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Abstract
Business now plays an increasingly prominent role in development. While the implicit links between private actors and international development institutions have been widely debated, the explicit role of financial corporations in shaping official development policy has been less well documented. We employ a feminist Marxian analysis to examine the material and discursive landscape of the 2012 World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development. Its exclusive focus on gender equality as ‘smart economics’, and the central role accorded to leading financial corporations like Goldman Sachs in the formulation of the key World Bank recommendations enable us to explore the changing landscape of the neoliberal corporatisation of development. We argue, first, that the apolitical and ahistorical representation of gender and gender equality in the wdr serves to normalise spaces of informality and insecurity, thereby expunging neoliberal-led capitalist relations of exploitation and domination, which characterise the social context in which many women in the global South live. Second, the wdr represents the interest of corporations in transforming the formerly excluded segments of the South (women) into consumers and entrepreneurs. The wdr thus represents an attempt by the World Bank and its ‘partners’ to deepen and consolidate the fundamental values and tenets of capitalist interests.
Notes
1 M Blowfield, ‘Corporate social responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development?’, International Affairs, 3, 2005, pp 515–524; and S Soederberg, Corporate Power and Ownership in Contemporary Capitalism, London: Routledge, 2010, esp chs 6 and 7.
2 See, for example, J Ruggie, ‘Taking embedded liberalism global: the corporate connection’, in D Held (ed), Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003; and C Cutler, Private Power and Global Authority, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
3 See http://www2.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press-releases/current/10kw-partnership-denmark.html.
4 World Bank, Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan, Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2006, p 6; and E Zuckerman, Critique: Gender Equality as Smart Economics, Washington, DC: Gender Action, 2007, at www.genderaction.org/images/04.22.0 8_EZ-GAPlan%20Critique.pdf.
5 ‘World Bank Group private sector leaders forum announces new measures to improve women's economic opportunities’, press release no 2010/084/PREM, World Bank.
6 Goldman Sachs, Womenomics 3.0, New York, 2010.
7 K Bedford, ‘Doing business with the ladies: gender, legal reform, and entrepeneurship in the International Finance Corporation’, LABOUR Capital and Society, 42(1–2), 2009, pp 168–194.
8 See, for example, R Hennessy & C Ingraham (eds), Materialist Feminism, New York: Routledge, 1997; S Federici, Caliban and the Witch, Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004; G LeBaron & A Roberts, ‘Toward a feminist political economy of capitalism and carcerality’, Signs, 36(1), 2010, pp 19–44; and C Mohanty, A Russo & L Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.
9 S Soederberg, The Politics of the New International Financial Architecture: Reimposing Neoliberalism in the Global South, London: Zed, 2004.
10 World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011, p 3.
11 Ibid, pp 18–19.
12 Ibid, p 13, emphasis added.
13 Ibid, p 4.
14 Ibid, p 55.
15 Ibid, p 38.
16 Ibid, p 254.
17 P Cammack, ‘What the World Bank means by poverty reduction and why it matters’, New Political Economy, 9(2), 2004 pp 189–211.
18 See World Bank, World Development Report, p 6.
19 G Becker, ‘A theory of the allocation of time’, Economic Journal, 75(299), 1965, pp 493–517.
20 L Benería, Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered, New York: Routledge, 2003.
21 See S Bergeron, ‘The Post-Washington Consensus and economic representations of women in development at the World Bank’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 5(3), 2003, pp 397–419.
22 World Bank, World Development Report, p 55.
23 World Bank, Social Capital: Conceptual Frameworks and Empirical Evidence—An Annotated Bibliography, Social Capital Initiative, Working Paper No 5, Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 1999, p iii.
24 B Fine, Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium, London: Routledge, 2001, p 138.
25 See, for instance, World Bank, World Development Report, p 5.
26 K Bedford, ‘Loving to straighten out development: sexuality and “ethnodevelopment” in the World Bank's Ecuadorian lending’, Feminist Legal Studies, 13(2), 2005, pp 295–322.
27 H Bannerji, Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism and Anti-Racism, Toronto: Women's Press, 1995; and S Ferguson, ‘Building on the strengths of the socialist feminist tradition’, Critical Sociology, 25(1), 1999, pp 1–15.
28 Federici, Caliban and the Witch.
29 Soederberg, Corporate Power and Ownership, ch 6.
30 Soederberg, The New International Financial Architecture.
31 Blowfield, ‘Corporate social responsibility’.
32 Soederberg, Corporate Power and Ownership.
33 World Bank, World Development Report, p 36.
34 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (fcic), The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, Washington, DC: fcic, 2011.
35 Ibid, p 143.
36 D Bocian, W Li & K Ernst, ‘Foreclosures by race and ethnicity: the demographics of a crisis’, crl Research Report, 2010, Durham, NC: Center for Responsible Lending; A Roberts, ‘Financing social reproduction: The gendered relations of debt and mortgage finance in 21st century America', New Political Economy, 17(2), 2012.
37 G Dymski, ‘Racial exclusion and the political economy of the subprime crisis’, Historical Materialism, 17(2), 2009, p 173.
