March 8, 2023 - Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on how well-designed economic and financial policies can benefit women, girls, and society in general. The IMF is committed to applying a gender lens to our surveillance, lending, and capacity development work.
Mainstreaming gender at the IMF starts with the recognition that reducing gender disparities goes hand-in-hand with higher economic growth, greater economic stability and resilience, and lower income inequality. At the same time, economic and financial policies can exacerbate or narrow gender disparities. Well-designed macroeconomic, structural, and financial policies can support efficient and inclusive outcomes and equitably benefit women, girls, and the society in general. The strategy lays out how the IMF can help its member countries address gender disparities in the context of carrying out its core functions—surveillance, lending, and capacity development. The strategy comprises four key pillars: first, gender-disaggregated data collection and development of modeling tools to enable staff to conduct policy analysis; second, a robust governance framework for an evenhanded approach across members based on the macro-criticality of gender; third, strengthening collaboration with external partners to benefit from knowledge sharing and peer learning, leverage complementarities, and maximize the impact on the ground; and fourth, the efficient use of resources allocated to gender by putting in place a central unit for realizing scale economies and supporting country teams.
Kristalina Georgieva, Melinda French Gates, Hon. Zainab Ahmed, and Sima Sami Bahous discuss how the IMF, governments, and others can work together to help reduce gender gaps. December 13, 2022
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Senior Advisor on Gender joined a panel discussion on the future of global population growth, and the pressures and opportunities it presents for women and girls. November 15, 2022
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Discussion on why more women are needed in the financial sector, especially in leadership positions, and how this can help with financial sector stability and inclusive growth. October 15, 2022.
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"Gender Equality Boosts Economic Growth and Stability:" remarks by Gita Gopinath, IMF First Deputy Managing Director, delivered at the Korea Gender Equality Forum. September 27-28, 2022.
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At the Center for Global Development, IMF's Ratna Sahay presented the recently approved IMF Strategy Toward Mainstreaming Gender, followed by a panel discussion. August 25, 2022.
See MoreKarnit Flug talks to F&D magazine about central bank accountability and, transparency and becoming the first woman to be governor of the Bank of Israel.
March 2023
Narrowing the gender gap in leadership would foster better performance of firms in the digital financial services industry, which is critical to economic growth. Read more in F&D Magazine.
December 2022
Gender discrimination and the associated biases and barriers to career advancement are unwelcome realities for many working women, and the economics profession is no exception. Read more in F&D Magazine.
December 2022
This paper identifies five key issues that are important for the continued efforts to tackle gender inequality: (i) gender inequality needs to be distinguished from gender gaps. Not all gender gaps necessarily reflect gender inequality as some gender gaps are not driven by the lack of equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities by women and girls, and this has important implications on policy designs to address gender inequity.
December 2, 2022
The stall in progress towards gender parity has resulted in a call for further action to reduce gender inequality, as seen in the Strategy for Mainstreaming Gender at the Fund.
November 8, 2022
Capturing the dividends from women’s economic equity. Too many women are locked out of economic opportunities, which is not only unfair but also harms growth and resilience for all.
September 8, 2022
This paper documents the evolution of gender discriminatory laws around the globe, and sheds light on the role of legal gender equality in income convergence across countries.
July 29, 2022
Well-designed macroeconomic, structural, and financial policies can support efficient and inclusive outcomes and equitably benefit women, girls, and the society in general. The IMF’s first Strategy toward Mainstreaming Gender into the IMF’s core activities, lays out how the IMF can help its member countries address gender disparities in the context of carrying out its core functions—surveillance, lending, and capacity development.
July 28, 2022
In just 20 years, the relationship between per capita income and fertility rates changed dramatically. Find out why and what can policymakers can do. Read more in F&D.
July 26, 2022
While digital financial services have made access to finance easier, faster, and less costly, helping to broaden digital financial inclusion, its impact on gender gaps varies across countries. Moreover, women leaders in the fintech industry, although growing, remain scarce. This paper explores the interaction between ‘women’ and ‘fintech.’
July 15, 2022
Fintech, which delivers financial services digitally, promises to promote financial inclusion and close the gender gap. Using a novel fintech dataset for 114 economies worldwide, this paper shows that fintech adoption significantly improves female employment and reduces gender inequality, the effect being more pronounced in firms without traditional financial access.
June 3, 2022
IMF research has consistently underscored the benefits of equality, including greater productivity and financial stability. To mark this International Women’s Day, we present a roundup of our most recent blogs, podcasts, and research on gender.
March 7, 2022
Labor markets in the UK have been characterized by markedly widening wage inequality for lowskill (non-college) women, a trend that predates the pandemic. We examine the contribution of job polarization to this trend by estimating age, period, and cohort effects for the likelihood of employment in different occupations and the wages earned therein over 2001-2019.
February 25, 2022
This paper goes beyond previous Fund work by categorizing the key sources of laws that impede women’s economic empowerment, as well as ways in which the law can be used as a tool to create behavioral changes and shifts in perceptions of women in the economy.
February 18, 2022
This paper provides an overview of the relation between tax policy and gender equality, covering labor, capital and wealth, as well as consumption taxes. It considers implicit and explicit gender biases and corrective taxation.
February 4, 2022
Domestic abuse is a plague on society. IMF staff research reveals how much it can hurt the economy looking at data from the region where violence against women is most rife: sub-Saharan Africa.
November 24, 2021
In this paper, we explore the economic consequences of violence against women in sub-Saharan Africa using large demographic and health survey data collected pre-pandemic.
November 19, 2021
This paper takes stock of gender budgeting practices in G20 countries and benchmarks country performance using a GB index and data gathered from an IMF survey. All G20 countries have enacted gender focused fiscal policies but the public financial management tools to operationalize these policies are far less established.
November 12, 2021
In this paper, we investigate how epidemics episodes have impacted school dropouts in developing countries, considering 623 epidemics episodes across countries from 1970 to 2019.
November 5, 2021
Women remain underrepresented in economics, yet many have made an outsized impact on the field. Whether it’s in working to eliminate poverty, reinventing development economics, examining social safety nets, or improving democratic institutions, Finance & Development magazine has regularly highlighted the contributions made by women economists.
August 6, 2021
The COVID-19 crisis threatens decades of progress for women and girls. This joint note between IMF/UNDP/UN-Women calls for countries to deploy gender-responsive policies and budgeting, which will help to mitigate the short-term impacts, while also addressing long-term structural drivers of gender inequality.
July 28, 2021
April 30, 2021
IMF estimates confirm the outsized impact on working mothers, and on the economy as a whole. In short, within the world of work, women with young children have been among the biggest casualties of the economic lockdowns.
April 30, 2021
Women have borne the economic and social brunt of the pandemic. National budgets are a powerful tool governments can bring to bear on gender inequalities.
March 5, 2021
The COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain the virus have caused severe disruptions to labor supply and demand worldwide. Understanding who is bearing the burden of the crisis and what drives it is crucial for designing policies going forward.
March 4, 2021
This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality.
March 4, 2021
