World Savvy Monitor

Trends

In the wake of collateral damage to women inflicted by SAPs, and as research mounted on the disproportionate effects of poverty on women in LDCs, developed countries and international finance institutions moved to include special gender budgeting in their aid programs.  

• More attention and money was directed toward women as part of a Women and Development (WAD) movement in the 1980s.  

• Yet, many women’s advocates and development experts found this approach to be often patronizing.  Instead of directing money at women as victims of poverty, many felt that women should be empowered as agents of their own improvement – in their families, communities, and countries.  

• By the 1990s, the prevailing wisdom accepted that women should be given economic and political opportunities to chart their own course toward development.  This came to be known as the Gender and Development (GAD) movement, and its strategies and tactics dominate the field of development assistance and anti-poverty efforts today.

Beyond Gendered Poverty: Helping Women as a Societal Investment

The last few decades have seen an explosion of research indicating that development dollars spent on women yield higher returns than those spent on men.   

• Women are more likely than men to use development assistance to benefit their children and families, increasing the intergenerational return on investments.  The World Bank has found that increasing women’s well-being correlates with better probability that their children will go to school and enjoy good health than if extra income had been provided to fathers.

• Women are considered more productive than men and better stewards of land in small scale farming ventures, an important indicator in a world still wracked by famines.  They are thought to make excellent use of agricultural extension training and loans when they are made available.  The World Economic Forum (WEF) has shown that giving women farmers in Kenya the same level of agricultural assistance as men could increase yields of farmers by more than 20%.

• Even enhanced gender equality in decision-making in household consumption and production dynamics makes a difference.  The Food Policy Research Institute has estimated that if family decision-making was equalized, nearly two million more children in Sub-Saharan Africa would be adequately nourished.

• Money spent on education yields differential returns as well.  Everything else being equal, the WEF has shown that countries where the rates of enrollment of girls in school is less than 75% that of enrollment rates of boys can expect to have a GDP roughly 25% less than that of countries where less gender disparity exists in education.  

• Educated women not only have enhanced economic opportunities, but educated women also are likely to have fewer children than non-educated women and to invest better in the children they do have.  This is of immense importance in a world where high fertility rates correlate dramatically with high poverty rates. 

The United Nations Development Program Gender Equality Strategy

In short, not only women, but entire communities and countries benefit from gender equality.  Reflecting this reality, a centerpiece of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is its Gender Equality Strategy:

• The UNDP Gender Equality Strategy is grounded in the premise that the development objective of equality between men and women, or gender equality, is absolutely indivisible from the UNDP human development goal of real improvements in people’s lives and in the choices and opportunities open to them.  By empowering women to claim their internationally-agreed rights in every development sphere, and supporting governments to be both pro-active and responsive in advancing the realization of these rights, UNDP will leverage the broadest possible expansion of choice and opportunity for all.

Next:  Women and Poverty:  The Millennium Development Goals