Neoliberalism with a Feminist Face: Crafting a new Hegemony at the World Bank

ARTICLES Elisabeth Prügl Pages 30-53 | Published online: 13 Jul 2016 Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2016.1198043 In this article ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION MAKING GENDER EQUALITY COMPATIBLE WITH ECONOMIC GROWTH DEFINING GENDER EQUALITY: BEYOND OPPORTUNITIES AND OUTCOMES INSTITUTIONS: MAKING MARKETS WORK FOR WOMEN MAKING WOMEN WORK FOR MARKETS CONCLUSION Supplemental material References Full Article Figures & data References Supplemental Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions PDF ABSTRACT Neoliberalism has been discredited as a result of proliferating crises (financial, ecological, care) and mounting inequality. This paper examines the growing research on gender at the World Bank as a site for the construction of a new hegemonic consensus around neoliberalism. Drawing on a computer-assisted inductive analysis of thirty-four Bank publications on gender since 2001, the paper documents Bank efforts to establish a positive relationship between gender equality and growth; shows the expansion of the Bank’s definition of equality as equal opportunity; illustrates how the focus on institutions has enabled engagement with core feminist concerns, such as equality in the family; and traces how incorporating notions of women’s empowerment and agency has made possible a focus on domestic violence. The paper concludes by emphasizing the ambiguous effects of the Bank’s new neoliberalism, which continues to use the market as the arbiter of social values while providing openings for feminist agendas. KEYWORDS: World Bank, neoliberalism, gender equality JEL Codes: B54 INTRODUCTION For many years, feminists have observed a tendency for commitments to gender equality to “evaporate” in development bureaucracies (Sarah Longwe 1995 Longwe, Sarah. 1995. “The Evaporation of Policies for Women’s Advancement.” In A Commitment to the World’s Women: Perspectives for Beijing and Beyond, edited by Noeleen Heyer, Sushma Kapoor, and Joanne Sandler, 126–40. New York: United Nations Development Fund for Women. [Google Scholar]; Caroline O. N. Moser and Annalise Moser 2005 Moser, Caroline O. N. and Annalise Moser. 2005. “Gender Mainstreaming since Beijing: A Review of Success and Limitations in International Institutions.” Gender and Development 13(2): 11–22. doi: 10.1080/13552070512331332283[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]). While development agencies have made public statements and written policy papers pledging to make the advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment a goal, they have translated these pledges into practice only with difficulty. But recent activities at the World Bank suggest a new determination to finally take gender mainstreaming seriously. With its 2007–10 Gender Action Plan, the Bank has put women’s empowerment forcefully at the center of its agenda. Under the slogan “gender equality as smart economics,” it has shifted its gender equality work from a focus on women’s education and health to economic growth and poverty alleviation, and allocated resources to accomplish this reorientation. The 2012 World Development Report (WDR) examined the relationship between gender equality and development, and summarized accumulating research evidence on the topic at the Bank and in development economics more broadly. Moreover, in a sign of significant progress in mainstreaming gender into Bank operations, staff in fiscal year 2013 reported that 98 percent of Bank lending was “gender-informed,” translating into “a dollar figure of almost US$31 billion” (Development Committee 2013 Development Committee. 2013. “Update on the Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group.” siteresources.worldbank.org/DEVCOMMINT/Documentation/23475671/DC20013-0010(E)GenderEquality.pdf . [Google Scholar]: 3). Under the leadership of its new president, Jim Yong Kim, the Bank in 2014 reorganized and declared gender as one of four “cross-cutting solution areas,” and in its successful application for the 2014–17 replenishment of the International Development Association (which funds poverty-oriented operations), it proposed gender as a “special theme.” There clearly are reasons for feminists to take a closer look. In this paper, I propose to do so from a perspective that situates the World Bank’s heightened interest in gender in the context of the contemporary organization of global capitalism. Political economists have observed that there currently is no global consensus over the way economies should be organized. Neoliberalism has lost its status as a hegemonic ideology as various crises have undermined the credibility of radical free-market economics. Whether one agrees with the assessment of an underlying crisis of over-accumulation, identified acute crises have included the financial crisis of 2008, a parallel food crisis, worsening ecological crises, and, importantly for the purposes of this paper, a crisis of care and depletion linked to the globalization of reproduction (Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Naná de Graaff, and Henk Overbeek 2012 van Apeldoorn, Bastiaan, Naná de Graaff, and Henk Overbeek. 2012. “The Reconfiguration of the Global State–Capital Nexus.” Globalizations 9(4): 471–86. doi: 10.1080/14747731.2012.699915[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Eric Helleiner 2014 Helleiner, Eric. 2014. The Status Quo Crisis: Global Financial Governance after the 2008 Meltdown. New York: Oxford University Press.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Shirin M. Rai, Catherine Hoskyns, and Dania Thomas 2014 Rai, Shirin M., Catherine Hoskyns, and Dania Thomas. 2014. “Depletion: The Cost of Social Reproduction.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16(1): 86–105. doi: 10.1080/14616742.2013.789641[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). These have all contributed to an erosion of consensus over neoliberal economic policies. The premise of this article is that the excesses of market fundamentalism have created forceful counter movements that have opened new policy space for regulating economies in a more sustainable manner and for redefining the role of the state in contemporary processes of capital accumulation. Some scholars have suggested that we may be witnessing a “re-embedding” of the economy in the Polanyian sense, with the state expanding its moderating role to protect society from the ravages of a free market fostered by decades of neoliberal policies (Shahra Razavi 2009 Razavi, Shahra. 2009. The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards “Embedded Liberalism”? New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers 2014 Block, Fred and Margaret R. Somers. 2014. The Power of Market Fundamentalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). But the double movement between marketization and social protection identified by Polanyi may be an incomplete description of current processes. Instead, Nancy Fraser has argued, we may be witnessing a triple movement in which social forces (feminist, anti-racist, and postcolonial) pursue emancipation in addition, seeking to find a balance between the oppressive power relations often encoded in social protection on the one hand, and the depredations of the market on the other (Nancy Fraser 2011 Fraser, Nancy. 