WUNRN
March 13, 2013
James Heintz -
Click here to download the report (PDF, 18
pages)
Executive Summary
The Group of 20 (G20) has declared itself the
“premier global economic forum” and was created to tackle the most pressing
challenges confronting the world economy today, including reducing instability
and preventing future financial crises. The G20 has committed itself to a goal
of shared and inclusive growth. Given this commitment, it is striking how
little attention has been paid to issues of gender equality in its policy
frameworks, summits, and declarations.
This report examines the G20’s strategies and
their effects on gender equality. It finds that the G20 has not seriously
considered the consequences for women and men when formulating policies and
setting its agenda. There are indications that this situation has changed
somewhat, with a commitment to gender equality made at the 2012 Los Cabos
Summit in
Broad-based economic policies have
gender-specific effects because sources of gender inequality interact with
changes in the economic environment to produce distinct outcomes for women and
men. Gender-blind policies are rarely gender-neutral. Gender bias must be
identified within the G20’s approach to economic governance if the commitment
to inclusive growth is to be realized.
This report analyzes the policy areas
identified in the G20’s Framework
for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth and subsequent summits
and processes, including fiscal policy, monetary policy, global rebalancing,
financial regulation, trade, social protection, and employment. Although the
G20 has committed to policy positions in each of these areas, actual
implementation frequently falls far short of the mark.
The G20 has embraced a strategy of “fiscal
consolidation” which requires reductions in government borrowing and public
debt. Although consolidation could be achieved by raising taxes, the emphasis
has been on spending cuts. In terms of monetary policy, the G20 has emphasized
price stability, which typically involves targeting low rates of inflation
which may negatively affect employment.
There are several possible sources of gender
bias in these policy stances. Spending cuts and restrictive monetary policy may
have a larger negative effect on women’s employment relative to men’s. Fiscal
consolidation may reduce public resources for programs that promote gender
equality. Slower growth and higher unemployment associated with lower levels of
spending and tighter credit policies reduce household incomes, increasing
pressures on women’s unpaid work.
Several G20 policies have implication for
international trade: exchange rate policies, multilateral trade negotiations,
and “rebalancing” the global economy between major exporting and importing
countries. Because women work in different jobs than men, changes to the trade
regime affect sectors of the economy differently and have specific consequences
for women's and men's employment.
The G20 has pledged to strengthen financial
regulation to avoid the conditions that led to the 2008 global crisis. The regulatory
reform agenda promises to implement new banking standards, review executive
compensation, harmonize accounting practices, regulate over the counter (OTC)
derivatives, rethink the role of credit rating agencies, and strengthen the
supervision of institutions seen as “too big to fail.” Financial reform has
important implications for gender equality, since crises have specific impacts
on women and men, yet the implementation of reforms remains weak. The G20 has
also endorsed improvements to social protection policies. Social protection not
only assists those worst affected by crises, but also supports recovery by
bolstering demand. Developing effective social protection policies requires
taking gender dynamics into account.
Since 2010, the G20 has taken on issues of
global development. The G20 Seoul
Development Consensus for Shared Growth and the Multi-Year Action Plan
on Development identify nine pillars of economic development:
infrastructure, human resource development, trade, investment and job creation,
food security, social protection, financial inclusion, domestic resource
mobilization, and knowledge sharing. The development agenda explicitly refers
to gender equality, but the focus is largely restricted to gender gaps in
education and health. The Development
Action Plan expires this year. As the G20 looks towards a
revised Action Plan and the post-2015 development agenda, gender equality
should be integrated throughout the policy framework, including issues such as
employment, social protection, unpaid care work, asset ownership, financial
inclusion, violence against women, and reproductive rights.
Based on this analysis, the report makes five
concrete recommendations:
1.
Establish a G20 Task Force on gender equality
to prepare a Toolkit
on Economic Policy and Gender to integrate gender into the G20’s
agenda;
2.
ensure that gender equality is more fully
reflected in the G20’s two primary policy frameworks – the Framework on Strong,
Sustainable, and Balanced Growth and the Development Action Plan;
3.
incorporate gender equality into the G20
monitoring activities of international organizations, such as the IMF, OECD and
WTO;
4.
use existing gender equality indicators and
develop new indicators to assess progress within the G20 and internationally;
and
5.
initiate a consultation process with key
stakeholders on the Toolkit
on Economic Policy and Gender and the ways in which the G20 should
be held accountable for advancing gender equality.
If adopted, these recommendations would
represent significant steps towards integrating gender throughout the G20’s
policy priorities and would fill a gap that currently undermines the goal of
shared and inclusive growth.