WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2012:

GENDER EQUALITY AND

DEVELOPMENT
GENDER & MONITORING AND EVALUATION
DECEMBER 14 , 2011

The Presentation Outline

Background to the WDR

Key Issues Raised: National and International

Relevance of Issues for Ghana

Next Steps Proposed for addressing Gender Equality

challenges
Conclusion

The Basic Argument of the WDR

This year's World Development Report: Gender

Equality and Development argues that: Gender

equality is a core development objective in
its own right. It is also smart economics.
Greater gender equality can enhance
productivity, improve development
outcomes for the next generation, and make
institutions more representative.

Key Gender Equality (GE) Issues

The Report focuses on four priority areas :
(i) Reducing excess female mortality and closing

education gaps where they remain,

(ii) Improving access to economic opportunities for
women
(iii) Increasing women's voice and agency in the
household and in society and
(iv) Limiting the reproduction of gender inequality
across generations.

Some Achievements
Educational enrollment: Gender gaps in primary

education have closed in almost all countries. In

secondary education, girls now outnumber boys in
secondary schools in 45 countries and there are more
young women than men in universities in 60 countries.
Life expectancy: Since 1980, women are living longer
than men in all parts of the world and, in low-income
countries, women now live 20 years longer on average
than they did in 1960.
Labor force participation: Over half a billion women
have joined the worlds labor force over the last 30 years
as womens participation in paid work has risen in most
of the developing world.

Remaining Challenges
but other gaps persist even in rich countries

Excess deaths of girls and women:

Females are more likely to die, relative to males, in many low and middle income
countries than their counterparts in rich countries. And this number is growing in
Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in childhood and the reproductive years and in the
countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Disparities in girls schooling:

Despite the overall progress, primary and secondary school enrollments for girls
remain much lower than for boys for disadvantaged populations in many Sub
Saharan countries and some parts of South Asia.

Challenges Contd
Unequal access to economic opportunities:
Women are more likely than men to work as unpaid family laborers or in
the informal sector, to farm smaller plots and less profitable crops than
men, or operate in smaller firms and less profitable sectors. And as a
result, women everywhere tend to earn less than men.
Differences in voice in households and in society:
In many countries, womenespecially poor womenhave less say over
decisions and less control over resources in their households. And in
most countries, women participate less in formal politics than men and
are under-represented in its upper echelons.

Priorities for domestic

policy action
Addressing excess deaths of girls and women and eliminating

gender disadvantage in education where these remain

entrenched.

Closing differences in access to economic opportunities and

the ensuing earnings and productivity gaps between women

and men.

Shrinking gender differences in voice within households and

societies.

Limiting the reproduction of gender inequality across

generations.

Priorities for domestic

policy action contd
Policy makers will need to prioritize these constraints and address

them simultaneously or sequentially.

(1) To reduce excess deaths of girls and women policy action

to improve the delivery of services of clean water, sanitation,
and maternal care is of primary importance.
(2) To shrink persisting educational gaps, policies need to
improve access for girls and young women when poverty,
ethnicity, or geography excludes them, and to reach boys
where gender disadvantages have reversed. Cash transfers
conditioned on school attendance are often effective in
reaching these groups.

Priorities Contd
(3) To narrow disparities between women and men in
earnings and productivity, a combination of policies is needed
to address the various constraints that affect womens access to
economic opportunities. These include
Lifting time constraints, by providing child care and improving

infrastructure (water and sanitation facilities).

Improve womens access to productive resources, especially to land

by granting joint land titles

Tackle information problems and institutional biases that work

against women. These include the use of quotas or job placement

programs

Priorities Contd
(4) To diminish gender differences in household
and societal voice, policies need to:
address the combined influence of social norms and
beliefs, womens access to economic opportunities, the
legal framework, and womens education and skills.
To equalize voice within households ,measures that
increase womens control over household resources and
laws that enhance the ability of women to accumulate
assets, especially by strengthening their property rights,
are of particular importance.

Priorities Contd
To increase womens voice in society, policies should

include quotas on political representation and

measures to foster and train future women leaders
and involve women more in groups such as trade
unions and professional associations.

Priorities contd
(5) To limit the reproduction of gender
inequality across generations interventions,
need to focus on:
Building human and social capital such as cash
transfer programs, and improving information about
returns to education and health education programs
Facilitating the transition from school to work with
job and life skills training programs
Exposure to role models such as woman political
leaders who challenge prevailing social norms.

The role of the

international community
With educational gender gaps, this will require adjusting

current support, such as ensuring that the Education for All

Fast Track Initiative reaches disadvantaged girls and boys,
or sustaining existing efforts, as with partnerships focused on
adolescent girls.

A combination of more funding, coordinated efforts to foster

innovation and learning, and more effective partnerships.

The funding should be directed particularly to supporting the

poorest countries in reducing excess deaths of girls and

women (through investments in clean water and sanitation
and maternal health services) and removing persistent gender
gaps in education.

Partnerships
The partnerships should extend beyond governments

and development agencies to include the private

sector, civil society organizations, and academic
institutions in developing and rich countries
More support is needed especially to improve the
availability of gender disaggregated data and to
foster more systematic evaluation of mechanisms to
improve womens access to markets, services, and
justice.

Relevance of the GE issues for Ghana

There is no doubt that these issues are very relevant

to Ghana.
At the national level, Government efforts have been
geared towards addressing some of these relevant
facts first as a national commitment and second as
Governments commitment to international and
sub-regional protocols through creation of
institutions, action steps in programming,
budgeting, policy and legal support.

Relevance Contd
Development partners have also contributed to addressing

some of these factual cases of gender inequality through

programmes, projects and budgetary support.

For the World Bank, the portfolio supports the educational

and health system with a focus to ensuring contribution

toward addressing these challenges within the broad context
of government programs and the MDGs.

Similar interventions have been in the water, sanitation and

other services including local governance administration

through interventions to District Assemblies.

Proposed Next Steps

In spite of these efforts we all know that gaps exists

at different levels politically, socially, institutionally,

economically.
Gaps also exist at both policy and programme levels
There is also the need for legal backing for some
existing policies and programmes to ensure
enforcement that will lead to results-based outcomes
It might also be important for some policy and
program review to factor recommended actions from
the WDR into implementation

Next Steps Contd

In order to address these and apply identified recommendations which

have been captured in different studies and reports especially the WDR,
there is the need for accurate and reliable data on facts and figures.

This means that programmes and projects should ensure that there are

gender sensitive indicators (and baseline information) which should be

monitored

There is the need to collect, analyze and include analysis into and

management decisions for political action, and social and economic

consideration.

This means record keeping and reporting on programs and project

outcomes is fundamental to the process of finding a comprehensive way

towards addressing these issues.

All of these mean that.

Conclusion
All stakeholders have a role to play: Government,

development partners, civil society, academia,

research institutions, the media, political parties and
the ordinary Ghanaian.
Given the fact that the challenges are multifaceted,
gender equality will be achieved if there is concerted,
consistent and sustainable efforts by all.

FINALLY..