{"id":1604,"date":"2009-04-23T08:46:14","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T13:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2009-04-23T08:46:14","modified_gmt":"2009-04-23T13:46:14","slug":"global-exchange-cuts-in-social-services-affect-women-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2009\/04\/23\/global-exchange-cuts-in-social-services-affect-women-worldwide\/","title":{"rendered":"GLOBAL EXCHANGE: Cuts in Social Services Affect Women Worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

servicesTravels and graduations behind us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re back! This month foremost on our minds is the issue of budget cuts. How many times will history have to repeat itself before we get it right?
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\nQuestion:<\/strong> What do cuts in services<\/a> for disabled and vulnerable people, shoddy food regulation<\/a> practices that are making people in some states very sick, the recent rise in crime and simultaneous reductions in police resources<\/a>, and even Nebraska\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability to provide adequate services for troubled children and their families<\/a> have in common? <\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong> These recent phenomena can be traced in some part to the reduction in social services that is common in national, state, and local budgets when trying to prevent the onset of a deep fiscal crisis. While these phenomena are all deeply troubling, even more troubling is the fact that there is historic evidence that such cuts do not work and, in many cases, actually have the opposite effect. That is, when the state no longer pays for things like health care, education, and even local security, there are extremely negative consequences for everyday people, especially for vulnerable groups such as the elderly, the disabled, and children, who depend on such services for daily survival. <\/p>\n

In the 1980s, the world saw the effect of these policies writ large in the international arena, with so-called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Structural Adjustment Plans\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, or plans put in place by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which laid out various conditions that had to be met by countries in order to get a loan from both establishments. Most of these conditions involved the opening of markets, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153free\u00e2\u20ac\u009d trade conditions, and extreme reductions in state provisions of social services like health care and education; it was argued that such services should instead be privatized. In short, the prevailing sentiment was this: let the markets take over and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see what happens.<\/p>\n

What happened was that structural adjustment plans had disastrous effects, particularly in many parts of Latin America <\/a> (where the period of heavy structural adjustment has led many to refer to the 1980s as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost decade\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and Africa <\/a> (where 34 countries implemented some form of a structural adjustment plan in the 1980s). Further, women were the ones to bear the brunt of many of the negative effects of these policies. According to Dzodzi Tsikata of the Third World Network<\/a>, this is because such policies \u00e2\u20ac\u0153assume the unlimited availability of women’s unpaid labour and time and\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 have tended to see women as a resource to be tapped to promote the efficiency of free market policies and to deal with the short-fall in access to social services.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In many instances, this leads to an increase in women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s working burdens and social responsibilities. In other words, women are expected to shoulder the majority of the burden of reductions in state provided services. And this phenomenon is not limited to developing countries (and surely not when the developing countries in question are following the economic prescriptions of their Western donors and lenders) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c critics in the US have also argued that domestic budget cuts have a disproportionate effect on women and children<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The USA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s neighbor up north hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done much better. Kathleen Lahley, a Law professor at Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s University in Canada outlined in her gender analysis of the 2009 budget, key ways in which the Canadian government has missed the mark. Not only does her analysis make for good reading, it also demonstrates how women in Canada will not directly benefit as much as men will from the $64 billion in spending and tax cuts. Gender equity requirements have not been included in the spending programs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the result is a gender-skewed stimulus. <\/p>\n

With so much evidence on the negative effects of cuts to social services, one wonders why this model is still pursued in such a fashion and, further, whether there are any movements (policy or otherwise) to reverse the ongoing trend, particularly as global leaders consider changes to international economic frameworks in light of the recent crisis. <\/p>\n

As we can see, leaders in North America don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be the fastest learners, but what about the rest of the world? The World Bank and the IMF? In 2007 Elaine Zuckerman, a former World Bank economist, challenged the Bretton Woods institutions to improve their track record of short-changing women. For all intents and purposes, it seems that World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, is trying to rise to the challenge. At last month\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s G20 meeting in London, he spoke of the Bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plan to develop a Vulnerability Framework. The fund would provide support infrastructure, agriculture, small- to medium- size businesses and micro-finance. Past lessons may just be paving the way to a more gender-balanced future for the World Bank. This plan would benefit not only men through infrastructure jobs, but also women who are heavily involved in agriculture, are the majority of small business owners, and represent 85% of the poorest 93 million clients of Microfinance Institutions. This effort would require a contribution of 0.7% of more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153developed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d countries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 stimulus packages. Maybe this is their way of making up for the gaping holes left at home through budget cuts\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6nice but gender equality should happen at home too.<\/p>\n

Who would have thought that the G20 would bring us even more good news?! We were a bit skeptical at first; the official documents that come out of these meetings rarely mention gender equality. Oh, we of little faith! The G20 countries pledged to support the World Bank\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Vulnerability Framework AND addressed the human dimension to the crisis and the pledge to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153build a fair and family-friendly labour market for both women and men.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Steps in the right direction. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hope this will manifest itself in thoughtful gender-conscious budget cuts across the board. The entire Official Communique can be seen here.<\/p>\n

Finally, Argentine President Cristina Fern\u00c3\u00a1ndez de Kirchner called for a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new starting point\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in hemispheric relations at the recent Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago (the country that gave you Blogger TAB \ud83d\ude42 ). While much attention has been given to Presidents Obama, Castro and Chavez, we recommend you take a look at President Fernandez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speech, which was in our opinion one of the, if not the, best (though we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been able to find any links to it). Further, the Summit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Declaration of Commitment\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preamble Point 6 is calypso music to our ears: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We recognize the importance of considering the differentiated needs of women and men in promoting and ensuring the integration of the gender perspective as a cross cutting issue in national and hemispheric policies, plans and programmes to be implemented in the political, economic labour, social and cultural spheres\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p>\n

At the very least, countries globally have demonstrated a rhetorical commitment to gender-balanced recovery and development. It remains to be seen how these plans will be put into action. Judging from past experiences, the best way to ensure that these rhetorical commitments are implemented in practice is through the work of gender researchers, advocates and practitioners, who must hold governments and international organizations accountable for the commitments that they make in these international forums. So, please, join us in reminding local, state, and national leaders to stick to their commitments to build a more gender-inclusive world. Let the fiscal crisis be used as an opportunity to strengthen gender equitable programs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not an excuse to cut much-needed services for women, men, and children. <\/p>\n


\nImage Credit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travels and graduations behind us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re back! This month foremost on our minds is the issue of budget cuts. How many times will history have to repeat itself before we get it right? Question: What do cuts in services for disabled and vulnerable people, shoddy food regulation practices that are making people in some states […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1907,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21104],"tags":[131,1399,33,119,21924],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-exchange","tag-economy","tag-global","tag-health","tag-poverty","tag-womens-economic-empowerment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1907"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}