2011. “Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polanyian Conception of Capitalist Crisis.” In Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian, 137–58. New York: New York University Press.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 2013 Fraser, Nancy. 2013. “A Triple Movement? Parsing the Politics of Crisis after Polanyi.” New Left Review 81: 119–32. [Google Scholar]). At the intersection of these processes, no clear alternative has emerged to take the place of neoliberalism. We may be living what Antonio Gramsci (2011 Gramsci, Antonio. 2011. Prison Notebooks, Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]: 33) has described as an interregnum in which “the old is dying but the new cannot yet be born.” The World Bank’s forceful embracing of gender mainstreaming since 2007 can be understood as part of a struggle over the terms of the incorporation of women and reproductive labor into contemporary commodity relations within the triple movement of marketization, social protection, and emancipation. I argue that the focus on gender equality in the Bank constitutes an attempt at establishing a new consensus over the regulation of the economy, a tempered version of neoliberalism that carries a feminist face. Neoliberalism with a feminist face builds on the post-Washington consensus that replaced pure neoclassical policy prescriptions in the 1990s. This consensus recognized that development needed a balance of financial and social policies, emphasized the importance of institutions to constructing successful markets, and accepted the need to address issues of social inclusion (Kate Bedford 2009a Bedford, Kate. 2009a. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]). It provided conceptual openings for gender mainstreaming and thus prepared the grounds for an incorporation of concerns over gender inequality into Bank knowledge. The forms of this incorporation have generated extensive feminist critique. The Bank apparently had difficulty retaining a relational approach to gender and has tended to revert to a focus on women with resonances in the Women in Development (WID) approach of the 1980s (Caroline O. N. Moser, Annika Tornqvist, and Bernice van Bronkhorst 1999 Moser, Caroline O. N., Annika Tornqvist, and Bernice van Bronkhorst. 1999. Mainstreaming Gender and Development in the World Bank: Progress and Recommendations. Washington, DC: World Bank. www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2000/02/24/000094946_99030406260119/Rendered/PDF/multi_page.pdf . [Google Scholar]; Carolyn M. Long 2006 Long, Carolyn M. 2006. “An Assessment of Efforts to Promote Gender Equality at the World Bank.” In Feminist Economics and the World Bank: History, Theory and Policy, edited by Edith Kuiper and Drucilla K. Barker, 40–56. New York: Routledge.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Sylvia Chant and Caroline Sweetman 2012 Chant, Sylvia and Caroline Sweetman. 2012. “Fixing Women or Fixing the World? ‘Smart Economics’, Efficiency Approaches, and Gender Equality in Development.” Gender and Development 20(3): 517–29. doi: 10.1080/13552074.2012.731812[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]; Diane Elson 2012 Elson, Diane. 2012. “Review of World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 178–83. doi: 10.1177/1468018112443673b[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). This failure to assimilate gender theory has led it to argue from an imagined female difference. In its publications and projects, it has constructed women as strategically rational and entrepreneurial, on the one hand, or as marginalized, vulnerable, and poor, on the other (Suzanne Bergeron 2003 Bergeron, Suzanne. 2003. “The Post-Washington Consensus and Economic Representations of Women in Development at the World Bank.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 5(3): 397–419. doi: 10.1080/1461674032000122759[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]). There was a disregard for intersectional status categories that differentiate women by class, race, ethnicity, or ability (Lourdes Benería 2012 Benería, Lourdes. 2012. “The World Bank and Gender Inequality.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 175–78. doi: 10.1177/1468018112443673a[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Corinne L. Mason 2014 Mason, Corinne L. 2014. “‘Cripping’ the World Bank: Disability, Empowerment and the Cost of Violence against Women.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(3): 435–53. doi: 10.1080/14616742.2014.941252[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), together with a silence about men and a tendency to naturalize heteronormative understandings of partnership and a traditional understanding of the family (Bedford 2009a Bedford, Kate. 2009a. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]; Penny Griffin 2009 Griffin, Penny. 2009. Gendering the World Bank: Neoliberalism and the Gendered Foundations of Global Governance. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Another consequence has been the deafening silence in the Bank’s gender research regarding macroeconomic fundamentals, financial crises, and structural adjustment (Elson 2012 Elson, Diane. 2012. “Review of World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 178–83. doi: 10.1177/1468018112443673b[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Shahra Razavi 2012 Razavi, Shahra. 2012. “World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development – A Commentary.” Development and Change 43(1): 423–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01743.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Scholars have characterized the truncated embracing of gender-equality topics in institutions ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to the World Economic Forum and multinational corporations as a neoliberalization of feminism (Andrea Cornwall, Jasmine Gideon, and Kalpana Wilson 2008 Cornwall, Andrea, Jasmine Gideon, and Kalpana Wilson. 2008. “Introduction: Reclaiming Feminism: Gender and Neoliberalism.” Institute of Development Studies Bulletin 39(6): 1–9. doi: 10.1111/j.1759-5436.2008.tb00505.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Nancy Fraser 2009 Fraser, Nancy. 2009. “Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History.” New Left Review 56: 97–117. [Google Scholar]; Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires 2012 Kantola, Johanna and Judith Squires. 2012. “From State Feminism to Market Feminism?” International Political Science Review 33(4): 382–400. doi: 10.1177/0192512111432513[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Sydney Calkin 2015a Calkin, Sydney. 2015a. “Feminism, Interrupted? Gender and Development in the Era of ‘Smart Economics’.” Progress in Development Studies 15(4): 295–307. doi: 10.1177/1464993415592737[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar], 2015b Calkin, Sydney. 2015b. “‘Tapping’ Women for Post-Crisis Capitalism: Evidence from the 2012 World Development Report." International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(4): 611–29. doi: 10.1080/14616742.2015.1071994[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Elisabeth Prügl 2015 Prügl, Elisabeth. 