The gender bias of the poverty reduction strategy framework

ABSTRACT

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) have not been very successful in gender mainstreaming. This article will show, with examples from the PRSPs of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, how gender issues have been largely ignored in the design, poverty analysis, and policy actions of PRSPs. It will be argued that the reason for this failure is only partially a lack of political will and gender expertise on the side of the governments and PRS teams. Rather, the main reason for the failure of integrating gender in PRSPs is the overall framework of PRSPs, which does not allow for gender mainstreaming in macroeconomic policies. The core of the framework consists of narrowly defined macroeconomic targets and policies, while giving less importance to broader socio-economic objectives and policies. This, in turn, tends to shift gender entirely to a secondary, social concern, rather than being part and parcel of the core of the poverty reduction framework.

KEYWORDS:

• PRSP
• gender
• poverty
• Bolivia
• Honduras
• Nicaragua.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful for very helpful suggestions by three anonymous referees of this journal.

Notes

In the gender and development literature there have been long debates on wordings such as integration and mainstreaming. I will follow here Rounaq Jahan (1995), who pleads for gender mainstreaming as genuine engendering policies, as opposed to gender integration which often remains limited to lip-service. So, only genuine gender integration, throughout a policy design, implementation and monitoring, should be referred to as mainstreaming.

In 2004, the original JSAs were replaced by slightly different guidelines for Joint Staff Advisory Notes (JSANs).

〈http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPRS1/Resources/PDFs/jsan_prsp_guidelines.pdf〉.

The year 2001 was chosen because the three case studies, to be presented in the next section, are from the same year. The reason for selecting this year is that these cases are closely studied for a multiple-year evaluation study on these PRSPs.

The guidelines for the JSAs state that they should give ‘staff's views on: (i) the main implementation risks; and (ii) priority areas for strengthening the PRS and its implementation which could lead to better results’ (World Bank, 2004: 4).

I am very grateful to my colleagues, in particular José Cuesta, Kristin Komives and João Guimaraes, who have taken much effort to collect the necessary gender disaggregated information in their interviews with stakeholders in all three countries. The gender analysis is my own, and I alone bear responsibility for any inaccuracies in it.

The inclusion of some MDGs in the policy actions will not be analyzed here, as they are not part of the PRSP but of earlier commitments.

On p. 70 reference is made to the Labor Code, but it is not clear to what extent this Code addresses gender inequalities in work conditions and how gender inequalities in the labor market will be addressed.

It would be helpful if these links could be modeled, so as to inform macroeconomic policy advise. Unfortunately, the relationships are very complex and not easy to put into sensible equations, in particular not of CGE-type models (for an exception, see Fontana and Wood, 2000).