Gender at World Bank: Extracting Lessons from Health, Education, Energy, Infrastructure, Agriculture and Rural Development Sectors

Abstract

Gender inequality, affecting the distribution of resources and economic opportunities remain pervasive around the world. In terms of employment opportunities, women for example, face severe discrimination in terms of access in the otherwise ‘free' labour market. It is estimated that globally 70% of the women are poor and they are paid less than their male counterpart for their work. In term of represent to the national parliament, only 17% seats are occupied by women overall world (UN 2010:x).

The World Bank as an organization has been in the forefront of organizing discussions and debates on important matters of development. On the issue of gender, the World Bank has been an active participant in raising concerns related to gender within mainstream theories of development. The proposed study seeks to examine as to how international organizations like the World Bank have responded to questions of gender. It examines a historical overview of the World Bank and its involvement with the incorporation of gender concerns in its lending programmes sectors like health, education, agriculture and rural development and infrastructure.

The present study has broadly three sections, the first section focuses on the World Bank and its organizational structure, its shift from reconstruction to development, the second section focuses on the World Bank and its engagement with gender and women's concerns and the third section focuses on the World Bank's work on gender in its various sectors. The data used for the study are drawn from both primary basically the World Bank's archive and documents and secondary sources like books, journal etc.