A crucial strategy to mainstream rectifying the gender gap has been announced by the IMF in light of the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and crises impacting women’s lives and livelihoods.
On July 22, the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved its first gender strategy, adapting to the evolving needs, challenges and priorities in member countries, according to Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF.
Georgieva added in a video making the announcement: “It sets a vision to mainstream macro-critical gender issues in our core activities – in surveillance, in lending, in capacity development. We start with the strategy implementation immediately, but we will do so in a gradual, measured pace.
“What the IMF board has done is to recognize that women’s financial and economic empowerment is critical for reviving global growth at this juncture, and also for building resilience for a more shock-prone world.”
The gender strategy has four pillars: Empowering IMF staff with access to relevant gender-disaggregated data and modelling tools to conduct policy analysis; setting up a robust framework to ensure that macro-critical aspects of gender are integrated in IMF country work based on an even handed approach across membership countries and creating a supportive internal organizational structure; strengthening collaboration with external partners to benefit from knowledge sharing and peer learning, leveraging complementarities, and maximizing the impact on the ground and efficiently utilizing resources allocated to gender by realizing economies of scale and avoiding duplication of effort.
It will certainly have consequences for Africa too.
“I always support all gender strategies in whatever field they are. Because, contrary to popular belief, I still believe there’s a glass ceiling and I still believe women are paid less, and are less valued,” says Mara Glennie, Founder and Director of TEARS, a non-profit organisation specializing in the assistance and support network for survivors of rape and sexual abuse in South Africa.
On February 1 this year, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa signed three gender-based violence (GBV) bills into legislation.
“But I do think that any gender strategy has to start at another place. I don’t think that we as a society are training our women sufficiently. We don’t encourage a young girl to set out on her own, and we encourage a young boy to go out. So a woman suddenly ends up in a situation where she’s vulnerable, and can’t cope, because she hasn’t been trained.”
Glennie says the pillars are necessary as a vision statement, and that is important to ascertain how the strategy will be implemented. She says women are entering the system ill-prepared. She suggests a special forum where women can take their problems, and adds that another avenue for implementation could possibly be ambassadors.
“If I’m a girl, who’s never fought for myself, and I’m in a situation where I need help, my boss is picking on me – could be a he or a she – how do I understand the gender role? Because I do think that we do not explain the gender roles properly. So I think that the first part has to start off with a great deal of education.”
Glennie is also a founding member of the Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa (BWA), founded before the dissolution of apartheid.
“We felt black women in business and white women in business should work together. A very important aspect of that is that you personally have to take responsibility – and we are personally responsible for our own ways that we help other women.”