2015. “Neoliberalising Feminism.” New Political Economy 20(4): 614–31. doi: 10.1080/13563467.2014.951614[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). The neoliberalization of feminism entails not only the insertion of women into neoliberal economic projects, but also the translation of feminist ideas into a common sense that favors the commodification of nonmarket values and processes, the privatization of public goods, the casting of human endeavor in entrepreneurial terms, and the construction of subjectivities that lend themselves to being governed through markets and incentives (Wendy Brown 2005 Brown, Wendy. 2005. Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). In other words, neoliberalism is here understood not only as an economic orthodoxy, but also as a cultural formation, a rationality in the Foucaultian sense “linked less to economic dogmas or class projects than to specific mechanisms of government” (James Ferguson 2010 Ferguson, James. 2010. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41 (Supplement S1): 166–84. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00721.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]: 171). The neoliberalization of feminism is not simply a matter of cooptation. A number of scholars have argued that neoliberal projects entail contradictions and have observed a diverse range of outcomes in such projects that suggest that neoliberalism may contain openings for “progressive” agendas (Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell 2002 Peck, Jamie and Adam Tickell. 2002. “Neoliberalizing Space.” Antipode 34(3): 380–404. doi: 10.1111/1467-8330.00247[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Liz Bondi and Nina Laurie 2005 Bondi, Liz and Nina Laurie. 2005. “Introduction.” In Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism: Activism, Professionalisation and Incorporation, edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi, 1–8. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Wendy Larner and David Craig 2005 Larner, Wendy and David Craig. 2005. “After Neoliberalism? Community Activism and Local Partnerships in Aotearoa New Zealand.” Antipode 37(3): 402–24. doi: 10.1111/j.0066-4812.2005.00504.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Ferguson 2010 Ferguson, James. 2010. “The Uses of Neoliberalism.” Antipode 41 (Supplement S1): 166–84. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00721.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Janet Newman 2012 Newman, Janet. 2012. Working the Spaces of Power: Activism, Neoliberalism and Gendered Labour. London: Bloomsbury Academic. [Google Scholar]). In a similar vein, the Bank’s gender discourse may entail contradictions as well as openings for feminist agendas. My purpose is to probe for such openings, bringing to light the new that may be in the process of being born in the neoliberalization of feminism, which includes feminist ideas woven in a new cloth together with submerged promises of emancipation. The object of my analysis is the Bank’s gender expertise – a form of knowledge that defines gender inequality as a policy problem, specifies the causes of the problem, and identifies solutions amenable to governmental intervention. This expertise is best reflected in the Bank’s gender-focused publications, which have increased markedly since the launch of the Gender Action Plan. The development economics unit has conducted some of this research; but its work is complemented by research in other units of the Bank, including the gender unit and the newly established Gender Innovation Labs, which produce evidence regarding the effectiveness of specific policy interventions. In addition, significant research efforts and data collection on gender are underway at the International Finance Corporation, the Bank’s arm to support private-sector investment, which under Kim has been linked more closely to the Bank’s main operations. I have collected a total of thirty-four Bank reports, books, and working papers published since 2001 that focus on gender in various ways. In selecting these, I paid particular attention to more recent publications and major flagship reports together with background documents produced for such reports. Flagship publications (in particular the WDRs) compile large amounts of evidence and distill it into a coherent and widely acceptable narrative. Background publications tend to be more diverse, also highlighting dissonances and debates. My method is interpretive and entails a close reading of documents and inductive coding of texts. To help me with this task, I employed qualitative data analysis software (NVivo). Starting from a broad outline of codes derived from literature on expertise, such as “problem definition,” “solutions,” “subjectivities,” and “technologies,” I added a total of 306 codes as I read through the publications, coding primarily analytically but also descriptively. This coding made visible the frequency with which certain topics and concepts appeared and, in an iterated fashion, allowed me to identify about thirty themes as particularly important anchors of the Bank’s gender expertise. I ran queries sorting coded paragraphs according to these themes and engaged in a close reading of the sorted paragraphs, teasing out framings and logics. I also ran word frequencies to gauge the use of select salient concepts over time. As in all interpretive analysis, my argument emerged gradually in the process of coding and analysis, and in the juxtaposition of the emerging interpretations with existing literature.11 For lists of documents, codes, and queries, see the online appendix to this paper on the publisher’s website. View all notes In what follows, I first document Bank efforts to latch feminist goals to neoliberal premises by establishing a positive relationship between gender equality and growth, despite the difficulties of doing so. I then show how Bank gender expertise has modified neoliberal commitments by drawing on feminist insights: it has questioned the definition of equality as equal opportunity in the face of feminine difference; its focus on institutions has enabled an engagement with core feminist concerns, such as equality in the family; and incorporating notions of women’s empowerment and agency has made possible a focus on domestic violence. I conclude by emphasizing the ambiguous effects of the Bank’s new neoliberalism, which continues to use the market as the arbiter of social values while providing openings for feminist agendas MAKING GENDER EQUALITY COMPATIBLE WITH ECONOMIC GROWTH Feminist critiques of development policies have long questioned the Bank’s tendency to define development as market-based growth. The WID and Gender and Development (GAD) movements’ arguments have been that such development has benefited men disproportionately and that the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s came at the expense of women’s unpaid labor (Lourdes Benería 2014 Benería, Lourdes. 2014. Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Gita Sen and Caren Grown 2013 Sen, Gita and Caren Grown. 2013. Development Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives. London: Routledge.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Ester Boserup 2007 Boserup, Ester. 2007. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. Abingdon: Earthscan. [Google Scholar]; Irene Tinker 1976 Tinker, Irene. 