Gender and the financial crisis

The current global financial crisis is gendered in its causes as well as in its consequences for human rights. The financial architecture itself is under critical scrutiny, with significant proposals for its reforms; this architecture is gendered, as are the proposed reforms. The crisis is having disproportionate impacts on the poor and on women; starting from a crisis in finance focused on the USA, the world is now experiencing a crisis in the ‘real’ economies of many countries, though with some variation in its forms. The policy responses to the crisis, include global, regional and national bail out, stimulus and recovery packages, which have different but often unacknowledged gendered consequences.

This paper seeks to identify these hidden gendered causes and consequences and subject them to analysis so as to improve the knowledge base for policy development. This includes gendered assumptions underlying financial and macroeconomic policies, the gender composition of decisionmakers and of beneficiaries or losers in the financial and ‘real’ economy; as well as issues of regulation, transparency and democracy, which have implications for women’s human rights and empowerment. There are not only issues at a global level, but also significant variations between countries and between regions. This paper would assist in the development of the knowledge base to improve the policy response to the financial crisis by providing analyses of the gendered causes and consequences of the crisis. In future research work, comparing the causes, effects and policy developments by country and region would provide a more wide-ranging analysis. Such a focus on national and regional policies, though global comparisons and coordination would make an important contribution.