionality
Analysis
The impacts of IMF-backed austerity on women’s rights in Brazil
The IMF and World Bank-endorsed 20 year spending freeze in Brazil disproportionately impacts women and other marginalised groups, despite less harmful alternatives being available
Conditionality
Background
Miriam Brett joins BWP as International Development Finance Project Manager
Miriam Brett will manage BWP's work on areas relating to international development finance, with a focus on macroeconomic scrutiny of the IMF
Conditionality
News
BWP edited volume on IMF’s policy impacts on gender equality
The Bretton Woods Project publishes edited volume on the impacts of IMF macroeconomic policies on women's rights and gender equality.
Conditionality
Analysis
World Bank report on fiscal adjustment in Brazil: questionable analysis; unfair policies
The World Bank’s report on public spending in Brazil raises serious questions about the methodology used and relevance of the report’s focus on fiscal consolidation in light of its own admission that the deterioration of Brazil’s fiscal situation is due principally to the recession.
Conditionality
Analysis
The IMF and Gender Equality: A Compendium of Feminist Macroeconomic Critiques
The Bretton Woods Project published an edited volume on the gendered impacts of some of the most commonly-prescribed macroeconomic policies of the IMF, covering tax, expenditure and labour policies.
Gender
Analysis
The IMF, Gender Equality and Expenditure Policy
BWP briefing explores gender dimensions of IMF’s key fiscal policy advice on expenditure policy in developing countries, focusing in particular on austerity measures.
Conditionality
Commentary
Protecting the victories of the ‘IMF Spring’
The IMF's recognition of the importance of inequality is under threat. Concerns have been raised about complacency and even the reversal of the IMF's recent progress on inequality, while IMF staff continue to operationalise new policy advice on inequality in surveillance and lending programmes.
Featured briefings
15 August 2019
The World Bank and gender equality: Development Policy Financing
New BWP briefing offers critical gender analysis of World Bank lending instrument to borrowing countries.
30 July 2019
The Bretton Woods Observer: Summer 2019
30 July 2019
The Bretton Woods Institutions and the second crisis of multilateralism
At 75, the World Bank and IMF face a crisis of multilateralism in no small part of their own making as failed economic policies have resulted in skepticism of the international order they helped to create.