1976. “The Adverse Impact of Development on Women.” In Women and World Development, edited by Irene Tinker and Michèle Bo Bramsen, 22–24. Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council. [Google Scholar]). The demand for gender equality thus has seemed to stand in tension with the Bank’s single-minded focus on economic growth – a tension that the Bank could safely ignore as long as its gender equality policies were framed mostly around improving women’s “human capital” (that is, education). But once the Bank committed to mainstreaming gender into its core business, economic development (defined as growth), it began to take seriously this feminist critique and square it with its core values. Faced with critiques from feminists, the Bank traditionally has defended its growth orientation: development advances gender equality as intuitively evident in the fact that richer countries typically are more gender equal than poorer countries. But detailed evidence on the connection between growth and gender equality was scarce. Thus, in its effort to mainstream gender, the Bank made a significant investment in research in order to show a positive connection between gender equality and economic growth. Under the Gender Action Plan, between 2007 and 2008, a total of US$4.2 million were spent to support “56 pieces of analytical work, many directly linked to key country policy dialogue; country-specific programs … ; and policy research to build the business case for gender equality” (World Bank 2010 World Bank. 2010. Gender and Development: An Evaluation of World Bank Support, 2002–08. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: xvii). However, according to development economists in the gender unit, “establishing an empirical relationship between gender equality and poverty reduction and growth at the macro level has proven to be … challenging” (Andrew R. Morrison, Raju Dhushyanth, and Nistha Sinha 2007 Morrison, Andrew R., Raju Dhushyanth, and Nistha Sinha. 2007. “Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth.” Policy Research Working Paper 4349, World Bank, Washington, DC. openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1 openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1. [Google Scholar]: Abstract). A major survey of literature about gender and macroeconomics, produced by the World Bank Institute, the Bank’s training arm, found that evidence pointed in multiple directions: The results from the empirical studies fall into three categories. A number of studies show a positive relationship between gender equality and economic growth, suggesting a win–win scenario: improving gender equality improves growth, and vice versa. At the other end of the spectrum are studies that posit a positive relationship between gender inequality and economic growth, a lose–win scenario. In between are studies that examine facets of gender discrimination that act as a brake on economic growth; once these problems are remedied, economic growth ensues. (Raj Nallari and Breda Griffith 2011 Nallari, Raj and Breda Griffith. 2011. Gender and Macroeconomic Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]) Early Bank research seeking to make the link focused on gender and education and responded to a landmark study by two economics professors (Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee 1993 Barro, Robert J. and Jong-Wha Lee. 1993. “Losers and Winners in Economic Growth.” Working Paper 4341, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. [Google Scholar]), which associated economic growth with gender inequality. Studies in the development economics research unit and by outside academics largely reversed the Barro and Lee finding, showing a positive correlation between female school completion and economic growth once the unit of analysis no longer was the country (summarized in Oriana Bandiera and Ashwini Natraj [2013 Bandiera, Oriana and Ashwini Natraj. 2013. “Does Gender Inequality Hinder Development and Economic Growth? Evidence and Policy Implications.” Policy Research Working Paper 6369, World Bank, Washington, DC. [Google Scholar]]: 5). The issue was less clear-cut with regard to the relationship of growth to women’s employment: on the one hand, growth seemed to be associated with an increase in women’s labor force participation, treated as an indicator for more gender equality. But Bank publications also cite the work of feminist economist Stephanie Seguino (2000 Seguino, Stephanie. 2000. “Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Analysis.” World Development 28(7): 1211–30. doi: 10.1016/S0305-750X(00)00018-8[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]), who has found an association of economic growth with larger gender-wage gaps (Bandiera and Natraj 2013 Bandiera, Oriana and Ashwini Natraj. 2013. “Does Gender Inequality Hinder Development and Economic Growth? Evidence and Policy Implications.” Policy Research Working Paper 6369, World Bank, Washington, DC. [Google Scholar]: 6). More recent research from the Bank’s Africa Region Gender Innovation Lab raises even more doubts, suggesting that in the area of agriculture “in general, gender gaps do not appear to fall systematically with growth, and they appear to rise with GDP per capita and with greater access to resources and inputs” (Andre Croppenstedt, Markus Goldstein, and Nina Rosas 2013 Croppenstedt, Andre, Markus Goldstein, and Nina Rosas. 2013. “Gender and Agriculture: Inefficiencies, Segregation, and Low Productivity Traps.” World Bank Research Observer 28(1): 79–109. doi: 10.1093/wbro/lks024[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]: Abstract). This finding supports Boserup’s (2007 Boserup, Ester. 2007. Woman’s Role in Economic Development. Abingdon: Earthscan. [Google Scholar]) contention from her classical study, which predicted a U-shaped correlation between gender equality and economic growth, so that early stages of development would aggravate gender inequality, but this would be corrected once countries became wealthier (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 202; Nallari and Griffith 2011 Nallari, Raj and Breda Griffith. 2011. Gender and Macroeconomic Policy. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 70). In their review of the literature, feminist economists Naila Kabeer and Luisa Natali (2013 Kabeer, Naila and Luisa Natali. 2013. “Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is There a Win–Win?” Working Paper 417, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK. [Google Scholar]) conclude that the effects of economic growth on gender equality are not consistent, a suggestion taken up in a recent publication by the Bank’s gender unit (World Bank 2013 World Bank. 2013. “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs.” World Bank. [Google Scholar]). Much of this echoes the conclusion drawn in the Bank’s Engendering Development report twelve years earlier: “the relationship between gender equality and economic development goes both ways – that is, income growth and economic development can be good for gender equality or bad” (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 181). Given these difficulties, Bank research made another move to bolster its growth orientation: if growth does not automatically bring about gender equality, then perhaps it is necessary to reverse causality; perhaps gender equality brings about growth. The evidence here may be somewhat stronger, but ultimately also inconclusive. The gender unit’s companion report to the 2014 WDR (on jobs) uses evidence from a private consulting company, Booz & Co. (DeAnne Aguirre, Leila Hoteit, Christine Rupp, and Karim Sabbagh 2012 Aguirre, DeAnne, Leila Hoteit, Christine Rupp, and Karim Sabbagh. 