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The World Bank: in the vanguardof an infrastructure boomBY NANCY ALEXANDER

At the World Bank, a significantincrease in commitment to genderequality came with its 2007-10 GenderAction Plan that centred on the slogan“gender equality as smart economics”,shifting its gender equality work froma focus on women’s ‘human capital’,i.e. education and health, to economicgrowth and poverty alleviation, andallocated resources to accomplish thisreorientation. As a result, staff in 2013reported that 98 per cent of projectappraisals considered gender issues,translating into lending of almost $31billion. When reorganising in 2014, theBank declared gender as one of four‘cross-cutting solution areas’. Theseare clearly reasons for feminists totake a closer look.

Tradition of feminist critique

The ways in which the World Bankhistorically incorporated concerns overgender inequality have generatedextensive feminist critiques. The Banktended to revert to a focus on womenwith resonances in the Women inDevelopment approach (WID) of the1980s, failing to assimilate gendertheory and leading it to argue fromthe starting assumption of animagined female difference. Itconstructed women as strategicallyrational and entrepreneurial on theone hand, or as marginalised,vulnerable, and poor, on the other.

There was a disregard forintersectional status categories thatdifferentiate women by class, race,ethnicity, or ability, together with asilence about men and a tendency tonaturalise heteronormativeunderstandings of partnership and atraditional understanding of thefamily. Another consequence was thedeafening silence in the Bank’s genderresearch regarding macroeconomicfundamentals, financial crises, andstructural adjustment. These trendsneed to be understood in the contextof the Bank’s reliance on amethodological individualism thatcannot account for the diversity ofneeds and interests arising fromdifferent social positions.

This truncated embracing of gender ininstitutions like the IMF and WorldBank has been characterised as aneoliberalisation of feminism,entailing the translation of feministideas into a common sense thatfavours the commodification ofnonmarket values and processes, theprivatisation of public goods, thecasting of human endeavour inentrepreneurial terms, and theconstruction of subjectivities that lendthemselves to being governed throughmarkets and incentives.

However, the neoliberalisation offeminism is not simply a matter of co-optation. Scholars have argued that

For many years, feminists have observed a tendency for commitmentsto gender equality to ‘evaporate’ in development bureaucracies. Whilepublic statements have been made pledging to make the advancementof gender equality a goal, they have translated into practice only withdifficulty. My analysis argues that the World Bank’s recent approach togender equality constitutes an attempt at establishing a consensus overthe regulation of the economy; a tempered version of neoliberalism thatcarries a feminist face.

October 2018

The World Bank’s role in crafting a neoliberalhegemony with a feminist face

by Elisabeth Prügl, the Graduate Institute ofInternational and Development Studies,Geneva

Elisabeth Prügl isProfessor of InternationalRelations at the GraduateInstitute of Internationaland Development Studiesin Geneva, where shedirects the Institute’sGender Centre. Herresearch focuses ongender in internationalgovernance, most recentlyon gender experts andgender expertise. Shedirects two internationalresearch consortia thatwork on gender and landgrabs in Cambodia andGhana, and on gender andconflict in Indonesia andNigeria. She is a memberof the academic networkof the Women’sInternational League forPeace and Freedom(WILPF).

neoliberal projects entailcontradictions and have observed adiverse range of outcomes in suchprojects that suggest thatneoliberalism may contain openingsfor ‘progressive’ agendas. In asimilar vein, the Bank’s genderdiscourse may entail contradictionsas well as openings for feministagendas. By analysing 34 Bankpublications since 2001 (the Bank’sgender work) that focus on gender invarious ways, I aimed to probe forsuch openings.

Making the ‘win-win’ case

Faced with feminist critiques of theBank’s tendency to definedevelopment as market-basedgrowth, the Bank aimed to defenditself by arguing that developmentadvancing gender equality isintuitively evident in the fact thatricher countries are typically moregender-equal than poorer countries.But detailed evidence on theconnection between growth andgender equality proved scarce.Despite the Bank investing inanalytical work to build the businesscase for gender equality, itsdevelopment economists were notable to convincingly show thateconomic growth is either good orbad for gender equality. Accordingto the development economists inthe Bank’s gender unit, “establishingan empirical relationship betweengender equality and povertyreduction and growth at the macrolevel has proven to be ...challenging”.i

In light of this difficulty andconsistent with its reliance on micro-foundations generally, the Bankfocused its arguments about theimportance of gender equality at themicro-level of households, wherethere is abundant evidence tosupport the contention thathouseholds and firms are better offwhen women are empowered.Focusing on microeconomics builds

in a narrow approach, including abias towards male breadwinners,deflationary and commodificationbiases that harm women and thoseat the margins of the economy, asoutlined by Elson and Cagatay.ii

Redefining gender equality

Yet, in searching for potentialopenings for progressive agendas,there is also evidence of the Bank’sgender work modifying someneoliberal commitments, startingwith questioning one of the basicassumptions of macro-economicorthodoxy, i.e. that all economicactors are ultimately the same,employing the same kind ofeconomic reasoning, which carriessignificant implications for themeaning of equality.

