-- Related Links -- Gender and Development GenderStats World Bank Expert: Mayra Buvinic

AT A GLANCE:

Women’s and girls’ education and health levels have improved in most poor countries.

• In low-income countries, over 37 million girls have been enrolled in primary school since 1995, improving girls’ enrollment rate from 80% of boys’ enrollment rate in 1995 to 88% in 2005.
  
  
• By 2004, two thirds of 181 countries with primary schooling data achieved gender parity in enrollment, and the gender completion gap narrowed to 5% from 15% in 1991.
  
  
• Since 1970, average life expectancy for women increased by 15 to 20 years in developing countries.

But progress is lagging on improving women’s economic opportunities. In low-income countries today, women consistently trail men in formal labor force participation, access to credit, entrepreneurship rates, income levels, and inheritance and ownership rights.

• In low-income countries the female labor force shrunk from 53% in 1980 to 49% in 2005, while men’s employment rate remained steady at 86%.
  
  
• In 2005, women’s share in nonagricultural wage employment was only about 30% in low-income countries. For 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, it was below 20%.
  
  
• Women in Africa receive less than 10% of all credit going to small farmers and 1% of the total credit to the agricultural sector, while they make up a majority of agricultural workers.

This is neither fair nor smart economics. Life chances should not be pre-ordained at birth. Butrestricting economic opportunity for women is also bad economics: under-investing in women limits economic growth and slows down poverty reduction. Countries with greater gender equality tend to have lower poverty rates. Evidence links increases in women’s productivity and earnings to lower household poverty. Indian states with higher female labor force participation are precisely those with faster economic growth, which lifts people out of poverty. In Sierra Leone, lack of adequate actions to address women’s anemia is estimated to result in agricultural productivity losses of almost US$100 million over the next five years. In Brazil, the survival probability of a child increases by about 20 percent when income is in the hands of the mother.

In labor markets, there are good examples of the benefits women, industries, and economies draw from women’s participation in the labor force. In 1978, Bangladesh's garment sector contributed only US$1 million to the total export revenue. By mid-2006, the annual export income from this industry, where an estimated 83% of workers are women, was close to US$8 billion and made up 75 % of the total foreign exchange earned by the country annually.

In agriculture, a study in Ghana shows that women’s right to the land they work impacts productivity: workers who face insecure land rights fallow their plots less, leading to significantly lower yields. Researchers estimate that agricultural output could increase by a third with land titling.

When credit is provided directly to a woman, it has a significant effect on consumption expenditure, children’s schooling, and her labor supply. On average, an additional 100 taka of credit, provided to a woman in Bangladesh, increases per capita household consumption expenditure by 18 taka, compared to 11 taka when given to a man. Moreover, studies show that it is also good business: repayment rates are higher for women in all regions of the world.

Gender Equality as Smart Economics – a World Bank Group Action Plan

To help increase women’s economic opportunity, and to speed implementation of its 2001 Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, the World Bank Group in 2007 launched Gender Equality as Smart Economics—a four-year Gender Action Plan (GAP). Mirroring global development indicators on women and girls, more than 90% of World Bank lending for health and education in the past two years incorporated gender issues in its design, compared to 69% of projects in the sectors of finance, agriculture, private sector development and infrastructure. The GAP therefore focuses on four key markets: land, labor, agriculture, and finance, and on infrastructure.

In February 2007, GAP activities kicked off at a conference opened by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who strongly endorsed the World Bank action plan. Subsequently, the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations (“the G8”) endorsed the GAP at their annual meeting in June 2007. And it received unanimous support from Finance Ministers during the April 2007 Development Committee meeting. Key donor partners in the implementation of the GAP include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

In the first year, the plan mobilized resources from both the Bank’s own funds and donor contributions. Pledges to date total $36.7 million. Two innovative activities were added to the original plan: a pilot collaboration with the Government of Liberia and the Nike Foundation to expand economic opportunities for adolescent girls (see box below). If successful, this type of government, private sector, and Bank collaboration will be replicated in other countries. In addition, a two-year program of research and advocacy was launched to include a gender dimension in the Bank Group’s Doing Business work.

Here are some illustrative examples of Bank activities in the sectors targeted by the plan:

Finance: In Tanzania and Senegal, the GAP complements the IFC’s Gender Entrepreneurship Markets’ (GEM) work in establishing lines of credit for female bankers and entrepreneurs. GAP funds train staff of commercial banks to better serve their women customers and women entrepreneurs to enhance financial literacy and management skills. In Tanzania, an IFC credit line of $5 million with Exim Bank resulted in loans to 10 SMEs and to Sero Lease, a woman-owned micro-leasing company, with an outreach to 30,000 women.

Labor Market: In Dakar (Senegal), analytical work found that women’s strong presence in the informal sector, in low-capital intensive and low-productivity activities, was linked to their lack of access to education—a formidable obstacle to better-paid occupations in the formal sector. The resulting policy recommendations were incorporated in the Senegal Country Economic Memorandum which informs policy dialogue with the country.

Infrastructure, Transport: The Guerrero Decentralized Rural Transport for Territorial Development Project in rural Mexico aims to meet the needs of poor women left behind and living in remote areas that have seen massive male migration. The project mainstreams gender by incorporating explicit incentives for women’s participation in the preparation and implementation of project components.

Infrastructure, Energy: The Power to the Poor Initiative in Lao PDR has set up a Housewiring Fund to enable the poorest households that are disproportionately female-headed to access electricity from a Rural Electrification Project. Households will repay loans through the regular monthly billing process from the savings incurred on traditional fuels.

To learn more about the World Bank’s Gender and Development work, please visit: http://www.worldbank.org/gender

Publications:

• Gender Equality as Smart Economics – a World Bank Group Action Plan
• Improving Women's Lives: World Bank Actions Since Beijing
• Engendering Development – Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice
• World Bank Gender Mainstreaming Strategy
• Gender equality as Smart Economics: World Bank Group Gender Action Plan. First Year Progress Report (January 2007-January 2008)

Last updated: March 2008

Media contact:
Alejandra Viveros, 202-473-4306: aviveros@worldbank.org