2012. Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in 2012. http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Empowering-the-third-billion_Briefing-report.pdf . [Google Scholar]), to argue that increasing women’s employment (treated as an indicator of gender equality regardless of wage differentials and quality) positively affects growth: “Raising female employment to male levels could have a direct impact on GDP, increasing it by 34 percent in Egypt, 12 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 10 percent in South Africa, and 9 percent in Japan.” Growth is assumed to result from an enlargement of the labor force. But the publication also goes a step further, to suggest that such employment reduces poverty: “In places where women’s paid work has increased, as in Latin America and the Caribbean, gains have made significant contributions to overall poverty reduction” (World Bank 2013 World Bank. 2013. “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs.” World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 1). Kabeer and Natali (2013 Kabeer, Naila and Luisa Natali. 2013. “Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is There a Win–Win?” Working Paper 417, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK. [Google Scholar]) extend the argument to education and employment status. As reviewed in a gender unit publication, they suggest that increased gender equality in these areas “contributes significantly to economic growth” (World Bank 2013 World Bank. 2013. “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs.” World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 24). But the same publication cites development economist Esther Duflo’s (2011 Duflo, Esther. 2011. “Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development.” Working Paper 17702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA. www.nber.org/papers/w17702 . [Google Scholar]) work to the effect that correlations between economic growth and gender equality are too weak to expect that one would cause the other. In light of this absence of conclusive macro-level evidence, much of the Bank’s argumentation around gender operates at the micro level (Bergeron 2003 Bergeron, Suzanne. 2003. “The Post-Washington Consensus and Economic Representations of Women in Development at the World Bank.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 5(3): 397–419. doi: 10.1080/1461674032000122759[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]). This follows the move made thirty years earlier by Gary Becker (1993 Becker, Gary S. 1993. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226041223.001.0001[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]), who through his neoclassical work on household economics was able to make gender research acceptable in orthodox economics (see Nancy Folbre [1986 Folbre, Nancy. 1986. “Cleaning House: New Perspectives on Households and Economic Development.” Journal of Development Economics 22(1): 5–40. doi: 10.1016/0304-3878(86)90051-9[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]]).22 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting me to this parallel. View all notes Bank research shows that gender equality is related to increases in individual productivity and to efficiency at the household and firm levels, supposedly with ramifications for aggregate performance. The suggestion is that gender equality in education and health (human capital) would increase labor productivity, and that more equal access to inputs would improve efficiency in the allocation of resources, all of which would feed into economic growth (Morrison, Dhushyanth, and Sinha 2007 Morrison, Andrew R., Raju Dhushyanth, and Nistha Sinha. 2007. “Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth.” Policy Research Working Paper 4349, World Bank, Washington, DC. openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1 openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1. [Google Scholar]). Evidence on these micro-level connections is proliferating, producing an abundance of statistically significant findings. The following excerpt from the WDR offers a taste with regard to more equal resource allocation: Ensuring that women farmers have the same access as men to fertilizer and other agricultural inputs would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and by 17 percent in Ghana. Improving women’s property rights in Burkina Faso would increase total household agricultural production by about 6 percent, with no additional resources – simply by reallocating resources (fertilizer and labor) from men to women. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that equalizing access to productive resources between men and women farmers could increase agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 2.5 to 4 percent. Eliminating barriers that prevent women from working in certain occupations or sectors would have similar positive effects, reducing the productivity gap between men and women workers by one-third to one-half … and increasing output per worker by 3 to 25 percent across a range of countries. (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 4–5, references removed) Thus, in their effort to find a positive link between gender equality and economic growth, gender researchers in and outside the Bank, and in and outside the gender unit, have found a solution in microeconomic literature. This solution includes the research of some feminist development economists, but decidedly stays away from those who have questioned the meaning of growth in neoclassical economics, criticized its biases and its inability to account for values created outside the capitalist economy (Diane Elson 1994 Elson, Diane. 1994. “Micro, Meso, Macro: Gender and Economic Analysis in the Context of Policy Reform.” In The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy, edited by Isabella Bakker, 33–45. London: Zed Books. [Google Scholar]; Diane Elson and Nilüfer Çagatay 2000; Suzanne Bergeron 2006 Bergeron, Suzanne. 2006. “Colonizing Knowledge: Economics and Interdisciplinarity in Engendering Development.” In Feminist Economics and the World Bank: History, Theory and Policy, edited by Edith Kuiper and Drucilla K. Barker, 127–41. New York: Routledge.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; Razavi 2012 Razavi, Shahra. 2012. “World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development – A Commentary.” Development and Change 43(1): 423–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01743.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Elissa Braunstein 2015 Braunstein, Elissa. 