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July 2011

Gender “mainstreaming” — not (actually) lost in translation

Patricia Fernandes's picture

Available in 中文

Changes were made in the way village meetings were run so women would participate more.

Whenever and wherever the Bank supports a project, to “mainstream” gender is one of the goals. The idea is a fairly simple one. Right? Making sure that men and women benefit equally from the poverty reduction activities we support. 

There are a number of tools we produce to help us achieve this—Gender Analysis, Regional Gender Action Plans, County Gender Action Plans, Gender Disaggregated Outcome Indicators, Gender Check-Lists, Strategies and Tool-Kits, etc. So looking at the amount of guidance we seem to need one might be forgiven for thinking this is an exceedingly complex task and for wondering whether in reality (i.e. after that board approval is done and the real work of implementation begins) all of the “gender mainstreaming language” doesn’t get a little lost in translation… 

SABER: Innovative Assessment Tool Helps Countries Use Evidence to Guide Global Education Reform

Robin Horn's picture

Effective education reform? Evidence-based policy making can light the way.At the launch of the World Bank's new Education Strategy for 2020 during the "What Works in Education” Policy Research Colloquium this spring, World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged the international development community to focus on interventions that produce learning results and emphasized the vital role that evidence must play in propelling smart investments in education. The strategy also emphasizes the Bank's role in helping countries move beyond the provision of inputs to a system-level approach for improving the quality, performance, and outcomes of education programs.

To improve learning for all, we are rolling out an innovative assessment tool to help our partners use knowledge more effectively to drive education reform.

The System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER) initiative is being designed to help countries systematically examine and better understand their education system's policies.  SABER's policy diagnostics are being built upon a solid evidence base and draws from research on the education policies of well performing or rapidly improving education systems. By leveraging global knowledge, SABER fills a gap in the availability of policy data and evidence on what policies matter most to improve the quality of education and achievement of better results.

Welcome to Africa, Welcome to Naija

Pierre Strauss's picture

Backpackers looking for an intense experience are constantly looking for new regions to explore. While Asia is nowadays swamped by mass tourism, and Western destinations lack originality, Africa remains the ultimate well-kept secret for unconventional tourism – tourists are heading into the rain forests of Madagascar and on safari in South Africa. But hurry up because more and more folks are traveling south.

Pierre Strauss (right) with Abubakar Wakili in Kano state, NigeriaDespite the economic downturn and a general decline in tourism worldwide, tourism in Africa is growing faster than in the rest of the world. African tourism arrivals grew from 37 million in 2003 to 58 million in 2009. The continent receives more tourists than the Caribbean, Central America, and South America combined. For instance, in Nigeria-the most populous country in Africa-we welcome more than three million visitors annually, largely business men from neighboring countries and the Nigerian Diaspora visiting friends and relatives.

Joburg's Transit Breakthrough

News story by Gail Jennings, Johannesburg

Informal ‘jitney’ associations transcend their warload past to become shareholders in South Africa’s first-ever Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system

JOHANNESBURG – Waiting, waiting, without facilities, still waiting, crammed, hemmed in, no brakes, no license, angry club-wielding drivers fighting for the most lucrative routes.  Weaving haphazardly through traffic at often frightening speeds. .. Scrabbling for the right coins, late, confusion, music that leaves your ears ringing, fists, bullets, escape... The stories travellers tell of their minibus taxi adventures.

Bus Rapit Transit in JohannesburgThis sort of  informal, unscheduled and unregulated taxi system still exists in most of Johannesburg.

But the 25km link between the central business district and Soweto with its 1.4 million residents is now plied by sleek red buses travelling on time and on schedule. Three years ago, the government launched Rea Vaya (“we are going”), South Africa’s first bus rapid transit system (BRT).  Rea Vaya has replaced the ramshackle minibuses with modern vehicles and an entirely different, formal operating system.

Equal pay for equal work for migrant workers?

Sanket Mohapatra's picture

The recent negotiations between Philippines and Saudi Arabia about the minimum living wages for migrant workers have resulted in a stalemate. Philippines is demanding a minimum wage of $400 per month for its workers, while Saudi Arabia is willing to stipulate a minimum wage of $200 per month. Saudi Arabia stopped processing contracts of Filipino workers in March, recently the Philippines has said that it will not send Filipino maids to Saudi Arabia until the dispute is resolved. Saudi Arabia hosts 1.2 million Filipino migrants and accounts for nearly 300,000 overseas deployments annually, while the Philippines receives $1.5 billion annually in remittances from Saudi Arabia. Thus, this wage dispute could lead to loss of employment opportunities for Filipinos, involve cost of reintegrating returning workers, and a reduction in remittance flows -- all of which could adversely impact the Philippine economy. 

