World Bank: plus ça change

Contrast UNIFEM's recommendations with those found in a recent policy document written by the World Bank's senior spokesperson on gender and development issues, Mayra Buvinic.

Buvinic believes that women and girls in the developing world will be disproportionally affected by the global economic crisis. She suggests that responses that build on women’s roles as economic agents can go a long way towards mitigating negative effects.

"In Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya and South Africa, among other countries, rigorous studies unequivocally show that children’s welfare (nutritional status, schooling attendance) in poor households improves more when income is in women’s hands rather than in men's," she writes.

So economic opportunities for poor women should be at the heart of designing safety nets, employment creation projects and financial sector operations.

"In particular, micro-finance institutions should be capitalised so that they continue to offer credit and other financial services to poor borrowers, the majority of whom are women. The development payoffs of these investments should be large - both in terms of mitigating current hardships and preventing future ones, and are a smart use of development assistance."

Public works programmes targeting women are praised; limited fiscal ability to provide social safety nets by governments deplored.

But no mention of a role for improved regulation of the market forces which have delivered food and financial crises or the vulnerable employment that is evaporating so rapidly.