Residents of Nairobi's Mathare slum, one of the largest in Kenya. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Farangis Abdurazokzoda
WASHINGTON, Apr 10 2014 (IPS)

Global income inequality threatens economic and social viability, according to a World Bank report released Thursday, reiterating a new but increasingly forceful narrative from both the bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Yet as the two Washington-based institutions gather here this week for semi-annual meetings, anti-poverty campaigners are calling on the bank and IMF to translate such rhetoric into practice.“Fewer than 100 people control as much of the world’s wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion combined.” -- World Bank President Jim Yong Kim

“World Bank President Jim Kim and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde have been vocal about the dangers of skyrocketing inequality, but there is still a long way to go,” Max Lawson, the head of policy and advocacy for Oxfam GB, a humanitarian and advocacy group, told IPS.

“There’s no trade-off between growth and inequality,” concurred his colleague, Nicolas Mombrial, of Oxfam America. “There will be no inclusive growth if economic inequality remains out of control.”

Oxfam and other groups are now calling on the World Bank and IMF to take concrete action to address issues associated with wealth inequality worldwide. IMF policies in particular have been criticised in the past for particularly negative impacts on poor and marginalised communities.

“We are pleased to see the IMF recognise that drastic fiscal consolidation policies have been a drag on growth, something that unions have been saying since the inappropriate shift to austerity made in 2010,” Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said Thursday.

“The IMF’s undermining of labour standards and collective bargaining institutions in several European countries, for example, has already had important impacts on income distribution that are likely to intensify in the future. We urgently call for a review and major changes in the Fund’s labour market policies.”

Oxfam’s Lawson lists at least three areas that he would like to see receive serious consideration by the IMF and the World Bank.

“First of all, it is necessary to develop a more adequate measurement of income inequality,” he says. “This needs to look at not only the income of the bottom 40 percent of the world’s income earners are measured but also the income flows of the world’s top 10 percent.”

Lawson suggested that the IMF, given its constant and influential interaction with the world’s governments, would be particularly well placed to advance a stronger measurement of inequality.

“Secondly, it is necessary to reform taxation schemes,” Lawson continued. “It is not fair that a billionaire pays a lower percentage in tax than a bus driver. And thirdly, it is essential to provide access to universal health care and education.”

Oxfam is also calling on governments to address inequality by focusing more robustly on tax dodging and related financial secrecy. Along with others, the group is calling for a global goal to end extreme inequality as part of the discussion around the post-2015 international development goals.

“We cannot hope to win the fight against poverty without tackling inequality,” Oxfam says. “Widening inequality is creating a vicious circle where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs from the top table.”

Widening gap

Inequality has become a particularly prominent topic in international policy discussions over the past two years. In part this is because, in the aftermath of the global economic downturn of 2008, the rich have bounced back much more quickly than the poor – thus widening the inequality gap.

A recent list of global billionaires published by Forbes underscored the scope of the problem. According to that data, just 67 people have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people.

“Fewer than 100 people control as much of the world’s wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion combined,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said Thursday at the start of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings. At similar meetings last year, Kim announced a new bank goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.

Yet on Thursday he warned that economic growth is not enough to reach that goal.

“Even if all countries grow at the same rates as over the past 20 years, and if the income distribution remains unchanged, world poverty will only fall by 10 percent by 2030, from 17.7 percent in 2010,” he said.

“We need a laser-like focus on making growth more inclusive and targeting more programmes to assist the poor directly if we’re going to end extreme poverty.”

Kim’s warning is underscored in a press release published on Thursday by the bank.

“Rising inequality of income can dampen the impact of growth on poverty,” the paper says.

“In countries where inequality was falling, the decline in poverty for a given growth rate was greater. Even if there is no change in inequality, the ‘poverty-reducing power’ of economic growth is less in coun­tries that are initially more unequal.”

The paper emphasises that the governments and donors can’t aim only to lift people out of extreme poverty, but also have to ensure that people aren’t “stuck just above the extreme poverty line due to a lack of opportunities that might impede progress toward better livelihoods.”

“Persistent inequality, where the rich are continuously advantaged and the rest struggle to catch up, makes people frustrated with the system,” Carol Graham, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“Such inequality pre-programmes the public perception downward. And even in countries where there is a progress with regard to inequality, and social frustration impacts political instability.”

In a blog post, Carol Graham and another researcher tie recent protests in Chile, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Ukraine and even the Arab Spring to widening income differential or inequality.

“The protesters are not a nothing-to-lose risk taker, but middle-aged, middle income, and more educated than average people who are unhappy about an unfair advantage of the rich and a lack of opportunities for the poor,” they write, calling the “prototypical” protestors “frustrated achievers”.

“Extreme inequality is particularly dangerous in countries in political and economic transition,” they note.

