{ "title": "Empowerment—the Amartya Sen Lecture, By Christine Lagarde Managing Director, International Monetary Fund", "publication": "IMF News, June 6, 2014", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614", "canonical": "https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614", "overlayPath": "/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/index.md", "summary": "Income disparities - Observation: the gap between the haves and the have-nots has risen substantially in recent years; “we might have avoided a second Great Depression, but we have not avoided a second Gilded Age.” - Amartya Sen’s capability approach emphasized: judge advantage by capability to do t", "authors": [ "Christine Lagarde Managing Director" ], "publishDate": "2014-06-06", "sections": [ { "heading": "Introduction", "content": "- Speech delivered by Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund.\n- London, June 6, 2014.\n- Lecture framed around the intersection of justice and economics: the issue of empowerment.\n- Three layers of empowerment addressed: individual, institutional, and multilateral." }, { "heading": "Empowerment of individuals — Findings and implications", "content": "- Central thesis: empowerment = economic opportunity and the ability to freely choose one’s path in life; cutting away obstacles to human flourishing.\n- Obstacles addressed: income disparities and gender disparities.\n\nIncome disparities\n- Observation: the gap between the haves and the have-nots has risen substantially in recent years; “we might have avoided a second Great Depression, but we have not avoided a second Gilded Age.”\n- Amartya Sen’s capability approach emphasized: judge advantage by capability to do the things people value.\n- Mechanisms by which inequality hinders empowerment:\n - Lack of decent nutrition, healthcare, education, skills, and finance reduces people’s capacity to get ahead.\n - Economic insecurity can cause underinvestment in skills and education.\n - Higher inequality associated with lower levels of contentment and less intergenerational mobility.\n- Policy implication: policies to tame excessive income inequality can be win-win if carefully chosen and calibrated.\n- Policy examples recommended:\n - Boost spending on health.\n - Boost spending on education.\n - Active labor market policies.\n - In-work benefits.\n- Education highlighted as a uniquely powerful agent of empowerment.\n- IMF contribution: development and public opening of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for government officials and the general public to enhance knowledge and skills in IMF-related policy areas.\n\nGender disparities\n- Key statistics and findings:\n - Globally, women earn only three-quarters as much as men, even with the same job and same education.\n - Women are underrepresented in the formal sector and overrepresented in the informal sector.\n - Women spend twice as much time on household chores as men—and four times as much on childcare.\n - Women make up 70 percent of the billion people living on less than a dollar a day.\n - Women are the first to be submerged by economic crisis and are more likely to be fired when they reach the top.\n - One study cited: women spend up to 90 percent of their earnings on health and education, as opposed to just 30-40 percent for men.\n - Women account for 70 percent of global consumer spending.\n - Eliminating gender gaps in labor force participation could raise income per capita by:\n - Middle East and North Africa—27 percent.\n - South Asia—23 percent.\n- Amartya Sen’s contribution: attention to “missing” women and the moral imperative to increase women’s voice and agency.\n- Policy implications recommended:\n - Focus on education for girls and women.\n - Strengthen ownership rights for women.\n - Expand employment opportunities outside the home.\n - Promote policies to boost women’s participation in economies such as Korea and Japan." }, { "heading": "Empowerment of institutions — Findings, metrics, and country examples", "content": "- Premise: institutions and governance structures significantly shape individual empowerment through accountability, transparency, and impartiality.\n- IMF role in capacity building:\n - Devotes a quarter of its budget to capacity building.\n - Since 2008, provided training to most of its 188 member countries, and technical assistance to 90 percent of them.\n - Low-income and lower-middle income countries receive two-thirds of the IMF’s technical assistance and half of its training.\n - Special focus areas: tax systems, public fund management, financial sector oversight, quality of economic statistics.\n - The IMF acts as a global conduit for sharing knowledge and know-how through technical assistance and training.\n\nCountry and regional examples of IMF capacity building\n- Myanmar:\n - Identified as the IMF’s third largest recipient of technical assistance.\n - Reforms assisted: setting up an independent central bank, removing exchange restrictions, establishing a functioning foreign exchange market.\n - Current priorities: tax administration, financial sector oversight, economic statistics.\n - Myanmar’s tax revenue noted as a mere 7 percent of GDP.