World Bank interest in gender equality issues began in the 1970s, but the Bank's emphasis on this issue has increased markedly since the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. Gender equality is now a core element of the Bank's strategy to reduce poverty. Reflecting this growing emphasis on gender, the Bank approved its first comprehensive strategy on gender in 2001. The Gender Mainstreaming Strategy presented the World Bank's plan for mainstreaming gender-responsive actions into its development assistance work. The strategy called for selective and strategic integration of gender issues into the Bank's work. Since being launched, the implementation of its key elements has been reviewed annually. Civil society has also played an important role in the gender mainstreaming strategy in the Bank. A consultative group composed of gender specialists and CSOs was established in 1996. The External Gender Consultative Group (EGCG) played an instrumental role in facilitating the consultation process for the new strategy, monitoring strategy implementation, as well as providing input into the design and content of research studies, including the seminal policy research report "Engendering Development". In 2006, the Bank’s Gender Team decided to further refine the Strategy by addressing emerging issues in gender and development. Past decades have seen steady improvements in women’s and girls’ average education and health levels in most of the world’s poorest countries. But progress is badly off track on targets for women’s economic empowerment. The research shows that under-investing in women limits economic growth and slows down progress in poverty reduction. In response to this situation, and to its own progress reports on the implementation of the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, the World Bank Group launched in January of 2007, a Gender Action Plan (GAP) - Gender Equality as Smart Economics. The plan is implemented in partnership with UNIFEM, and helps empower women economically by scaling up gender work in economically productive sectors. The GAP incorporates the lessons from the implementation of the Bank's gender mainstreaming strategy, and works to establish a solid empirical rationale for gender equality activities. It is not designed to replace the gender mainstreaming strategy, but rather to advance its implementation. The plan sets out a four-year road map to intensify the implementation of the gender mainstreaming strategy in the economic sectors. The GAP is being co-funded by the Bank and by various donor agencies, with Germany and Norway being the largest. The GAP is now fully operational with an overall budget of US$30.2 million. The plan will guide the Bank's gender equality work through 2010, with most of the operations under the plan expected to occur in the poorest countries of the world - IDA countries. All operations funded by the GAP will also be carefully evaluated. A guiding principle of the Gender Action Plan is to continually track measurable results of its activities, and to evaluate the impact it makes. With the design of the GAP endorsed and activities underway, the Bank is increasingly looking for partnerships and guidance on how to bring about a breakthrough for women's economic empowerment in developing countries, and how the gender action plan can best help reach this target. To coordinate such partnerships, provide guidance, and oversee the implementation of the Gender Action Plan, an Advisory Council for Women's Economic Empowerment has been constituted. It is the Bank's key external advisory mechanism on issues of women's empowerment and implementation of the new action plan. The Council is composed of government officials, civil society representatives, and donor agency officials.
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