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Building Capacity through Rethinking Development

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This blog is maintained by the Growth and Crisis (GC ) Program of the World Bank Institute.

We bring you timely news, resources, tools, ideas and commentaries on issues related to the global economic crisis and growth.

July 2009

The Gender Perspectives of the Global Crisis of 2008

This is a summary of materials available from ILO and World Bank.

The financial and economic crises of 2008 had gender-specific impacts and placed a disproportionate burden on women, in particular poor, migrant and minority women. Even though both women and men are affected by job losses, women are often laid off first, as men are traditionally considered to be the main “breadwinners”. Some of the implications of the global financial and economic crisis on women are:

Semi-Globalization

As interdependence between the developed (North) and developing countries (South) becomes greater, the economic policies of the North will invariably impact on the South. Globalization, defined as the increasingly free flow of ideas, people, goods, services, and capital that leads to the integration of economies and societies, has become a major force for global change, but much remains to be understood about the transmission channels and potential impacts.  The developing countries commonly complain that the global system is a ‘creditor-run financial system’ and as such, maintaining the stability of the financial system is more important for the advanced countries than mitigating financial crisis in any particular country.