In the neoclassical tradition, equalityis a matter of equal opportunities.Inequality results fromdiscrimination, is characteristic ofoverregulated markets and can beovercome through competition,which drives out discriminatingfactors. Once discrimination hasbeen eliminated and a level playingfield has been created, anyinequality in outcomes is a matter ofthe personal preferences and choicesof an imagined abstract rationaleconomic actor; gender inequalityhas been eliminated. Conversely,structuralist traditions see inequalityas an intrinsic feature of capitalistand patriarchal systems that rely onexploitation in order to advance theinterests of those in power. Thus,even under conditions of formalequal opportunity, unequaloutcomes are largely preordained.The market cannot be the road toequality; emancipation needs thecollective resistance of politicalactors.

Interestingly, gender experts at theBank have begun to question thedefinition of equality as a matter ofequal opportunities, drawing on the

capabilities approach andbehavioural economics to cast doubton the axiom of the disembodiedrational actor that buttressesorthodox economics. Arguing thatembodied market actors areintrinsically different, a narrow focuson offering equal opportunities forsupposedly similar rational actors willfall short of generating genderjustice. In this way, the Bank’sgender work has destabilised thedefinition of equality andproblematises a core assumption ofliberal economics, even whennarrowed to micro-economicprocesses.

Making markets work for women

Drawing on institutional economics,a central argument of the Bank’srecent gender work makes the casefor a levelling of the playing field.The argument rehearses well-knownrecommendations from the Bank’sgood governance agenda, such asthe need for simplified rules to dobusiness. However, it implicitlyconsiders women’s difference,bringing into view a range of rules astraditionally regarded a privatematter and supposedly irrelevant tothe institution of markets, includingfamily law and discriminatory rulesand practices. While these provisions

The World Bank’s role in crafting a neoliberalhegemony with a feminist face

Credit: O

ran Viriyincy

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may pertain to the private sphere,the Bank’s gender work has arguedthat they have economicconsequences: they contribute tocreating markets that areinequitable and constitute obstaclesto women’s economic participationand economic growth.

The corresponding regulatorychanges proposed are oftencontentious and have includedarguing for a heavier role forgovernments with regard toalleviating women’s reproductiveburdens. Care labour is a traditionalBank blind spot and structuralistfeminists have criticised the Bank’smacroeconomic policies for shiftingthe burdens of macroeconomicadjustment to women’s care andother unpaid labour. The new Bankwork recognises this critique andmakes a forceful argument forgovernment policies on childcare. Farfrom considering childcare adistorting and costly governmentintervention in the free market, itsuggests that it is a key ingredientfor gender equality that contributespositive outcomes for economicgrowth. Embedding gender issuesinto the Bank’s good governanceagenda thus subsumes genderequality goals in a neoliberal logic ofthe primacy of the market; but it hasalso provided room to amelioratedisadvantages resulting from thegender division of labour, a basicpillar of patriarchal gender orders.

Empowering women to work inmarkets

The second line of argument in theBank’s more recent approach togender moves beyond an equalopportunities logic and addresseswomen’s subjectivity, recognisingthat they need expanded agencyand empowerment to be able tocompete in markets. To begin with,the Bank’s gender work suggeststhat women lack physical and

human capital endowments,including land, fertilizer, credit andlabour on the one hand, and accessto governmental institutions,training, infrastructure, informationand networks on the other. Theselead to ‘gender gaps’ that requiregovernment intervention, meaningfixing a constructed female deficit sothat women’s endowments areraised to the level of those of men.While the language of endowmentsthus pushes beyond the idea of anabstract, masculine-coded rationalactor, it retains this actor as the idealthat needs to be approximated forwomen to succeed in a free marketeconomy.

But there is another, more promisingapproach that the Bank takes towomen’s empowerment - one thatseeks to counteract the tendency toconstrue women as passive objectsof intervention. As such, womenremain potentially efficient actors ina liberal market, but they alsobecome political agents. FollowingAmartya Sen,iii this approachconsiders agency as a basicdevelopment freedom. Accordingly,Bank experts from the genderunit have defined agencyas “the capacity tomake decisions aboutone’s own life andact on them toachieve a desiredoutcome, free ofviolence,retribution, orfear.” The abilityto act on decisionsand make them areality is thuscentral to thisapproach. Itrequires not only endowments, butalso freedom from violence, politicalvoice, and the ability to organise andmake claims collectively.

