Gender Analysis for the PRSP and MDGs Monitoring Gulnara Febres, WBI

1. Gender Analysis for the PRSP and MDGs Monitoring Gulnara Febres, WBI Poverty Analysis Workshop, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, September 17-21, 2007

2. Gender Issues in the Balkan Countries’ PRSPs Issues: • MDG indicators: gender-responsive? • To evaluate gender sensitivity of the Balkan countries’ PRSPs • To identify existing gaps in gender-sensitive approach • Potential opportunities

3. Why to Address Gender? • Gender based inequalities slow economic growth and poverty reduction, and tend to be most extreme in the lowest income countries and poorest HHs • Failure to conduct poverty diagnosis in a gender-responsive manner runs the risk of ignoring important avenues to poverty reduction.

4. What is Gender Equality? Gender equality means equal access to the “opportunities that allow people to pursue a life of their own choosing”— that is, gender equality in rights, resources, and voice (World Bank 2006, WDR).

5. What is Gender Equality? • Equality of rights refers to equality under the law • Equality of resources refers to equality of opportunity, including equality of access to human capital investments and other productive resources and to markets. • Equality of voice captures the ability to influence and contribute to the political and development processes.

6. Key Elements of Gender Equality Gender equality in rights, resources, and voice Leveling the field of opportunities Household Household resource and task allocations, fertility decisions Economy & Markets Access to land, financial services, labor markets, technology Society Civic and political participation Domains of choices, domains for policy Aggregate economic performance (poverty reduction, growth)

7. Framework : Key Elements of Gender Equality Ties together key elements of gender equality* • In the household: increased gender equality between men and women changes the allocation of HH expenditures, resulting in a larger share of resources devoted to children’s education and health. • In the market, gender inequality is reflected in unequal access to land, credit, and labor markets, and in significantly less access to new production technologies. • In society, gender inequality is expressed as restrictions to women’s participation in civic and political life. • In addition to improving individuals’ lives, increased gender equality can contribute to better aggregate economic performance. *Source – WB Global Monitoring Report 2007

8. Pathways for Gender Equality • There are several pathways through which gender equality in rights, resources, and voice stimulate productivity, earnings, and better child development outcomes, thus generating better development outcomes in an economy.

9. Gender equality ↔ growth? Increased gender equality in households, markets, society Women have better access to markets Women have better education and health Mothers have greater control over decision- making in households Increased labor force participation by women, productivity, and earnings Improved well-being for children Income/consumption expenditure Differential savings rate Better health and educational attainment & greater productivity as adults Current poverty reduction and economic growth Future poverty reduction and economic growth

10. Pathways for Poverty Reduction Women’s LF Participation, Productivity, and Earnings: • Working women contribute to HH income and expenditure. In poor HH, such contributions can be crucial for keeping the HH out of poverty; • this is the reason to increase access to education, markets (labor, land, credit), and technology. • This increased access contributes to: • current poverty reduction through higher consumption • future poverty reduction through the impact on children’s accumulation of human capital and the potential impact on aggregate saving

11. Constraints to women’s LF participation • Reproductive role (KR-24.8% of women are kept at home due to care for children, elderly, sick or housekeeping vs. 1.5% of men) • Time burden of domestic tasks (Uganda, Zambia, Burkina Faso – time for collecting fire wood range from 125 to 664 hours per year)

12. Disincentives to women’s LF participation • Current effect: Wage gaps and discrimination against women in labor markets persuades women to stay home. • Future effect: The wage loss/segregation into low-paying jobs lead to underinvestment in girls education.

13. “Inequality trap”? • Land: in LAC and SSA, 70-90% of land is owned by men. • When women have access to land, they have less tenure rights. SSA-permanent land rights are held by men • Women are less likely to apply for loans as they do not have assets to offer as collateral. • Cumulative disadvantages (ethnicity, race, location and disability)

14. Pathways for Poverty Reduction Factors forChildren’s Well-Being • Women’s education, health • Mothers’ greater control over resources more resources allocated to food and to children’s health and education. better child dev-t in the presentintergenerational transmission of earnings capacityprospects for future poverty reduction

15. MDG 3 MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women • Target 10: Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education • Target 11: Eliminate gender disparity in elected organs and decision making positions

16. MDG3 Effect on Other MDGs Gender equality and women’s empowerment are channels to attaining other MDGs — • universal primary education (MDG2), • lower under-five mortality (MDG4), • improved maternal health (MDG5),and • lower likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS (MDG6).

