Gender equality: closing the resource & policy gaps

Source: NGLS
Barbara Adams, Marina Durano and Genoveva Tisheva

Women’s organizations and groups worldwide celebrated the UN General Assembly resolution, adopted on 2 July 2010, to establish the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, or UN Women. This new entity will be headed by an Under-Secretary-General (Ms. Michelle Bachelet) and will consolidate and combine into one the four existing gender-specific entities, increase operational capacity at the country level and have greater authority and resources to strengthen women’s empowerment and advancement (see NGLS Roundup 138).

This resolution would not have happened without the strong advocacy and determined commitment of women’s movements and other civil society organizations over the last four years, spearheaded through the GEAR Campaign. Charlotte Bunch, a founding member of the Campaign, stated: “We have high expectations for this new agency – the women’s groups and other social justice, human rights and development organizations that played a pivotal role in this effort must now work to ensure that the new body has the human and financial resources necessary to succeed.”

In bringing together the normative and standard-setting side of the UN system with the operational or development side, UN Women will depend upon two different resource pools: namely, assessed and voluntary contributions. The latter will present a challenge at a time when donors seem to be prioritizing bilateral over multilateral development initiatives and rebalancing the proportion of official development assistance that goes to each; at the same time ODA budgets overall are declining due to the slowdown. However, it is a challenge that must be taken up if the gains for gender equality are to be expanded, particularly to low income women.

A 2006 study of the costs of achieving Millennium Development Goal 3 – to promote gender equality and empower women- has estimated these to be on average between 35% and 52% of the total costs for achieving the eight MDGs (or US$37-$57 per capita annually between 2005 and 2015), with low-income countries requiring external resources of about US$13 billion annually between 2005 and 2010, after which estimates should be revised (1). However, reallocating resources from existing MDG budgets would place MDG 3 in competition with the other Goals, all of which affect gender equality. Instead, spending on each of the Goals should be mutually reinforcing, so that progress towards one contributes to progress towards the others.

For this to happen, additional resources need to be mobilized, externally as well as internally. Goal 8 calls for strong partnerships for development, with more and more effective aid, more equitable trade, debt relief, affordable medicines and technology transfer. The MDG Gap Task Force Report 2010 shows serious shortfalls on all of these, including an estimated aid gap of US$20 billion for 2010; an estimated US$35 billion each year is needed to reach the MDGs by 2015. To meet the Goals, including gender equality, rich countries need to honour their Goal 8 commitments, including increasing aid to 0.7% of gross domestic product (GDP). Governments need to increase revenues through more equitable and efficient tax policies and reallocate resources to create decent work, provide the infrastructure and ensure the provision of public services that can meet gender equality goals. This means they need to confront the “policy gap” between gender justice and macroeconomics.

The policy gap

The financial and economic crisis has challenged not only the resources for development but also the policies to make it inclusive and sustainable. As governments are pressed to reduce debt and balance their budgets – in order to quell market fears among other things – a major target for reductions is social service provision, including education and health. This in turn threatens to reverse gender equality gains, not only because the services which women particularly depend upon will become more limited and more expensive to access, but also because the cuts will increase the amount of unpaid labour that women take on in order to make up for these reductions. This increased reliance on what is known as the “care economy” is based on the incorrect assumption that women are by nature dedicated to care and that they have the time, energy and capacity to provide it.

At the same time, such measures add to women’s job losses, since it is in the public sector that women’s employment is most concentrated, particularly in developing countries. The argument for spending cuts posits that if governments cut spending on the public sector, and instead subsidize private sector initiatives, the private sector will step up to provide these services, thereby creating jobs for both men and women. This assumes not only sustained demand, despite the loss of household income and imposition of new fees, but also that women’s earnings are less important to household income than men’s earnings. Policy responses to the economic crisis are in many cases perpetuating these outdated and discredited assumptions, further disadvantaging women and widening the policy gap.

Gender and social equality advocates have argued that developing country governments, which had no part in causing this crisis, must be allowed the policy space to respond to it by expanding fiscal policy, primarily in order to create new jobs and protect social spending. International lending institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, have indicated a greater willingness to support more flexible fiscal policies and continued social spending, at least in some cases.

Therefore, what is most urgently needed is concerted efforts by civil society, including women’s organizations, to make sure their governments take that space and close the policy gap. To do so they need to: 1) expand fiscal policy to spur employment growth by protecting and expanding women’s public sector jobs and creating private sector incentives to expand decent work for women; and 2) establish and finance a universal social protection floor that will ensure that all individuals have access to essential social services.

One of the first challenges for UN Women is to work with UN, government and women and civil society partners to start to address the “policy gap” between macroeconomic policies and gender justice. Can it provide the leadership needed for social and gender equality advocates – inside and outside of government – to begin to close this gap?

 

This article draws on an article for Social Watch on the challenges for gender equality by Genoveva Tisheva (Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation) and Barbara Adams (Global Policy Forum); an interview with Barbara Adams by the Global Policy Forum; and a contribution on financing gender equality by Marina Durano (Development Alternatives for a New Era (DAWN).

This article is part of the NGLS Roundup 139, entitled "Closing the Gaps: Gender Equality and Development Effectiveness" released on the eve of the MDG Summit in New York, September 2010. 

 

--------------

Notes

1 Caren Grown et al., The Financial Requirements of Achieving Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, 2006.