\n - Goal: boost tax revenue to fund health, education, and infrastructure and expand access to credit, including for women and rural areas.\n- Cambodia:\n - Assistance to restore legal framework and trust in the financial system after Khmer Rouge legacy.\n - Result: broader rural access to banks compared to a decade ago.\n- Kosovo:\n - Post-independence capacity building: creation of a brand new central bank and subsequent training support to other central banks.\n- Peru:\n - Rapid growth but lagging tax capacity; a fifth of revenue lost through avoidance and evasion.\n - IMF assistance aimed at strengthening tax collection and public finance management to support programs like Juntos (conditional cash transfer).\n- Arab transition countries:\n - Assistance in tax policy and administration, financial sector reform, monetary policy, capital markets, and statistics.\n - Delivery through regional technical assistance center and regional training institute.\n- Sub-Saharan Africa:\n - Conference on “Africa rising”; emphasis on strong fiscal regimes to manage resource revenues for current and future generations.\n - Technical assistance provided to Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania.\n - Hands-on help delivered through five regional technical assistance centers in Gabon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritius, and Tanzania.\n\n- Overarching point: empowerment of people depends fundamentally on empowerment of institutions; continuous institutional capacity building is needed across all members as the global economy becomes more intricate." }, { "heading": "Empowerment of multilateralism — Analysis and recommendations", "content": "- Argument: many contemporary challenges are global (demographics, climate change, rising inequality, fragile states) and require multilateral cooperation.\n- Central tensions:\n - World becoming more integrated via trade, finance, technology, and communications.\n - Simultaneous diffusion of power and potential fragmentation toward more diverse stakeholders.\n - Risk: tension between integration and fragmentation could cause indecision, impasse, and insecurity.\n- Moral foundation: Amartya Sen’s view that shared humanity entails responsibilities beyond one’s neighborhood.\n- Policy implications and institutional roles:\n - Preserve and update effective multilateral instruments and institutions developed postwar.\n - Make institutions like the IMF fully representative of current global economic reality.\n - Develop a “new multilateralism” that engages emerging powers and expanding networks and coalitions embedded in the global economy.\n - Invest in global social capital and a global civil society that provides space for all voices and long-term perspective.\n- IMF’s role emphasized:\n - Convening 188 countries to share knowledge, collaborate, and lend mutual support.\n - Acting as a convener and capacity builder to foster cooperation that unlocks opportunities and reduces obstacles to empowerment." }, { "heading": "Conclusion — Core messages", "content": "- Economic empowerment equated with freedom, dignity, and opportunity.\n- Three pillars to promote empowerment:\n - Enabling policies (education, health, labor market and social policies).\n - Enabling institutions (accountable, transparent, impartial capacity for fiscal, monetary, and financial governance).\n - Enabling international cooperation (reinvigorated multilateralism and inclusive global engagement).\n- Amartya Sen invoked as a guiding intellectual force whose thinking on capability, justice, and global responsibility informs the path to empowerment.\n\nInternational Monetary Fund.\n\n---\n\n Content in this bundle\n\n- 060614apdf (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- 060614cpdf (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- 060614jpdf (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n- 060614rpdf (PDF){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}\n\n---\n\n References\n\n- Myanmar and the IMF\n- Cambodia and the IMF\n- Republic of Kosovo and the IMF\n- Peru and the IMF\n- Republic of Mozambique and the IMF\n- United Republic of Tanzania and the IMF\n- Technical Assistance -- A Factsheet\n- Speeches\n- Christine Lagarde\n- PRESS CENTER\n- https://www.imf.org/en/home\n\nSource: https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614" } ], "bullets": [ "[Markdown version](/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/index.md)", "[Structured JSON version](/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/index.json)", "[Bundle manifest](/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/bundle-manifest.json)", "Authors: Christine Lagarde Managing Director", "Published: June 6, 2014", "Speech delivered by Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund.", "London, June 6, 2014.", "Lecture framed around the intersection of justice and economics: the issue of empowerment.", "Three layers of empowerment addressed: individual, institutional, and multilateral.", "Central thesis: empowerment = economic opportunity and the ability to freely choose one’s path in life; cutting away obstacles to human flourishing.", "Obstacles addressed: income disparities