Devex @ World Bank-IMF: The World Bank's new gender strategy

The World Bank Group released its new Gender Strategy earlier this year with three key aims: ending gender-based violence, expanding economic opportunities, and engaging more women as leaders. But how will the bank achieve these lofty aims? Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger sits down with the bank’s Global Director for Gender Hana Brixi for our latest podcast to learn about how this new plan will be implemented and what exactly is changing. “The World Bank Group is at a very historic moment at the time. It is the first time ever to have a strategy for the World Bank Group to engage with such a strong ambition, and also a commitment to engage differently for better gender equality and really to accelerate progress,” Brixi tells Adva. The “full engagement of women” is key to ending poverty, and without ending gender-based violence that will be impossible, she adds. It’s less about new programs or specific new funding but integrating stronger emphasis on gender throughout everything the World Bank does. It will also mean making the case to countries about why they should address gender issues as a matter of economic policy. Not everyone is convinced about all aspects of the strategy. Mary Borrowman, a policy fellow in the Gender Equality and Inclusion program at the Center for Global Development, shares her concerns about data, accountability, funding and a lack of country-level targets. “I think that there are some really positive things. I think there are some kind of missed opportunities, and I think there are some areas where I'm not sure if the bank's playing, perhaps, to its comparative advantage in areas of the most impact,” she says. Another missed opportunity in her eyes? The lack of specific gender-based targets in the policy package for the upcoming International Development Association replenishment, IDA21. “I think they’re really rolling the dice and it’s a big risk, in terms of not having financing for gender, not having accountability” she says.