The education of a gender skeptic: what I learnt from the WDR 2012
Before I started working on the World Developmnet Report 2012 (WDR), I often thought of gender equality being at the periphery of my work on development. Like many other World Bank colleagues, I would have told you: “Yes, gender equality matters and it is a good thing.” But in my mind gender equality was something that happened pretty much automatically with economic development. If asked about policy priorities, I would say: focus on growth, on creating jobs, on reducing poverty and improving equity in opportunities, and gender equality will come right along. But I was wrong. Gender equality is not just something that ‘happens’ with development. Gender equality is both fundamental to and a means for development. And countries need to work hard at achieving it, because it does not come about on its own with economic growth.
Jackson Hole was abuzz last week as top economists rubbed shoulders with central bankers, but the stuffed bears in the lobby of the venue seemed symbolic of the angst permeating world markets.
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.
