Gender Action

Programs: Economic Reforms and Gender: Gender Action monitors the gendered impacts of IFI loans and works with local partners to mitigate their harmful effects on low-income women and men. Gender Action?s ?Gender Guide to World Bank and IMF Policy-Based Lending? examines the gender impacts of harmful IFI policy-based loans. As a founding member of the first global campaign to curb the destructive power of the IMF, Gender Action and its partners are promoting alternative finance for poor countries without strings attached. Women, the Environment and Infrastructure: Because massive IFI infrastructure projects have huge environmental and social consequences, in ?Boom-Time Blues: Big Oil?s Gender Impacts in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Sakhalin,? Gender Action and CEE Bankwatch Network examined IFI-financed pipeline projects on the ground. We showed how IFI pipeline investments increase poverty, human trafficking, rates of HIV/AIDS and still births and drive women into sex work. We are using Boom Time Blues to advocate that IFIs fulfill promises that their investments will protect women from harm. Engendering Country Strategies: Gender Action, and its partners, promote sovereign country-owned national development strategies. As things stand, poor countries must prepare Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs), development plans written to meet World Bank and IMF specifications. Gender Action?s experience with partners in PRS countries shows that PRSs overall have neglected to address gender gaps and promote women?s rights, and their IFI-driven economic reforms actually impoverish women and men in developing countries. Women?s Rights in Peace and Conflict: In 2007 Gender Action released ?Mapping Multilateral Development Banks? (MDBs?) Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Spending,? the first report exposing diminishing MDB spending for these issues. We also released ?Gender Justice: A Citizen?s Guide to Gender Accountability at IFIs? with the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) to help people harmed by gender discrimination in IFI projects seek redress. Finally, ?The Gender Dimensions of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The World Bank Track Record,? also released in 2007, demonstrated that the majority of Bank post conflict investments ignore gender issues and reinforce patriarchal patterns.Tracking IFI Gender Implementation: IFI gender experts are vital to mitigate the detrimental impacts of IFI operations. Our ?Reforming the World Banks: Will Gender Strategy Make a Difference?? reveals that gender experts compose less than a fraction of one percent of World Bank staff and that most non-gender experts lack incentives to address the imbalance. Our ?Gender Justice? reports that other IFIs have even fewer gender experts and incentives. We are following-up with pressure on the IFIs to hire more gender experts and provide incentives for all staff to address gender impacts.