Andrew Morrison

Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth

This paper reviews empirical findings from economic analyses of the role of gender equality and womens empowerment in reducing poverty and stimulating growth. Going beyond the large literature documenting the impact of female education on a range of development outcomes, the paper presents evidence on the impact of womens access to markets (labor, land, and credit) and womens decision-making power within households on poverty reduction and productivity at the individual and household level. The paper also summarizes evidence from studies examining the relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level. Although micro level effects of gender equality on individual productivity and human development outcomes have been well documented and have important ramifications for aggregate economic performance, establishing an empirical relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level has proven to be more challenging. The paper concludes by identifying priority areas for future research.

Preventing and Responding to Gender-Based Violence in Middle and Low-Income Countries: A Global Review and Analysis

Worldwide, patterns of violence against women differ markedly from violence against men. For example, women are more likely than men to be sexually assaulted or killed by someone they know. The United Nations has defined violence against women asgender-basedviolence, to acknowledge that such violence is rooted in gender inequality and is often tolerated and condoned by laws, institutions, and community norms. Violence against women is not only a profound violation of human rights, but also a costly impediment to a countrys national development. While gender-based violence occurs in many forms throughout the life cycle, this review focuses on two of the most common types-physical intimate partner violence and sexual violence by any perpetrator. Unfortunately, the knowledge base about effective initiatives to prevent and respond to gender-based violence is relatively limited. Few approaches have been rigorously evaluated, even in high-income countries. And such evaluations involve numerous methodological challenges. Nonetheless, the authors review what is known about more and less effective-or at least promising-approaches to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. They present definitions, recent statistics, health consequences, costs, and risk factors of gender-based violence. The authors analyze good practice initiatives in the justice, health, and education sectors, as well as multisectoral approaches. For each of these sectors, they examine initiatives that have addressed laws and policies, institutional reforms, community mobilization, and individual behavior change strategies. Finally, the authors identify priorities for future research and action, including funding research on the health and socioeconomic costs of violence against women, encouraging science-based program evaluations, disseminating evaluation results across countries, promoting investment in effective prevention and treatment initiatives, and encouraging public-private partnerships.

The international migration of women

Women now account for nearly half of all international migration. Theoretical and empirical models that omit gendered determinants and impacts of migration are missing key elements of the story. Womens roles in destination labor markets and in remittance flows-to cite just two examples-are crucial to understanding the development impacts of international migration. This volume surveys the state of our knowledge and provides new research on the gendered determinants and impacts of migration and remittances as well as on the patterns of labor market participation of women migrants. It also sketches a road map for future research on gender and international migration. This research on women and international migration illustrates the type of analytical work that can shape policies to economically empower women migrants as well as women left behind by male migration. It is authors hope that such analysis will lead to policies that boost productivity, raise incomes, and improve welfare in both sending and receiving countries. This volume addresses several issues. The introductory chapter provides an overview of the volume; it includes a description of methodology, data, main results, and conclusions from the six remaining chapters. The second chapter reviews the existing research on gender and international migration and can be considered a starting point for the remaining chapters. The third chapter focuses on the gendered determinants of migration and remittances in rural Mexico, an important sending country. The following two chapters (chapters 4 and 5) address the impact of migration and remittances on sending countries and provide analysis of household- level data from Ghana and Mexico. Chapter 6 turns to the labor market participation and performance of female migrants in a major destination country, the United States. The volume concludes with a forward-looking chapter that summarizes the major findings, links those to migration policy, and outlines some of the important research and policy issues that need to be addressed in the future.

The Effect of Conditional Transfers on School Performance and Child Labor: Evidence from an Ex-Post Impact Evaluation in Costa Rica

Conditional transfer programs are becoming a common approach to influence household decisions. The evidence to date is that these programs are good at promoting certain outcomes such as school attendance, but that other outcomes such as reducing child labor are more difficult to achieve. This study examines the impact of Superemonos, a conditional transfer program in Costa Rica, which provides poor families with a subsidy for the purchase of food conditional upon children regularly attending school. Using three different empirical techniques—simple comparison of mean outcomes, regression analysis and propensity score matching—we examine the program’s impact on school attendance, performance in school and child labor. We find strong evidence that the program achieves its goal of improving school attendance and much weaker evidence regarding school performance. The program does not reduce the likelihood that youth will work. These findings are discussed in the context of the results from impact evaluations of other conditional transfer programs.

Addressing gender-based violence in the Latin American and Caribbean Region : A critical review of interventions

The authors present an overview of gender-based violence (GBV) in Latin America, with special emphasis on good practice interventions to prevent GBV or offer services to its survivors or perpetrators. Intimate partner violence and sexual coercion are the most common forms of GBV, and these are the types of GBV that they analyze. GBV has serious consequences for womens health and well-being, ranging from fatal outcomes, such as homicide, suicide, and AIDS-related deaths, to nonfatal outcomes, such as physical injuries, chronic pain syndrome, gastrointestinal disorders, complications during pregnancy, miscarriage, and low birth-weight of children. GBV also poses significant costs for the economies of developing countries, including lower worker productivity and incomes, and lower rates of accumulation of human and social capital. The authors examine good practice approaches in justice, health, education, and multisectoral approaches. In each sector, they identify good practices for: (1) law and policies; (2) institutional reforms; (3) community-level interventions; and (4) individual behavior change strategies.

Equality for Women: Where Do We Stand on Millennium Development Goal 3?

There is compelling evidence of the importance of gender equality for poverty reduction and sustainable growth. So it should come as no surprise that most development actors-international agencies, bilateral donors, and most developing countries, have an official policy for promoting gender equality. Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3) on gender equality and womens empowerment is shared global commitment. With only seven years remaining until the end date for the MDGs, it is an opportune time to take stock of where the world stands in terms of progress toward gender equality. This volume documents trends both on the official MDG3 indicators and on an expanded set of indicators that provide a more complete measure of gender equality, especially in the area of womens economic empowerment. The message that emerges is both hopeful and sobering: progress toward equality in capabilities has been considerable, but progress toward equality of opportunities for womens economic livelihoods leaves much to be desired. Beyond tracking trends toward gender equality, the volume reviews different measures of gender equality and estimates the financial resources required to achieve this objective. While necessarily imprecise, such estimates can provide a rough guide as to whether the level of effort devoted by international donors and developing countries is adequate in the area of womens economic empowerment.