Last week, Heather Brotsos from SIA represented SI at a series of World Bank and International Monetary Fund Civil Society Forms in Washington D.C. Over 600 Civil Society Organisations participated in a four day programme of discussions to
promote dialogue between civil society representatives and these two international
organisation. Topics included climate change and energy, gender, aid dependency,
and jobs as well as mechanisms for World Bank and civil society engagement.

The main event for Soroptimist International was the Open Forum on Gender. Hala Gorani, of CNN International, hosted the
event. The World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Maria Eitel,
President and CEO of the Nike Foundation and Kakenya Ntaiya, Founder of the
Academy for Girls in Kenya,

featured as panellists. They discussed why gender equality is not only important for women’s
empowerment, but also economically smart. 
A number of reports were generated by the World Bank and others to build
this case.

“Women now represent 40% of the global labor
force, 43% of the world’s agricultural labor force and more than half the
world’s university students. 
Productivity will be raised if their skills and talents are used more
fully.  For example, if women farmers
were to have the same access as men to fertilizers and other inputs, maize
yields would increase by almost one-sixth in Malawi
and Ghana”.

Development has closed some gender gaps in
educational enrollment, life expectancy and labour force participation.  However, “females are more likely to die [prematurely], relative to
males, in many low- and middle-income countries than their counterparts in rich
countries.  These deaths are estimated at
about 3.9 million women and girls under the age of 60 each year.  About two-fifths of them are never born,
one-sixth die in early childhood, and over one-third die in their reproductive
years.  And this number is growing in
Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in childhood and the reproductive years and in
the countries hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic".

Further, disparities in girls’ schooling
persist.  There is unequal access to
economic opportunities and differences in the voice in households and in
society. Priorities of the World Bank include:

• Addressing excess deaths of
  girls and women and eliminating gender disadvantage in education where these
  remain entrenched.
• Closing differences in access
  to economic opportunities and the ensuing earnings and productivity gaps
  between women and men.
• Shrinking gender differences in
  voice within households and societies.
• Limiting the reproduction of
  gender inequality across generation.

The World Bank has launched a campaign to
“Think Equal” in which they are looking to solicit ideas across the world to
solve this “global challenge”.  Click here for more information.

For more information, read the main messages of the World Development Report 2012: Gender Development and Equality. To watch a full video of the live forum: http://live.worldbank.org/open-forum-gender. For general information about the work of the world bank and gender, visit: www.worldbank.org/gender .