and gender disparities.", "Observation: the gap between the haves and the have-nots has risen substantially in recent years; “we might have avoided a second Great Depression, but we have not avoided a second Gilded Age.”", "Amartya Sen’s capability approach emphasized: judge advantage by capability to do the things people value.", "Mechanisms by which inequality hinders empowerment:", "Policy implication: policies to tame excessive income inequality can be win-win if carefully chosen and calibrated.", "Policy examples recommended:", "Education highlighted as a uniquely powerful agent of empowerment.", "IMF contribution: development and public opening of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for government officials and the general public to enhance knowledge and skills in IMF-related policy areas.", "Key statistics and findings:", "Amartya Sen’s contribution: attention to “missing” women and the moral imperative to increase women’s voice and agency.", "Policy implications recommended:", "Premise: institutions and governance structures significantly shape individual empowerment through accountability, transparency, and impartiality.", "IMF role in capacity building:", "Myanmar:", "Cambodia:", "Kosovo:", "Peru:", "Arab transition countries:", "Sub-Saharan Africa:", "Overarching point: empowerment of people depends fundamentally on empowerment of institutions; continuous institutional capacity building is needed across all members as the global economy becomes more intricate.", "Argument: many contemporary challenges are global (demographics, climate change, rising inequality, fragile states) and require multilateral cooperation.", "Central tensions:", "Moral foundation: Amartya Sen’s view that shared humanity entails responsibilities beyond one’s neighborhood.", "Policy implications and institutional roles:", "IMF’s role emphasized:", "Economic empowerment equated with freedom, dignity, and opportunity.", "Three pillars to promote empowerment:", "Amartya Sen invoked as a guiding intellectual force whose thinking on capability, justice, and global responsibility informs the path to empowerment.", "[060614apdf (PDF)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/arabic/np/speeches/2014/060614apdf.pdf){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}", "[060614cpdf (PDF)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/chinese/np/speeches/2014/060614cpdf.pdf){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}", "[060614jpdf (PDF)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/japanese/np/speeches/2014/060614jpdf.pdf){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}", "[060614rpdf (PDF)](/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/russian/np/speeches/2014/060614rpdf.pdf){rel=\"external\" type=\"application/pdf\"}", "[Myanmar and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/MMR/index.htm)", "[Cambodia and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/KHM/index.htm)", "[Republic of Kosovo and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/UVK/index.htm)", "[Peru and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/PER/index.htm)", "[Republic of Mozambique and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/MOZ/index.htm)", "[United Republic of Tanzania and the IMF](http://www.imf.org/external/country/TZA/index.htm)", "[Technical Assistance -- A Factsheet](https://www.imf.org/en/about/factsheets/imf-capacity-development)", "[Speeches](https://www.imf.org/en/news/searchnews)", "[Christine Lagarde](https://www.imf.org/external/np/omd/bios/cl.htm)", "[PRESS CENTER](http://presscenter.imf.org/)", "[https://www.imf.org/en/home](https://www.imf.org/en/home)" ], "related": [ { "title": "060614apdf", "role": "document", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/arabic/np/speeches/2014/060614apdf.pdf", "binary": { "path": "/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/arabic/np/speeches/2014/060614apdf.pdf", "mime": "application/pdf" } }, { "title": "060614cpdf", "role": "document", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/chinese/np/speeches/2014/060614cpdf.pdf", "binary": { "path": "/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/chinese/np/speeches/2014/060614cpdf.pdf", "mime": "application/pdf" } }, { "title": "060614jpdf", "role": "document", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/japanese/np/speeches/2014/060614jpdf.pdf", "binary": { "path": "/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/japanese/np/speeches/2014/060614jpdf.pdf", "mime": "application/pdf" } }, { "title": "060614rpdf", "role": "document", "sourceUrl": "https://www.imf.org/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/russian/np/speeches/2014/060614rpdf.pdf", "binary": { "path": "/-/media/websites/imf/imported/external/russian/np/speeches/2014/060614rpdf.pdf", "mime": "application/pdf" } } ], "alternates": { "markdown": "/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/index.md", "json": "/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/index.json", "bundleManifest": "/en/news/articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp060614/bundle-manifest.json" }, "generatedAtUtc": "2026-09-27T10:02:54.755Z" }