The Global Energy Challenge

Ioannis N Kessides's picture

This entry is the first of a series of posts written by members of the World Bank's Development Research group's Environment and Energy team on economic and policy issues involving energy and climate change mitigation.

Issues relating to energy are among the most important and difficult challenges confronting the world today.  Providing sufficient energy to meet the requirements of a growing world population with rising living standards will require major advances in energy supply and efficiency. Doing this while mitigating the risks of climate disruption will be an even more challenging undertaking.  It will require a significant shift in the historic pattern of fossil-fuel use and a major transformation of the global energy system.  Especially in the developing countries, the choice of technology, policy, and economic levers that will be used to transform and expand their energy systems will have profound implications for their growth, international competitiveness, and economic security and prosperity.   This overview focuses on the challenges related to electricity supply; subsequent blogs will address other parts of the energy system.

Is it possible to send remittances to North Korea?

Sonia Plaza's picture

I participated in a panel on Informal Markets and Peacebuilding in North Korea at the United States Institute of Pace last Tuesday where we discussed remittances. There is no data available on how much remittance North Korea receives since the country does not publish remittance statistics. 

However, remittances are being sent from South Korea and China through informal channels (hand carried to the border by informal operators or wired). According to the Ministry of Unification in Seoul, North Koreans living in Seoul remit around 10 million dollars per year. Other estimates indicate that the annual amount is within the range of $5-$15 million per year.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Financial Task Force
World Bank Unveils New Transparency Initiative

“Last week, the World Bank unveiled a major initiative to make their funding more transparent.  Through the new World Bank Finances portal, vast amounts of information about the inner workings of the Bank’s finances are now made easily accessible.  This includes information about specific funds that members are supporting, and the disbursement and repayment status of thousands of projects around the world.  Tools are provided to allow members of the public to comment on specific elements of the data, as well as to download datasets specifically catered to their needs.  The data is remarkably up-to-date, often covering information as recent as June 2011.”  READ MORE

Misinformation and its consequences

Berk Ozler's picture

You’ve seen the scenario on “Law and Order” many times: the defense lawyer tosses out a wild accusation that the person on the witness stand (or someone else related to the case) is the real killer – with no evidence whatsoever behind it. Jurors have now heard about an alternative suspect for the crime. The judge proclaims that the jurors “must disregard the last statement.” But, can they?

Nine hours with Al Gore

Judy Baker's picture

On Thursday I had the honor and privilege to make a presentation on issues of sustainable urbanization and urban poverty at a small summit organized by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in New York City. Vice President Gore is writing a book about drivers of global change that will cover a range of topics including population and demographics, which was the focus of the meeting. 

His team identified about 12 experts from a range of disciplines—a sociologist; demographer; geographer; researchers working on issues of family, aging, and gender; a writer; and an economist to explore patterns, trends, and current research. I was on a panel along with Saskia Sassen of Columbia University and David Owen of the New Yorker magazine. We all sat in a small room for 9 hours, presenting different perspectives on demographic change, each contributing from our own disciplines. 

Gender and Trade

Otaviano Canuto's picture

Gender inequality and discrimination can affect many areas of life, from a women’s access to basic health services to her prospects for education and future earnings. Accordingly, in order to overcome these disparities, development practitioners have begun to collect gender-disaggregated data and address gender elements in the design and implementation of aid programs.

How to Seize the 85 million Jobs Bonanza

Justin Yifu Lin's picture

Remember the famous joke about an economist who believes so much in rational expectation theory that he would not pick up a $100 dollar bill off the sidewalk under the pretense that if it were actually there someone would have already picked it up? A similar excuse may be invoked to justify why low-income countries that are currently facing high underemployment are not organizing themselves to seize the extraordinary bonanza of the 85 million manufacturing jobs that China will have to shed in the coming years because of fast rising wages for unskilled workers.

Economic development is a process of continuous industrial and technological upgrading in which each country, regardless of its level of development, can succeed if it develops industries that are consistent with its comparative advantage, determined by its endowment structure. As I explained in an earlier blog post for China to maintain GDP growth of nearly 10 percent a year in the coming decades, it must keep moving up the value chain and relocate many of its existing labor-intensive manufacturing industries to countries where wage differentials are large enough to ensure competitiveness in global production networks.

The promise of participatory women’s groups in South Asia: Can education and empowerment save lives?

Jed Friedman's picture

Each year almost 4 million children die within the first four weeks of life, many from preventable or treatable causes. Much programmatic aid is now devoted to devising ways to ensure that simple effective health practices, such as ensuring a more sterile birth environment, are adopted on a wide scale. A number of recent evaluations from South Asia suggest that the active involvement of local women’s groups in problem solving can be among the most cost-effective interventions to prevent deaths.


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