Abstract 
of the speech at the conference on "Gender Budgets, Financial Markets, Financing for Development", February 19th and 20th 2002 at the Heinrich-Boell Foundation in Berlin.

"This paper analyses gender dimensions of global finance that underlie the involvement of the women’s movement with financial markets and financial policies. These gender dimensions occur at all levels: the micro level (including the intra-household level); the meso level (industry, banking, government institutions, taxation); and the macro level (nationally as well as globally).

With globalization, the micro, meso and macro levels of finance have become more and more interrelated. For example, credits to developing countries from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank add to the domestic supply of money, leading to increased government consumption and investment and/or reduced foreign exchange shortages. Bilateral development co-operation and World Bank lending often support domestic credit institutions and programmes in developing countries. In this way the 8-10 million households that borrow from micro-credit programmes are indirectly dependent on global sources of finance (Morduch, 1999: 1569). Meanwhile remittances from migrant workers form a substantial source of foreign exchange in countries like the Philippines and Bangladesh. Adopting this understanding of global finance as a tightly woven web of macro, meso and micro conditions, the paper examines how global finance influences, and is influenced by, the differentiated economic positions of women and men. Such gender analysis of finance is a new field of study. Therefore, my contribution here should be taken as only preliminary. It does not claim to cover all possible intersections between finance and gender.

Within this limitation, the paper discusses four gender biases of global finance: (1) the under-representation of women in financial decision-making; (2) increased gender gaps in the economic positions of women and men; (3) the gender-based instability of financial markets; and (4) inefficient resource allocation in financial markets due to gender discrimination.

The paper then describes the globalisation of the women’s movement and its attention to problems of global finance. The conclusion of the paper argues that the activities of the women’s movement in the field of global finance would probably become more effective with a shift of focus from the micro to the macro level. Finance is increasingly a globalized phenomenon, and the gender problems to which it gives rise need to be addressed with more than training or women’s credit programmes. Therefore, the women’s movement might consider a shift towards discussing issues like the financing of human development with loans or grants, the IMF monopoly on financial policy advice, and gender audits of influential financial institutions."

The paper has been published as:
Irene van Staveren, ‘Global Finance and Gender’ in Jan Aart Scholte and Albrecht Schnabel (Eds), Civil Society and Global Finance. London: Routledge.

<<  zurück

Aktualisiert: 13.02.2005