New report reveals how publicly-funded development banks fail on gender

A new report by Gender Action in collaboration with Recourse, NGO Forum on ADB and Oxfam, “Unmet Gender Promises: making IFI projects and policies deliver on gender-equal rights” and infographic demonstrate how publicly-funded development banks are failing on gender.

The report and infographic analyse and score about a dozen International Financial Institutions’ (IFIs)’ gender policies and the gender-sensitivity of their Environmental and Social Frameworks (ESFs) through mid-2020 and examine nine past case studies’ gender impacts.

Few ESF project risk analyses address gender discrimination; half of IFI gender policies and no ESFs require projects to collect gender-disaggregated baseline and subsequent data, undermining IFI capacity to ensure gender equality between women, men and sexual and gender minorities (SGMs); and most IFI gender policies and ESFs fail to address women’s primary roles managing and protecting the environment, natural resources and biodiverse ecosystems although climate change especially undermines women’s livelihoods and health.

Recommended robust implemented policies will only be effective if IFIs increase rather than decrease public spending and reverse decades of privatisation of services and infrastructure which makes them unaffordable to poor women, men and SGMs during and after the COVID19 pandemic.