38 fcic, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report; and sigtarp, Factors Affecting Efforts to Limit Payments to aig Counterparties, Washington, DC: Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, 2009.
39 Goldman Sachs, Womenomics: Japan's Hidden Asset, New York, 2005.
40 Ibid, p 17.
41 Ibid.
42 ‘A guide to womenomics’, The Economist, 12 April 2006.
43 Goldman Sachs, The Power of the Purse, New York: Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, 2009.
44 Goldman Sachs, 10 000 Women, Leadership Academy Brochure, 2009, at http://www2.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000women/about/leadership-acad-broch.pdf.
45 Goldman Sachs, The Power of the Purse, p 14.
46 I Bakker, ‘Neoliberal governance and the reprivatization of social reproduction’, in I Bakker & S Gill (eds), Power, Production, and Social Reproduction, New York: Palgrave, 2003, pp 66–82.
50 ‘World Bank calls for expanding economic opportunities for women as global economic crisis continues’, press release No 2009/214/PREM, World Bank.
51 ‘World Bank Group private sector leaders forum announces new measures’.
52 See Soederberg, Corporate Power and Ownership.
53 World Bank, World Development Report, pp 344–345.
54 World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Global Monitoring Report 2010: The mdgs after the Crisis, Washington, DC: irbd/World Bank, 2010.
55 S Gill & A Roberts, ‘Macroeconomic governance, gendered inequality and global crises', in B Young, IBakker & D Elson (eds) Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective, London and New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 154–171; Cf World Bank, World Development Report, p 87.
56 S Seguino, ‘The global economic crisis, its gender and ethnic implications, and policy responses’, Gender and Development, 18(2), 2009, pp 179–199.
57 M Floro & G Dymski, ‘Financial crisis, gender, and power’, World Development, 28(7), 2000, pp 1269–1283; and S Walby, ‘Gender and the financial crisis’, paper prepared for unesco, 2009, available online at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/doc_library/sociology/Gender_and_financial_%20crisis_Sylvia_ Walby.pdf.
58 D Elson, ‘Gender and the global economic crisis in developing countries’, Gender and Development, 18(2), 2010, pp 201–212.
59 ‘World Bank calls for expanding economic opportunities for women’.
60 ‘Auditors criticised for role in financial crisis’, Financial Times, 30 March 2011.
61 fcic, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, p 271.
62 World Bank, World Development Report, pp 267, 202.
63 International Labour Office (ilo), Women and Men in the Informal Economy, Geneva: ilo, 2002.
64 Ibid; and ilo, Statistical Update on Employment in the Informal Economy, Geneva: ilo, 2011.
65 E Braunstein & J Heintz, ‘Gender bias and central bank policy’, International Review of Applied Economics, 22(2), 2008, pp 173–186; and ilo, The Global Crisis, Geneva: International Labour Office, 2011.
66 S Razavi, wdr 2012: Gender Equality and Development … an Opportunity both Welcome and Missed, Geneva: unrisd, 2011.
67 R Sengupta & CP Aubuchon, ‘The microfinance revolution: an overview’, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Review, January/February 2008, pp 9–30.
68 S Soederberg, ‘The Mexican debtfare state: micro-lending, dispossession, and the surplus population’, Globalizations, 9(4), 2012.
69 Businessweek, ‘Compartamos: from nonprofit to profit’, 13 December 2007.
70 D Roodman, ‘Does Compartamos charge 195 per cent interest?’, David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog, Washington, DC: Centre for Global Development, 2011.
71 ‘sks to add financial services to microfinance as founder quits’, Bloomberg Businessweek, 24 November 2011.
72 J Erfe, ‘Microcapital story’, MicroCapital.org, 2 October 2008, at http://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-story-bill-clinton-extols-microfinance-amid-global-credit-crisis-at-2008-clinton-global-initiative-summit.
73 Razavi, wdr 2012.
74 S Gill & A Roberts, ‘Macroeconomic governance, gendered inequality and global crises’, Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective, pp 154–171.
75 Eurodad, Bail-out or Blow-out? imf Policy Advice and Conditions for Low-Income Countries at a Time of Crisis, European Network on Debt and Development, 2009, p 3.
76 unctad, Trade and Development Report, 2009, New York: United Nations, 2009.
77 Ibid, pp 35–36.
78 E Braunstein & J Heintz, ‘Central banks, employment, and gender in developing countries’, in B. Young, I Bakker & D Elson (eds), Questioning Financial Governance from a Feminist Perspective, pp 90–109.
79 unesco, efa Global Monitoring Report 2010: Reaching the Marginalized, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
80 unctad, Trade and Development Report, 2011, New York: United Nations, 2011, p vi.
81 M Weisbrot, R Ray, J Johnston, JA Cordero & JA Montecino, imf-supported Macroeconomic Policies and the World Recession, Washington, DC: Center for Economic Policy Research, 2009.
82 S Soederberg, ‘The politics of representation and financial fetishism: the case of the G20 summits’, Third World Quarterly, 31(4), 2010, pp 523–540.