Update #8 | Spring 2010

Gender Action has never seen its work take on greater importance than right now. The global recession and climate change crises, mainly caused by inadequately regulated corporations based in rich countries, have deepened poverty worldwide. The International Financial Institutions (IFIs), claim, like always, that they will rescue the poor, but their actual beneficiaries are corporations which win IFI investment contracts. Meanwhile, rich countries are massively increasing their grants to the IFIs to address the fallout of the recession, climate change, and Haiti’s earthquake catastrophe of historic proportions. Gender Action is working to ensure that IFI investments in poor countries, which depend on taxpayer funding, empower women and girls, rather than negatively impact them.

World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings: Workshop

During the World Bank and International Monetary Fund 2010 Spring Meetings in Washington DC, Gender Action co-sponsored an important external civil society discussion on: “World Bank, Climate Change and Climate Finance.” This April 22 discussion featured speakers from Brazil, South Africa and other countries. The workshop convened on the heels of the World Bank approval of a nearly $4 billion loan to the South African government for a massive coal mine expected to inflict harmful environmental and societal, including gender, impacts. Ironically, at the same time that the World Bank is financing new greenhouse gas-generating coal mines in developing countries, the World Bank is custodian of the multilateral Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) meant to assist these countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In Gender Action’s 2009 publication, “Doubling the Damage: World Bank Climate Investment Funds Undermine Climate and Gender Justice”, we demonstrated that the Bank’s CIF framework neglects to address gender concerns.

Additionally, Gender Action actively participated in numerous gatherings during the Spring Meetings, conferring with fellow IFI watcher civil society organizations to strategize about new ways to combine our voices for positive impacts in holding the IFIs accountable.

"HIV/AIDS and Gender Justice: Funding the Fight"

Gender Action ended 2009 by co-hosting an insightful event on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2009. We joined with The National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) and the Embassy of Zambia in presenting a workshop: "HIV/AIDS and Gender Justice: Funding the Fight." Gender Action organized the event in its role as NCWO Global Task Force Chair. Panelists included Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of Global AIDS Alliance who lived in Zambia for many years; Regina Dumba, Gender Action Board member who founded an umbrella organization of women’s groups in Zimbabwe; and Elaine Zuckerman. Elaine spoke on Multilateral Development Banks' Spending on HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health.

“The IMF and Women”

At the National Council of Women’s Organization (NCWO) bimonthly November meeting--held shortly after Elaine Zuckerman assumed NCWO’s Global Task Force Chair--Elaine presented on the US government’s recent massive $106 billion appropriation to the IMF to address the global financial and economic crises. She explained that Congress’s funding required the IMF to take measures to prevent further saddling of debt upon the world’s least developed countries, and to permit these countries to undertake stimulus spending during recessions, rather than slash social programs assisting the poor, of whom women and children constitute a majority. Congress also called for greater IMF transparency. President Obama, however, attached a signing statement to the bill refusing IMF reforms, resulting in a de facto blank check for the IMF.

Publications: Examining Impacts, Empowering Women

Gender Action published our fourth “Gender Action Link”, Gender, the IFIs and Debt, which highlights how illegitimate International Financial Institution (IFI) debt exacerbates the feminization of poverty and undermines gender equality. The Link specifically examines typical gender impacts of IFI loan conditions on female workers, such as an increase in the amount of care-work for women and the exclusion of poor women and girls from essential health services, both caused by countries canceling social programs in order to repay IFI debt. The Link presents the case of Malawi, where World Bank and IMF loan and debt conditions had disproportionately affected women throughout the country. Additionally, the Link provides resources and suggestions on what advocacy must be done to cancel illegitimate IFI debt which continuously harms low-income countries.

Gender Action also published “Speaking up for Gender: A Step-by-Step Guide to Holding IFIs Accountable”. This user-friendly guide provides grassroots groups and others affected by IFI projects with information, tips and guidelines for submitting a gender discrimination complaint to an IFI accountability mechanism. It follows up on our joint Center for International Environmental Law-Gender Action publication, “Gender Justice: A Citizen’s Guide to Gender Accountability at International Financial Institutions”, which laid the legal basis for citizens to take gender discrimination complaints to IFI accountability mechanisms. Despite having gender policies, IFIs continue to finance projects that often ignore gender inequalities and increase poverty, sex work, violence, and HIV/AIDS among women and girls.

Speaking Up for Gender encourages affected communities to hold IFIs accountable for gender impacts of their investments through taking gender discrimination complaints to IFI accountability mechanisms. It provides basic information on how and when to submit a claim to each IFI accountability mechanism.

Haiti: IFIs in Charge of Aid, Warnings to Heed

Elaine published a blog essay addressing the most tragic and urgent example of where IFIs will be tasked, in Haiti. “To Help Haiti, Upend Aid Habits, and Focus on its Women,” published on the websites of both the Association for Women’s Rights in Development and the Center for Economic and Policy Research in February 2010, inaugurated Gender Action’s lead civil society role in holding IFIs accountable for the billions of dollars they will spend in post-earthquake Haiti over the next decade.

The essay underlined how over $5 billion in past official donor aid often harmed poor Haitian men and women. It recommended strings-free grant aid without harmful IFI conditions and debt obligations. It also urged women’s leadership in using aid since Haitian women are community and household pillars who will utilize aid most effectively.

Following this blog essay, Gender Action has been working in an ad hoc civil society Haiti Advocacy Working Group where it is leading a committee on Haiti and the IFIs. Gender Action is currently editing a gender shadow report, a gender sensitive response by Haitian and global women’s groups to the remarkably gender-insensitive official Haitian Post-Disaster Needs Assessment.

In the Field:
Central America

Gender Action staff just returned from El Salvador where they shared information on how to integrate gender into IFI advocacy. Diana Arango and Nicole Zarafonetis of Gender Action held a capacity building workshop in May 2010 with ten women’s rights and IFI watcher group participants from five countries in the region: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Diana and Nicole provided partner groups with Gender Action’s tools on how to analyze IFI investments for gender and on how individual women and men and groups can take gender discrimination complaints to IFI accountability mechanisms.

Embracing New Media

This spring, Gender Action launched a process to overhaul our communications, especially online. Our new communications assistant, Lisa Vitale, began working with Board Chair Joel Lawson to set Gender Action on a path to more dynamic communications. Our new Facebook page puts Gender Action into the social media explosion, and a three-phase overhaul of our website has begun.

New People, New Passions

Lisa Vitale joins us as Executive & Communications Assistant and Cameroonian Judge Esther Ayuk joins us as Associate. Check out their bios here!

Regina Dumba and Joel Lawson recently joined our Board; with Joel joining as the newly-elected Chair.

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