The introduction of this concept ofagency has allowed the Bank’s

gender experts to take up topics nottypically associated with a narrowlydefined notion of development aseconomic growth. Importantly, it hasgiven them a language to addressviolence against women andreproductive rights, two topics theBank has begun to discuss inpublications and on which it hasbegun to collect data. Women’sagency thus has emerged asembodied, as requiring much morethan endowments equal to those ofmen. Connected to this has been arecognition by this particular cornerof the Bank of the necessity forwomen to have ‘voice’, including notjust a say in household decision -making, but also participation inpolitics - through instrumentsranging from gender quotas tocollective mobilisation. In thisunderstanding processes ofempowerment are not justindividual, but a matter of bothpersonal and collective politics.

The Bank has thus redefinedfeminist knowledge to resonate withits core commitment to neoclassicaleconomics, to expanding capitalist

markets and growingeconomies via such

markets.

Openings andLimits

Thedevelopmentof the World

Bank’sapproach to

gender since theturn of the new

century can beinterpreted as an effort to

craft a new common sense aboutthe relationship between markets,social protection, and emancipationout of the ashes of previousneoliberal economic orthodoxy. Byconstructing gender equality as anengine of economic growth, the new

the Bank’s genderwork has destabilised

the definition of equalityand problematises a core

assumption of liberaleconomics, even when

narrowed to micro-economicprocesses

orthodoxy functions to buffer coretenets of neoclassical economics,albeit moderated by a focus oninstitutions and individualcapabilities. It retains a neoliberalrationality that celebrates marketefficiency outwardly as the measureof all things and as the mainpurveyor of truth.

At the same time, this modifiedneoliberalism produces substantialopenings, bringing into viewcoercively gendered institutionstraditionally considered private, suchas those regulating relations in thefamily and provisions of care.Moreover, it begins to question theidea of the abstractly rational actor,introducing the notion of sociallyproduced subjectivities, and ofcapable, but differentiallyempowered agents. The rationaleconomic actor is replaced with anempowered and autonomous agent,who does not simply respond tomarket incentives but is able toreflect on and change her own life.This specification of logics andcausalities allows for thinking aboutgender in development in a way thattakes on many feminist movementconcerns, from the unequaldistribution of resources and familylaws cementing patriarchy, toviolence against women and sexualand reproductive rights.

The gender-sensitive reformulationsof development economics suggesta new understanding in whichmarkets do not produce inequalitybut equality, in which the pursuit ofprofits and gender equality go handin hand. This is not simply a matterof feminism co-opted byneoliberalism: introducing ideas

about embodied, rights-bearingsubjects profoundly broadens thefield of vision and fundamentallyquestions the viability of aneconomic theory that thrives onabstract actors and forces.

Activists critical of neoliberalorthodoxy need to both be aware ofthe openings this kind of discourseprovides and beware of its limits.With regard to openings,neoliberalism with a feminist facegives force to feminist demands byshowing that meeting them wouldadvance economic efficiency.

Yet, there are limits to this framingand activists need to be careful notto get trapped in the logic ofeconomic rationality. They need toremember the silences inneoliberalism with a feminist face,which include: (1) The male-breadwinner, deflationary, andcommercialisation biases that arenot addressed in microeconomicinterventions, together with a totalsilence about class; (2) Theinstrumentalisation of genderequality for purposes of economicgrowth. Non-discrimination,empowerment, and “goodgovernance” should be first andforemost matters of human dignityand ends in themselves, not meansto economic efficiency; (3) Theimportance of democratic processesand of holding governments andother duty bearers accountable,which take centre stage in humanrights approaches, but which haveno place in the language ofneoliberalism with a feminist face.

Neoliberalism with a feminist facemay seduce us into thinking that

gender equality policies are a matterof technocratic intervention that canbe delegated to bureaucrats andeconomists. But the struggle forgender equality is deeply political,involving power politics at multiplescales. If there is any doubt aboutthis, the contemporary backlashagainst feminism and the surge ofpopulist misogyny should serve as areminder of what is at stake. In thiscontext, activists do not have theluxury to ignore the openings thatgender mainstreaming has carvedout in World Bank policies anddiscourses; they need to use theseopenings strategically, but alsocritically and reflexively.

October 2018

Elisabeth Prügl, Neoliberalism with aFeminist Face: Crafting a NewHegemony at the World Bank,Feminist Economics 23, 1: 30-53

i Andrew R. Morrison, Raju Dhushyanth,and Nistha Sinha, Gender Equality,Poverty and Economic Growth. PolicyResearch Working Paper 4349, WorldBank, 51 (Washington, DC., 2007)ii Diane Elson and Nilufer Cagatay, TheSocial Content of MacroeconomicPolicies.” World Development 28, no. 7(2000): 1347–1364.iii Jeni Klugman, Lucia Hanmer, SarahTwigg, Tazeen Hasan, and JenniferMcCleary-Sills, Voice and Agency:Empowering Women and Girls forShared Prosperity (Washington, D.C.:World Bank Publications, 2014), p. xv.

A fully referenced version of thisObserver article, including references tothe literature review discussed, isavailable online at bit.ly/feministface

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The World Bank’s role in crafting a neoliberalhegemony with a feminist face

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