17. Official Indicators for MDG3

18. Official Indicators for MDG3 • Show progress and responsiveness of girls’ school enrollments to gender informed policy interventions (stipends, conditional cash transfers, etc). • But gender gaps remain: of the 137 mln. illiterate youths in the world, 63% were female (UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2005) • The female-to-male literacy ratio was lowest in SSA, MENA, and SA (in 25 countries, fewer than 80 literate women to 100 literate men). In Yemen and Afghanistan – 36 to 100 respectively.

19. Limitations of the Official MDG3 Indicators • Partially measure gender equality • Do not monitor key elements of gender equality (health outcomes and disparities in access to productive resources such as land, credit, and technology) • Inadequate measurement of empowerment • National-level indicators can veil inequalities between particular subgroups

20. The unfinished education agenda: Must attend to: • Fragile states and countries unlikely to meet the enrollment target—of the 22 countries unlikely to achieve the target even by 2015, 16 countries are in SSA, nine of which are fragile states. • Disadvantaged and excluded groups within countries, seenwhen statistics are disaggregated by income, race, ethnicity, disability and rural-urban residence. • Levels of enrollment (especially secondary), not just gender parity ratios. • Gender disparities in the transition from one level of education to the next.

21. Official MDG indicators conceal inequalities within countries • I. 1. Ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education – • say nothing about educational outcomes (Completion? Getting a job?) Gaps b/w boys and girls completion rates remain high in SSA and SA (90% to 83% and 67% to 57% respectively) • Changes in the indicators based on parity ratios are difficult to interpret. (Increases in female-to-male ratios can result from a fall in male rates with female rates remaining constant) • Measure the status of women relative to men, rather than whether women are empowered (whether they have the ability to exercise options, choice, and control)

22. Where are the limitations? • I 2. Share of women in non/agric. wage employment • Is not taking into account the circumstances of each country – such as the share of n/a employment as a percentage of total employment. • Is of limited use for low-income countries where wage employment is not a main source of jobs. • Does not capture the dimensions of job quality/ability of women to work for pay (economic empowerment) • Does not quantify barriers inhibiting women from participating in a LF. • Does not capture the ability of women to control their fertility • I 3. Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments • Political participation is captured only at the national level, not at provincial or local levels,

23. Recommended additional indicators for MDG3**

24. Additional indicators: value added? • Meet 3 criteria: • data availability (wide country coverage), • strong link to poverty reduction, • and amenability to policy intervention • School completion rate is measured (MDG2), under five mortality (MDG4). A low-cost step forward – just sex-disaggregate the data. • Contraceptive prevalence is measured (MDG6), - just find % of use of modern contraceptives.

25. Primary School Completion Rates

26. Prospective MDG 3 Indicators***

27. Data needs on gender equality: • The proposed complementary indicators do not remedy all the shortcomings of the official MDG3 indicators. Data collection efforts must be scaled up. • Inter-agency Expert Group on Gender Statistics was formed in December 2006 by the initiative of UNSD, WB and UNFPA. • 3 Task Forces were formed: (TF on VAW, TF on GS training, TF on Time Use Surveys).

28. Instruments: To advance women’s rights, resources, and voice through: • Laws • Institutions • Policies (for example, gender-informed budget)

29. Laws • The difference between high and low performer countries in not in the laws themselves, but in the mechanisms to implement them. Formula : institutions to enforce good laws (A) + sex-disaggregated statistics (B) + associated budget allocations (C) Successful gender policies

30. Institutions • Most countries now have separate gov-t agencies to promote gender equality, some are elevated to ministerial status (Cambodia Ministry of Women’s Affairs). • “National Women’s Machineries” • Integration of gender concerns in donor agencies (for example: WB Gender Action Plan 2007-2009, UNDP Gender Plan) • Alliances between the gov-t and advocacy organizations, NGOs and civil society

31. Policies • Moving beyond gender-targeted interventions to full and sustained gender mainstreaming in the budget process • Good practice example: Moldova’s Gender Equality Law of Feb.2006 • Specifies the mandates & responsibilities of public institutions with a role of enforcement; • Authorizes public budget funding for these agencies; • Establishes penalties and reparations for violations of the law.

32. Gender-informed budget tools: • Gender-disaggregated beneficiary assessments • Public-expenditure benefit incidence analysis • Tax incidence analysis • Good practice example, Chile: • has included gender as a cross-cutting theme in a performance-based national budget, • is using incentives (salary bonuses) for public sector staff as a tool to achieve measurable results.

33. Business case for investing in MDG3? • Progress toward attaining MDG3 should have multiplier effects and spur progress to other MDGs. • There can be significant advancement in gender equality when there is a will. • Laws, institutions and policies matter. • Gender mainstreaming will work with high level leadership as well as technical and budgetary resources. It is not cost free.

