gender equality as smart economics
The Gender and Law Thematic Group in conjunction with
The PREM Gender and Development Group (PRMGE) and the Legal VPU
invite you to a consultation on
The Legal Dimensions of Women’s Economic Empowerment
Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Venue:Â MC 2-800
Time:Â 9am to 5pm
Background The World Bank adopted a Gender Action Plan (GAP)  in September 2006. The GAP seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment in client countries as a way to promote shared growth and accelerate the implementation of the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG). The Action Plan commits the World Bank to intensify gender equality work in the economic sectors over four years in four key markets – land, labor, product, and financial – because of their potential to produce rapid and sustained increases in women’s productivity and incomes. The policy and legal dimensions underpinning these markets are crucial to their success and, more specifically, to enabling women’s equal access to these markets and the corresponding benefits of development. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) was launched in January 2006 "to make legal protection and economic opportunity not the privilege of the few, but the right of all," by focusing on the link between exclusion, poverty and law. The CLEP’s work focuses on four key themes that, in large part, parallel the markets that the GAP targets: Access to Justice & Rule of Law; Property Rights; Entrepreneurship; and Labor Rights. The Bank is actively supporting the work of the CLEP, and has developed an independent agenda through the Legal Empowerment of the Poor Initiative, for the Bank to demonstrate how legal empowerment can enhance the effectiveness of development project. In this context the World Bank is convening a consultation to bring together legal development practitioners as well as staff of the World Bank and other international organizations to identify the key legal aspects relevant to promoting women’s economic advancement and to propose a set of priority legal empowerment issues and tools to incorporate in the GAP’s implementation. The overall goal of the consultation is to: (i) identify the legal issues relevant to the priority markets that the GAP targets; (ii) provide further analysis to ground legal reforms under Legal Empowerment for the Poor;  and (iii) propose specific areas and topics for reform in order to articulate a set of guidelines and tools which will, in turn, inform future GAP-related efforts. Thematic Areas of the Consultation Land and property rights: Â
Elements of the enabling legal and policy framework to promote women’s rights to own and inherit property.  The section will discuss examples of good practices on women’s land rights from around the world and propose ways of replicating and scaling them up, as well as identify remaining gaps and how to fill them. Access to finance and credit:
Elements of the enabling legal and policy framework to facilitate and increase women’s access to financial markets and services. Drawing on lessons from the 4 existing Gender and Growth Assessments conducted by the Bank/IFC (GGAs), this section will analyze policies and laws from selected countries to document their impacts on access to finance. Labor laws and women’s rights to employment :
Elements of the enabling legal and policy framework --including the role of labor unions, the contributions of legal professionals and academics, and the legal dimensions of core labor standards-- needed to promote women’s access to equal opportunities in labor markets, the equitable enjoyment of labor rights and elimination of discrimination in the labor force. This section will look at the range of legal issues relevant for women’s employment needs and benefits, covering such topics as labor conditions, wage discrimination, occupational segregation, pensions, taxes and other benefits, as well as the ability of women to benefit from foreign investment promotion and free trade agreements. It will also discuss model legislation that can be developed by country clients in line with standard guidelines proposed by the donor community; and how meeting their international obligations under treaties already ratified, e.g. ILO core labor standards, can be used in within the national legal framework to promote women’s legal empowerment in labor and their equitable access to labor markets.
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