International Financial Institutions (IFIs), like the World Bank, routinely undermine their commitment to empower women and promote gender equality through their policies and projects. Gender-insensitive IFI investments disproportionately harm women and girls.
Gender Action is the world's only organization that is dedicated to promoting women's rights and gender justice in all IFI investments. We invite you to join our new global network of Gender IFI Watchers, which will help you hold IFIs in your country accountable for their negative gender impacts.
As a Gender IFI Watcher, you will learn how to:
- Locate vital information about IFI projects in your country;
- Conduct gender analyses of IFI projects;
- Collaborate with Gender Action and other network members in your region and around the world;
- Use Gender Action publications, including the "Gender Toolkit for International Finance Watchers," to take action when IFI projects cause harm in your community or region;
- Strengthen your voice for women's rights and gender justice.
Membership is FREE! To register, click here.
If you have already registered, access the tutorials by clicking here, or by selecting the Network from the Publications tab above.
On April 17, 2012, The Real News Network (TRNN) interviewed Elaine Zuckerman on the newly elected World Bank President. Watch here.
Elaine Zuckerman was interviewed on Al Jazeera's Inside Story on April 13th, 2012. She shared her perspective on the selection of a new World Bank president. Click here to see the show.
Hear Gender Action's Elaine Zuckerman discuss the World Bank President selection process on April 2, 2012, on NPR's WBEZ.
Gender Action Heralds International Women Day with Haiti GBV IFI Case!
To commemorate International Women's Day 2012, Gender Action prepared this IFIs and Gender Based Violence Case Study that analyzes the extent to which World Bank and IDB shelter, sanitation and electricity investments address GBV in Haiti, as these projects have significant implications for Haiti's GBV epidemic. It also highlights an IDB-funded survey of GBV in Haiti, which took place before the earthquake, but we could not find any post-earthquake follow-up. While Gender Action applauds the World Bank's most recent investment to address GBV, our analysis demonstrates that neither the World Bank nor the IDB adequately address GBV within other critical post-earthquake investments. The case study underscores the urgent need for these institutions to fully implement their gender policies and explicitly address GBV across all sectors.
Broken Promises:
Gender Impacts of the World Bank-Financed West-African and Chad-Cameroon Pipelines
Based on fieldwork done with Friends of the Earth member groups in Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo and Ghana, Broken Promises reveals that the Chad-Cameroon and West African pipelines, financed by the World Bank, increased women's poverty and dependence on men; caused ecological degradation that destroyed women's livelihoods; discriminated against women in employment and compensation; excluded women in consultation processes; and led to increased prostitution.
Governing Climate Funds:
What Will Work for Women?
As the international community mobilizes in response to global climate changes, climate change mechanisms must ensure the equitable and effective allocation of funds for the world's most vulnerable populations. Governing Climate Funds:
What Will Work for Women? highlights women and girls' disproportionate vulnerability to negative climate change impacts in developing countries, and demonstrates how they have been largely excluded from climate change finance policies and programs.
Gender Action is excited to announce its newest series on Gender, IFIs and Gender Based Violence (GBV). Our GBV primer demonstrates that IFI policies and investments fail to address GBV as a human rights issue, ignore GBV among men and boys, and neglect to measure IFI impacts on GBV through investment monitoring and evaluation. In addition, our latest Gender Action Link, IFIs and Gender Based Violence, summarizes Gender Action's analysis of the extent to which IFIs address GBV in their policies and investments, finding that very few current IFI operations address GBV and comprise only a tiny fraction of IFI spending.
Case Studies: Gender, IFIs and Gender Based Violence
Check out the latest series on Gender, IFIs and Food Insecurity. These new publications highlight how IFI investments in agriculture, nutrition and rural development often exacerbate food insecurity in developing countries, and how women and girls disproportionately suffer harmful impacts.