34. Part 2. Gender in the Balkan Countries PRSPs • Five Balkan PRSPs (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYROM, Montenegro, Serbia) were reviewed to: • Examine the degree to which gender issues were included: • In the 4 core PRSP elements (diagnosis, public actions, monitoring, and consultative process); • In the 8 sectoral areas (health, education, labor markets, agriculture, safety nets, infrastructure, governance and financial services)

35. Rating system • Rating system used in the review of core PRSP elements: “0”= no mention of gender issues “1”= brief mention of gender issues “2”= gender issues treated with some elaboration • Scores averaged for each core element

36. Average Scores by Core PRSP Component:

37. Coverage of Gender Issues in Core Elements of PRSP in the Balkan countries Qualitative Rating: 0- No mention of gender, 1 – Brief mention of gender issues, 2 – Gender issues treated with some elaboration

38. Gender Issues in Core Elements of PRSP by Country in the Balkan region Qualitative Rating: 0- No mention of gender, 1 – Brief mention of gender issues, 2 – Gender issues treated with some elaboration

39. Coverage of Gender Issues in Sectoral Areas in the Balkan countries Qualitative Rating: 0- No mention of gender, 1 – Brief mention of gender issues, 2 – Gender issues treated with some elaboration

40. Results of the Review: • Notable feature: differences in average scores across core elements • General problem (not unique to the treatment of gender issues): disconnect and absence of a logical flow from: diagnosis => public actions =>monitoring • Public actions : • did not correspond to the majority of the problems identified in diagnosis • often identified without any plans for monitoring outputs or impacts

41. Western Balkans – specific challenges: • Conflict legacy in most of the Balkan countries • Political and institutional systems are relatively new. State-building is still underway. • Human Rights Violations (refugees, internally displaced persons, Roma) • High Rates of Unemployment, especially of the young (BiH, Albania, Macedonia) • Grey economy • Inadequate Social Assistance System • Slow Implementation of Reforms • Quality of Education (Albania, Macedonia) • Corruption • Emigration

42. Western Balkans - specific challenges (2) • Data on poverty remains poorand is not gender-disaggregated • Poor governance environment • Both, government and civil society have faced difficulties in meeting the requirement for a participatory PRSP

43. Trends in Gender Profile of the Balkan Region • Female employment as a percent of total number of employed has declined almost twice over the last decade – BiH, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia. • Women account for only 35% of the employed in BiH, which is the lowest proportion of women in the total labor force of any country in Southeastern Europe.

44. Trends in Gender Profile of the Balkan Region • Gender disparities in access to some parts of the labor market : women are disproportionately represented in lower paying social sector jobs • Gender discrimination in employment in both private and public sector (women are the first to be fired during restructuring, fewer opportunities for promotion, wage gaps) (BiH) • Low percentage of women in decision-making positions (BiH – 2.4%, Albania) • Male depopulation (Albania, Macedonia) due to out-migration of male population

45. Trends in Gender Profile of the Balkan Region • Large gender disparities in access to land, capital and credits • Maternal mortality decreased over the past decade but still remains high (Albania – 22 per 100,000 live births) • Gender disparities at all levels of education enrollment (Albania, Macedonia) • Human trafficking (Albania, BiH)

46. “Country Specific” Trends in the Balkan Gender Profiles • “Missing young women” in BiH (in the labor market the age group of females from 19-29 with higher education) is very low due to out- migration. (The same trend is increasing in Albania and Macedonia) • About 92,000 young people left BiH between January 1996 and March 2001, and surveys show that 62% of the young would emigrate if they had the opportunity.

47. “Country Specific” Trends in the Balkan Gender Profiles • In Albania, maternal mortality rate is the highest in SEE (22,7 per 100,000 live births). To compare, in BiH – 5, Montenegro - 2 per 100,000 live births • Maternal mortality is even 5-6 times higher in rural areas in Albania than the national average

48. “Country Specific” Trends in the Balkan Gender Profiles Albania has the largest in the Balkans gender gap in: • enrollment rates (ratio of girls to boys in primary education – 0.94), • literacy (ratio of literate women to men – 90 in urban areas, 87 - in rural), and • infant mortality rates (17.4 per 1,000 live births)

49. “Country Specific” Trends in the Balkan Gender Profiles • In BiH, the most vulnerable categories of women are: • Women refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) • Single mothers • Elderly women • Roma women • Victims of violence • Uneducated and unemployed women • Women in returnee households (the worst position of all)

50. Balkan Countries PRSPs: Gender-Sensitive? • The major problem: gender is not addressed as a cross-cutting issue in PRSPs(except BiH), rather the discussion of gender is isolated to some specific sectors • In most cases, PRSP emphasizes market economy (paid labor/male dominated) at the expense of the HH economy (unpaid labor/female dominated).