2015. “Economic Growth and Social Reproduction: Gender Inequality as Cause and Consequence.” Discussion Paper 5, United Nations Women Discussion Paper Series, New York. http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/genderinequality [Google Scholar]). The Bank thus has redefined feminist knowledge to resonate with its core commitment to neoclassical economics, to expanding capitalist markets and growing economies via such markets. Gender equality and economic growth emerge as compatible, and indeed as mutually reinforcing. Feminist knowledge seems successfully latched to neoclassical economics. DEFINING GENDER EQUALITY: BEYOND OPPORTUNITIES AND OUTCOMES The cooptation of feminism into neoliberalism, however, is incomplete. This becomes visible in the way World Bank publications revisit the well-rehearsed arguments over the meaning of gender equality and are expanding its meaning beyond neoliberal orthodoxy (for a recent treatment see Günseli Berik, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, and Stephanie Seguino 2009 Berik, Günseli, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, and Stephanie Seguino. 2009. “Feminist Economics of Inequality, Development, and Growth.” Feminist Economics 15(3): 1–33. doi: 10.1080/13545700903093524[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). While equality of opportunity remains central, how to get there and the definition of the subject of equality have morphed. In my codings, gender inequality remains by far the most salient problem identified in gender-focused Bank publications, with gender equality as the main goal. This seems commonsensical. But alternative problem definitions might have centered on the terms oppression and subordination and on the goal of liberation, or on the hierarchical gender binary as a structuring form of power relations. Instead, in Bank logic gender inequality needs to be overcome so that women can take advantage of economic opportunities, compete in markets, and contribute to economic growth. But the definition of gender equality is, of course, deeply contested in the literature – as is the definition of equality more broadly. In the neoclassical tradition, equality is a matter of equal opportunities. Inequality results from discrimination, is characteristic of overregulated markets, and can be overcome through competition, which drives out discriminating employers. Once equal opportunities have been guaranteed, any inequality in outcomes is a matter of personal preferences and choices (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]). Conversely, structuralist traditions see inequality as an intrinsic feature of capitalist and patriarchal systems that rely on exploitation in order to advance the interests of those in power. Thus, according to the structuralists, even under conditions of equal opportunity, unequal outcomes are preordained. The market cannot be the road to equality, as this needs politics and collective resistance (Heidi Hartmann 1976 Hartmann, Heidi. 1976. “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1(3): 137–69. doi: 10.1086/493283[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Catharine A. MacKinnon 1982 MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1982. “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7(3): 515–44. doi: 10.1086/493898[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Maria Mies 1986 Mies, Maria. 1986. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour. London: Zed Books. [Google Scholar]). As expected, in my codings of Bank documents, gender equality is approached largely as a matter of equality of opportunity, and discrimination emerges as the top reason explaining gender inequality. But while their problem definition is thus thoroughly liberal, Bank gender experts do not share the view from neoclassical economics that discrimination is a self-correcting phenomenon – that is, that the mechanism of competition can remedy it. They recognize the role of laws and institutions in producing discrimination (more on this below). But lurking in the background are abstractly rational and bodiless individuals that seek to maximize their utility in a context of equal opportunities (for a critique, see Nancy Folbre [1994 Folbre, Nancy. 1994. Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint. New York: Routledge.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]]). If Bank gender experts thus are thoroughly liberal (though not neoliberal), there is an interesting questioning in the documents of issues of difference and preferences and of the meaning of equal opportunities once different rationalities are allowed for. A juxtaposition of documents makes opposing views visible. On the one hand, there are those who hold on to the idea of markets as unsocialized optimizers of choice, and who tend to insist that the causes of unequal outcomes must be sought either in some distortion of opportunities or in preferences. The argument appears in the 2001 report Engendering Development, according to which “equality implies that women and men are free to choose different (or similar) roles and different (or similar) outcomes in accordance with their preferences and goals” (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 3). The emphasis is on freedom of choice, for which the playing field needs to be equalized so that ungendered calculators can act strategically. People should be free to pursue choices – even if these will yield inferior outcomes. But more recent writings problematize this position in two ways. First, it runs up against proliferating evidence in behavioral economics on male–female differences in “risk aversion, trust, leadership, moral behavior, attitudes about competition, and compassion” (Ana María Muñoz Boudet, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 14). The 2012 WDR picks up this evidence from a Bank publication produced by consultants, leading the report’s authors to acknowledge that “not all observed differences in outcomes can be attributed to differences in opportunities” (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 4); rather, they may be the result of different rationalities. Second, following Amartya Sen (1999 Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), the WDR recognizes that differences in preferences may be socially produced: “Persistent differences in power and status between men and women can become internalized in aspirations, behaviors, and preferences that perpetuate the inequalities” (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 4). Once these “adaptive preferences” (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 15) are acknowledged, the liberal goal of equality of opportunities collapses – inequalities in outcomes may no longer be the result of unequal opportunities, but of adaptive preferences generated in power-laden environments. Indeed, the WDR takes precisely this step: “Despite this debate [that is, about whether equality means equal opportunities or outcomes], it is difficult in practice to measure opportunities separately from outcomes. Indeed, equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are tightly linked in theory and in measurement” (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 4). The discussion amounts to recognizing that the notion of the abstract, rationally choosing economic actor cannot be upheld. If one adopted the essentialist definitions of women’s difference that appear to emerge in behavioral economics, then the conclusion to be drawn would be that, where there is gender