Case Studies: Gender, IFIs and Food Insecurity
In 2012, the World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) will be devoted to gender for the first time. We encourage activists, campaigners, CSOs and researchers to join the discussion!
See our Newest Advocacy Tools
Gender Action has streamlined its qualitative indictors to form an "Essential Gender Analysis Checklist."
The checklist can be used to assess the quality of gender integration in International Finance Institution (IFI) investments, measuring critical issues such as the degree to which IFIs uphold gender rights, promote equal access to project benefits, and use gender disaggregated data. It also provides a gender analysis framework for civil society, government, and other entities' projects. Check it out!
Gender Action's Critique of the World Bank's Gender Road Map (2011-2013)
Gender Action's critique of the World Bank's "Applying Gender Action Plan Lessons: A Three Year Road Map for Gender Mainstreaming" (2011-2013) demonstrates how the Bank has continued to ignore civil society criticisms of its original Gender Action Plan (2007-2010). The "Road Map" fails to include a human rights framework, assumes a narrow approach to reproductive health and lacks robust, transparent gender-related data.
Gender Action's work in Haiti
As Haiti's devastation deepens nearly one year after its January 12, 2010 earthquake, the need for human rights-based gender interventions remains critical.
Haiti Gender Shadow Report: Ensuring Haitian Women's Participation and Leadership in All Stages of National Relief and Reconstruction
This final Haiti Gender Shadow Report (GSR), jointly prepared by many women's rights activists and edited by Gender Action, provides the crucial gender content that is missing from the Haitian government's World Bank-led Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), the operative blueprint for recovery that Haiti plans to implement.
Gender Action's new report on Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development Investments in post-earthquake Haiti
Gender Action's new report demonstrates that most World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) post-earthquake investments in Haiti represent lost opportunities to help Haiti's predominantly poor female farmers, prevent gender-based violence, and support gender-inclusive development efforts.
Letter to President Obama on IFIs, debt, and gender-based violence in Haiti
Gender Action recently sent a letter to President Obama to end gender-based violence and debt in Haiti through IFI intervention.
Within a month of sending our letter, the IMF cancelled most of Haiti's outstanding debt.
Gender and Debt Impacts of IFI Grants and Loans in Post-Earthquake Haiti
This factsheet summarizes findings from Gender Action's analysis of IFI post-earthquake assistance. It demonstrates first that IFI assistance fails to address Haiti's escalating gender-based violence, and second that although IFIs have cancelled most Haiti debt, IFI debt remains that impoverished Haiti cannot afford to repay. This factsheet is part of the Haiti Advocacy Working Group materials presented to Congress described below.
See more of our work on Haiti
Gender Action's IFI Watcher Toolbox!
Gender Toolkit for International Finance Watchers
Newly Updated February 2011
Gender Action provides a vital and user friendly toolkit
for civil society groups to incorporate gender perspectives
into their work on the IFIs or any other projects. All sections
contain electronic hyperlinks to a vast array of available
gender resources. Just click on an underlined word to be directed
to the specific tool you need!
Disponible en Español.
Speaking up for Gender: A Step-by-Step Guide to Holding IFIs Accountable
Diana Arango & Nicole Zarafonetis
Speaking Up for Gender is a user-friendly Guide providing grassroots groups and others affected by IFI projects with information, tips and guidelines for submitting a gender discrimination complaint to an IFI accountability mechanism.
Disponible en Español.
NEW GENDER ACTION LINKS!
We are linking up gender justice
groups and international finance-watchers! Gender Action Links
are brief, reader-friendly resources that critically connect
gender, international finance and other key development issues,
and provide case examples, resources and partnership opportunities.
ABOUT GENDER ACTION
Gender Action is the only organization dedicated to promoting
gender equality and women's rights in all International Financial
Institution (IFI) investments such as those of the World Bank.
With partners from around the globe we
• Track
and analyze IFI investments
• Do
advocacy to ensure IFI investments empower women and eliminate
violations against them
Download Gender Action’s NEWEST
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