Marcela Máspero, the head of Venezuela’s Unión Nacional de Trabajadores, surrounded by the leaders of affiliated unions. Credit: Estrella Gutiérrez/IPS

By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Apr 30 2013 (IPS)

Misogyny is the word on the lips of women trade unionists in Latin America when asked what they have had to fight against to win spaces in the leadership bodies of labour unions in the region.

“The problems faced by women workers are greatly aggravated by misogynistic attitudes that further block progress towards their rights and hinder the participation in decision-making posts of those who are working to modify the culture in the labour movement,” said Mexican trade unionist Martha Heredia.

“The participation of Latin American women workers in trade union leadership posts is not in line with the percentage of women who are in the labour force,” said Heredia, chair of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) Women’s Committee.

Heredia and the other women labour leaders interviewed by IPS pointed out that only one Latin American woman has reached the presidency of a trade union federation: Bárbara Figueroa, who since 2012 has led Chile’s Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, the country’s biggest union, with over half a million members.

Alexandra Arguedas, who heads TUCA’s gender programme, explained that to boost female participation in the labour movement, the regional confederation demanded at its second ordinary congress in 2012 that its member unions set a 40 percent quota for women in leadership structures.

TUCA is the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) regional organisation for the Americas, and the largest regional workers´ organisation. It was founded in 2008 and represents more than 50 million workers from 53 national trade unions in 23 countries.

Arguedas said from the TUCA offices in Costa Rica that the higher level of participation and representation of women workers was also a pillar of the labour movement’s internal reforms – a process of renewal and adaptation to the new economic and social realities of the structures, tasks and proposals of the trade union movement.

As part of that self-reform process, she said, “participative gender audits are being implemented as a key instrument to make the gender perspective a cross-cutting question throughout the entire trade union movement.”

Training of women is also being given a push, and delegations made up of equal numbers of men and women have started to be required for all activities.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports that 55 percent of women in the region participate in the labour market, compared to 79 percent of men.

But the gap shrunk significantly between 1990 and 2006, with an 11 percentage point rise in female participation and a one percentage point drop in male participation.

Didice Godinho from Brazil, the founder in 1987 of one of the first women’s commissions in a regional central trade union, said the growing insertion of women in the labour market was behind the increasing incorporation of gender issues on the labour movement agenda, along with the unceasing pressure of women trade unionists.

Godinho, a social researcher who is now secretary of women’s issues in Brazil’s Central Unico dos Trabalhadores, the country’s largest union with more than 23 million members, summed up the challenges facing the objective of gender parity in the 2009 study “Latin American Trade Unionism and Gender Policies”.

Besides the patriarchal culture in Latin America, which is especially deeply-rooted in the labour movement regardless of ideological orientation, Godinho pointed out that there are hurdles to the full participation of women in trade unions, such as their role as mothers, for which the movement must find answers.

She welcomed the fact that one of TUCA’s founding principles is that the labour movement must be inclusive, and that it promotes gender equity in its leadership bodies and all of its activities. But she said that putting equality principles into practice “is a pending challenge.”

That is abundantly clear to Marcela Máspero, the most prominent female trade unionist in Venezuela, who says “it is very complicated to be a woman and a trade unionist in an environment where misogyny is embedded, and where there are doubts that we have the same commitment, willingness and capacity, even if there are no longer doubts that we have the same skills.”

Máspero, the national coordinator of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (ÚNETE) and a presidential council member of the World Federation of Trade Unions, said gender policies like those fomented by the International Labour Organisation helped women gain space in trade unions.

But the leader of ÚNETE – which has 1.5 million members from the public and private sectors – said she doubted that quotas were the way to achieve greater participation by women in union leadership posts.

“We forge a place for ourselves in the battle, elbow to elbow with men, against the common adversary: the bosses, capital, bureaucracy, and in that battle we don’t need concessions, because women have the same values and capacities as men when it comes to participating and leading,” she said.

She noted that women trade unionists must somehow juggle their commitments as “mothers, wives in many cases, breadwinners, workers and labour or political activists.”

She added that quotas “are merely cosmetic measures if women are not given practical help in handling their multiple roles.”

Máspero said that while the labour movement in Latin America is mainly in the hands of the left, “it behaves in a retrograde manner in terms of gender, and is still dominated by a patriarchal, machista culture.

“I don’t see women heading the labour movement in Cuba, Argentina or Brazil – only in Chile has the rhetoric been translated into practice,” she said.

Heredia, who is also one of the leaders of the Mexican Telephone Workers Union and is involved in gender policy questions in her country and in ITUC, said women leaders have the challenge of “strengthening the role of female workers not only in the labour movement but also in collective bargaining.

“We must be in the vanguard in vindicating women’s rights, especially the right to decent work, which includes a living wage, social security coverage, bilateral negotiations and a gender perspective as a cross-cutting issue,” she said.