Gender mainstreaming
Financing for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women: Some Theoretical and Practical Issues from a Trade and Macroeconomic Policies Perspective
This paper argues that macroeconomic policies tend to ignore social policy, social protection and job creation, and critiques current reform agendas for not moving beyond poverty reduction to look at structural issues of inequality and economic injustice that reinforce old forms of poverty as well as create new inequalities.
Authors:
M. Williams
Publisher:
WomenWatch, UN, 2007
The international political economy is currently dominated by a wide range of reform agendas, including on aid, trade and debt. This paper argues that such macroeconomic policies tend to ignore social policy, social protection and job creation, because they: focus on external debt payments over the provision of essential services; encourage privatisation of service delivery instead of supporting State capacity to deliver them; liberalise trade at all costs; and strictly enforce fiscal austerity requirements impacting on State spending. To counter the negative impacts of these policies, discussion and action agendas should move beyond poverty reduction to look at structural issues of inequality and economic injustice that reinforce old forms of poverty as well as create new inequalities. Financing of gender equality and women's empowerment must focus attention on housing, sanitation, health care, education and skills training, with particular attention to unpaid work, the care economy, basic school (and early childhood), employment and enterprise development and the development of public infrastructure within communities. The paper makes recommendations for both broader macroeconomic policy domains and specific suggestions for trade policy and reform, including that:
:- Each country develops a framework for engendering its trade related capacity building and Aid for trade programs.
:- Trade negotiation mandates should proactively include gender sensitive frameworks for sectoral areas under negotiation.
:- Gender sensitive measures should be implemented to deal with the negative outcomes of trade reform underlying the implementation of trade agreements.
