WUNRN
Gender Action
World Bank Declines to
Adopt a Mandatory Gender Policy - Gender Action Review
Direct Link to Full 7-Page 2014
Document:
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Gender Action demonstrates in its Gender Review and Recommendations
on the World Bank Environmental and Social Framework: Setting Standards for
Sustainable Development (Draft) that from a gender perspective the Draft,
updating the Bank’s two decades-old Safeguard Policies, is hugely disappointing
in two ways: First, its proposed Environmental and Social Standards (ESSs)
do not include a freestanding mandatory gender standard. Second, the Draft does
not even “mainstream” gender issues.
Civil society provided strong gender inputs into the Bank’s Phase 1 safeguard
review consultations to ensure that the new safeguards include the Bank’s first
freestanding mandatory gender standard. The Draft ignored these civil society
inputs. Bank officials promised that the Draft would mainstream gender but it
does not.
Gender Action’s Review contains
quantitative and qualitative analyses of the World Bank Environmental and
Social Standards. The qualitative analysis also provides constructive examples
of how to mainstream gender into the existing Draft standards
.