difference, the market mechanism produces biased results even if discrimination has been eliminated and equal opportunities are assured. A consideration of difference thus would end up questioning a core premise of neoclassical economics – the idea of free markets producing optimal allocations. Bank gender expertise sidesteps this conclusion by embracing a notion of agency (and thus difference) as socially produced and as therefore amenable to intervention (see below). Indeed, Bank gender expertise over the years has considerably broadened the understanding of what are the drivers of (in)equality. Engendering Development approached equality as equal opportunity, but linked the existence of such opportunity to women having “resources, rights, and voice” (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 2–3). A 2007 gender-unit staff working paper nicely spells out the logic: “gender equality is not equality of outcomes for men and women, but rather equality in the determinants of these outcomes – that is equality in opportunities or resources, rights and voice” (Morrison, Dhushyanth, and Sinha 2007 Morrison, Andrew R., Raju Dhushyanth, and Nistha Sinha. 2007. “Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth.” Policy Research Working Paper 4349, World Bank, Washington, DC. openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1 openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1. [Google Scholar]: 1). The 2012 WDR moves beyond this logic, embracing more extensively the capabilities approach and proposing that gender equality is determined by the triad of opportunities, endowments, and agency. Opportunities is no longer the master variable but one determinant of equality next to endowments and agency, which is conceptualized to encompass voice. This unshackles the explanation for inequality from a narrow orientation toward participating in markets and enables an additional focus on gender equality as “a core development objective in its own right” (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: xx). The discussion in Bank documents thus has destabilized the definition of equality as equal opportunity valorized through an entry into the market. The revival of institutional economics has provided an important source of insight for explaining gender inequality. In addition, the recognition of women’s difference – whether in behavioral economics or in the capabilities approach – has problematized the notion of the abstract subjects that can compete in the market as equals. The Bank’s gender expertise further elaborates how institutions can make markets work for women and how creating certain subjectivities allows women to work in markets. The following investigates these themes probing how they make room for feminist agendas. INSTITUTIONS: MAKING MARKETS WORK FOR WOMEN Neoclassical economics treats discrimination as bias located in individuals and firms that the play of free markets can overcome. But Bank gender experts have suggested that this trust in free markets is simplistic, and that markets have failed women. According to the 2012 WDR, growth does not deliver women’s labor force participation, it does not automatically enhance educational opportunities or health, nor does it bring about women’s political empowerment automatically. Moreover, gender wage differentials persist even in highly competitive settings. Together with many economics departments in the United States, Bank gender experts have made the shift toward new institutional economics to suggest that discrimination is located in laws and institutions. The challenge, as formulated in the Gender Action Plan, is to “make markets work for women” by changing these (World Bank 2006 World Bank. 2006. “Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan (Fiscal Years 2007–10).” siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf. [Google Scholar]: 4). The market remains the center of concern in this less radical form of liberal economics. But the focus on reforming institutions in order to create equitable markets has allowed for a significant expansion of the role for government. A Bank policy guide on “the gender dimensions of investment climate reform” provides a hint of what is at stake: “When analyzing laws and regulations that affect women’s economic participation, it is critical to pay attention to those that both directly (business registration, labor law) and indirectly (family law, inheritance law) affect women’s capacity to participate in the private sector” (Sevi Simavi, Clare Manuel, and Mark C. Blackden 2010 Simavi, Sevi, Clare Manuel, and Mark C. Blackden. 2010. Gender Dimensions of Investment Climate Reform: A Guide for Policy Makers and Practitioners. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 22). Accordingly, on the one hand, the institutions identified as in need of fixing are those typically considered constitutive of efficient markets including, for example, reducing the time and monetary costs for formalizing enterprises, offering financial services for women, and promoting property rights for women through joint titling (for example, World Bank [2006 World Bank. 2006. “Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan (Fiscal Years 2007–10).” siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf. [Google Scholar]]). On the other hand, the Bank’s institutional equality agenda demands an adjustment of laws regulating the private sphere of the family, relations of reproduction, and gendered power relations, setting its sights on institutions not typically considered as market-making and subsuming them under a neoliberal rationality. Thus, the 2014 Women, Business, and the Law report compares legal differences for women and men in twenty-one areas that inhibit women from entering business. These include, among others: choosing where to live; having ownership and inheritance rights over property; having their testimony carry the same evidentiary weight in court; a gender or sex discrimination clause in the constitution; and the validity of customary and personal law (which typically regulates relations in the family), even if it violates the constitution (which may include a gender-equality clause). For married women, it also looks at whether they are legally required to obey their husbands, whether they are allowed to administer marital property, and whether there is legal recognition for their nonmonetary contribution to marital property (World Bank and International Finance Corporation 2013 World Bank and International Finance Corporation. 2013. Women, Business, and the Law 2014: Key Findings. Washington, DC: International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group. [Google Scholar]). This broad focus on institutions that limit women’s participation in markets thus brings into view the vast array of rules traditionally defined as private that set the terms for women’s economic participation. It attacks the very core of patriarchal power, male power in the family, by subsuming it to a logic of market expansion. Laws that limit women’s status in the family are identified as obstacles to economic efficiency. The focus on inequality in the family also brings into view women’s unpaid labor. Care labor is a traditional Bank blind spot that has been a particular sore point for structuralist feminists who have criticized the Bank’s macroeconomic policies as shifting the burdens of adjustment to women’s care and other unpaid labor. The focus on the patriarchal family makes visible the need to “socialize” the costs of child rearing as part of good governance of markets (World Bank 2006 World Bank. 2006. “Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan (Fiscal Years 2007–10).” siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf. [Google Scholar]: 5). Thus, the 2012 WDR for the first time engages with the issue of care labor (see also Sylvia Chant [2012 Chant, Sylvia. 