World Bank Says Reduced Gender Gaps
Promote Development

Lead to Less Malnutrition, More Transparency

Countries that reduce gender gaps in basic rights, access to resources
and economic opportunities develop more effectively, according to the
World Bank.

In a December 6 press release the Bank said countries with smaller
gaps between men and women in education, employment and property
rights also have lower child malnutrition and mortality rates, greater
transparency in business and government and faster economic growth.

The Bank noted that where women have a greater role in public life
levels of corruption are lower.

However, it pointed out that women worldwide continue to have fewer
rights than men. In South Asia girls' school enrollment is still only
two-thirds that of males. In sub-Saharan Africa women have limited
rights to own land even when they are the major crop producers. In
several countries a woman cannot travel outside the home or conduct
business without her husband's consent, the release said.

The release pointed to areas where the Bank has ongoing efforts to
improve women's condition -- education, health and nutrition, credit
and savings, legal rights and post-conflict reconstruction.

Following is the text of the World Bank's press release.

(Note, in the following text "billion" equals 1,000 million.)


WOMEN KEY TO EFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT
World Bank Issues New Press Backgrounder

WASHINGTON, December 6, 2001 -- Unfolding events in Afghanistan have
brought worldwide attention to the severe treatment of women under the
Taliban. As the Afghan people prepare to rebuild their country, and as
they explore ways to include women in this process, World Bank experts
say that countries which promote women's rights and increase their
access to resources and schooling enjoy lower poverty rates, faster
economic growth and less corruption than countries that do not.

Gender inequality hurts all members of society, not just girls and
women. World Bank research -- including an in-depth report released
earlier this year called Engendering Development shows that countries
with smaller gaps between women and men in areas such as education,
employment, and property rights not only have lower child malnutrition
and mortality they also have more transparent business and government
and faster economic growth, which in turn helps to further narrow the
gender gap.

"Increasing gender equality is central to the idea of development as
freedom, of expanding the choices and control that people have over
their lives," says Nicholas Stern, World Bank Chief Economist and
Senior Vice President for Development Economics. "The evidence shows
that education, health, productivity, credit and governance work
better when women are involved."

"Societies that discriminate on the basis of gender pay a significant
price -- in greater poverty, slower economic growth, weaker
governance, and a lower quality of life," says Elizabeth King, Lead
Economist in the Bank's Development Research Group and co-author of
Engendering Development.

In fact, research shows that countries that reduce gender gaps in
basic rights, access to resources, and economic opportunities achieve
more effective development -- more rapid economic growth, better
governance, and higher levels of well-being. The benefits of promoting
equality between women and men are significant and wide-ranging. Some
examples:

Productivity and Economic Growth

-- In Africa, improving rural women's access to productive resources
including education, land, and fertilizer could increase agricultural
productivity by as much as one-fifth.

-- In Bangladesh, microcredit provided to women has higher returns in
terms of raising household consumption (income) than the same credit
provided to men.

-- Cross-country studies suggest that if the Middle East and North
Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa had been as successful as
East Asia in narrowing the gender gap in education during 1960-1990,
GNP [gross national product] per capita in those regions would have
grown by 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points higher per year, substantial
increases over actual rates.

Governance

-- Cross-country studies show that where women have greater rights and
play a greater role in public life, levels of corruption in government
are lower.

-- In the republic of Georgia firms owned or managed by women are
significantly less likely to make unofficial payments to government
officials than those owned or managed by men.

Well-Being

-- Greater equality in education between women and men means healthier
families. If African women and men had more equal schooling, child
mortality would have been 25 percent lower than it was in 1990.

-- A cross-country study of 63 countries finds that gains in women's
education made the single largest contribution to declines in
malnutrition in 1970-95, accounting for 43 percent of the total.

-- Smaller gender gaps in literacy translate into lower HIV infection
rates, even after accounting for the effects of per capita income and
other factors known to affect HIV prevalence.

-- Women's income, not just education matters. In Brazil, income in
the hands of mothers has four times the impact on child nutrition than
the same income in the hands of fathers. Similar patterns are seen in
such diverse countries as Bangladesh and C��e d'Ivoire.

Overall, girls and women have made significant progress in recent
decades. For example, over the past 25 years girls' primary school
enrollment rates doubled in the Middle East, South Asia, and
Sub-Saharan Africa. And in the past half-century, women's life
expectancy has increased by 15-20 years in developing countries.

Despite this progress, however, women worldwide continue to have fewer
rights and less control over important resources than men. In South
Asia, women have only about half as many years of education as men,
and female secondary school enrollment rates are only two-thirds of
male rates. Control of land and of other forms of capital is also
highly unequal. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, women have limited
rights to own land, even though they are the major producers of food
crops. And several countries around the world, women still cannot
travel outside the home or transact business without their husbands'
consent.

"Experiences from cross-country analysis and case studies show that
economic development and institutional change are both necessary to
improve the status of women." says Andrew Mason, Senior Economist in
the Bank's Gender and Development Group and co-author of Engendering
Development. "Societies progress more rapidly if they also adopt
specific measures to narrow gender gaps."

Many ongoing World Bank efforts aim to help reduce gender inequality
through the programs and projects it supports in developing countries,
including:

-- Education. Since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in
1995, World Bank lending for girls' education has totaled
approximately US$5.3 billion. The Bank's girls' education programs
give special emphasis to countries where primary enrollments are low
and/or gender disparities in primary and basic enrollment rates are
large.

-- Health, nutrition and population. To date the World Bank has lent
more than $4 billion to support population and reproductive health
activities throughout the world and is the world's largest external
funder of health programs. In 1999, two thirds of the loans in these
areas included actions aimed at promoting gender equality.

-- Credit and savings. The Bank is integrating credit and savings
programs that cater to women's needs into its projects in many
sectors; and it is working with partners to strengthen microfinance
programs. The Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, for example, includes
a microfinance component that targets poor women.

-- Legal rights. The Bank is increasingly emphasizing the role of
legal and regulatory systems in protecting women from exclusion and
discrimination, especially through initiatives designed to assess the
status of women and promote women's access to justice and legal
services.

-- Post-conflict reconstruction. The Post-Conflict Fund (PCF) supports
planning, analysis of reconstruction activities, and pilot programs by
funding governments and other partners working on post-conflict
reconstruction. The PCF is funding the Afghan Female Teachers
In-Service Training project in Peshawar, Pakistan, for example, to
train female teachers in the Afghan University, attended by the Afghan
refugee community.