2012. “The Disappearing of ‘Smart Economics’? The World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality: Some Concerns about the Preparatory Process and the Prospects for Paradigm Change.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 198–218. doi: 10.1177/1468018112443674[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]]; Razavi [2012 Razavi, Shahra. 2012. “World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development – A Commentary.” Development and Change 43(1): 423–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01743.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]]); and the companion volume to the 2013 WDR on jobs makes a forceful argument for government policies on childcare (World Bank 2013 World Bank. 2013. “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs.” World Bank. [Google Scholar]). Similarly, Women, Business, and the Law includes the availability of childcare services as one indicator for whether governments are “providing incentives for work” (World Bank and International Finance Corporation 2013 World Bank and International Finance Corporation. 2013. Women, Business, and the Law 2014: Key Findings. Washington, DC: International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group. [Google Scholar]: 3). No longer identified as a distorting and costly government intervention in the free market, publicly provided childcare is redefined as a key provision for gender equality, one that contributes positive outcomes for economic growth.33 This analysis seemingly contradicts findings by Kate Bedford (2009a Bedford, Kate. 2009a. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]), who has identified a tendency of Bank projects in Latin America to privatize care in the family through a focus on more equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men. It is an open question how these different types of gender expertise relate and how they circulate in the Bank. View all notes In her analysis of the 2001 Bank report on Engendering Development, Bergeron (2006 Bergeron, Suzanne. 2006. “Colonizing Knowledge: Economics and Interdisciplinarity in Engendering Development.” In Feminist Economics and the World Bank: History, Theory and Policy, edited by Edith Kuiper and Drucilla K. Barker, 127–41. New York: Routledge.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]) noted that institutional approaches allowed for a multilayered incorporation of gender into Bank discourse. Her contention is born out in my analysis: the focus on institutions provides a vocabulary to argue for markets that are not only more effective, but also more equitable, and it makes possible a problematization of the gendered organization of society. The market remains the pivotal organizing logic in this argument. It demands the creation of laws and institutions that unburden women from family responsibilities, free them from relationships of dependency, and allow them to sell their labor power and move around freely. The Bank’s promise is that the liberation of women from the shackles of the patriarchal family will make it possible for markets to work for women, allowing them to take opportunities and thus achieve equality. MAKING WOMEN WORK FOR MARKETS Making it possible for women to compete in markets needs not just equitable institutions that set the right incentives. It also needs individuals that can and properly do respond to the incentives set through markets and institutions, and market actors who have the capabilities and are inclined to make choices freely. Scholars have observed how neoliberal approaches have spawned development interventions to encourage entrepreneurship among the poor and to produce women as subjects, who take responsibility for their own development (Barbara Cruikshank 1993 Cruikshank, Barbara. 1993. “Revolutions Within: Self-Government and Self-Esteem.” Economy and Society 22(3): 327–44. doi: 10.1080/03085149300000022[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Katherine N. Rankin 2002 Rankin, Katherine N. 2002. “Social Capital, Microfinance, and the Politics of Development.” Feminist Economics 8(1): 1–24. doi: 10.1080/13545700210125167[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]; Kate Bedford 2009b Bedford, Kate. 2009b. “Doing Business with the Ladies: Gender, Legal Reform, and Entrepreneurship in the International Finance Corporation.” Labour, Capital, and Society / Travail, Capital et Société 42(1/2): 168–94. [Google Scholar]; Kate Maclean 2013 Maclean, Kate. 2013. “Gender, Risk and Micro-Financial Subjectivities.” Antipode 45(2): 455–73. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01005.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). These exemplary neoliberal subjects do populate Bank gender knowledge, but they are by no means the most salient. Bank expertise constructs women as subjects in two distinct ways. First, it presents women’s differences as a matter of their endowments and argues that gaps in endowments need to be overcome to allow women to compete in markets. Second, it takes a rights-based approach, seeking to enhance women’s voice and agency and with it women’s negotiating power and ability to design their own lives, including the freedom to take advantage of opportunities. Differential endowments, agency, and voice contribute to inequality not through external bias or institutions, but through processes of identity formation. The challenge is to overcome these inequalities in order to produce subjects able to participate in markets in an equitable fashion. Endowments: Overcoming gaps, lacks, and traps The premise of the first approach is that individuals are equipped with endowments at birth, but more importantly, accumulate additional endowments over the course of a lifetime. These affect the degree to which they can take advantage of economic opportunities (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Endowments come in two categories. “Physical endowments” or resources (such as property, land, and financial resources) have traditionally been recognized as the key factors of production in a capitalist economy. More recently, following the work of Becker (1993 Becker, Gary S. 1993. Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226041223.001.0001[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]), “human capital endowments” (in particular education and health) have been accepted additionally as individual assets that justify investment because they have the potential to yield income. The focus on endowments in Bank gender literature tends to establish women’s disadvantage against an implied male comparator, and in so doing creates women as deficient and in need of development intervention (Bergeron 2003 Bergeron, Suzanne. 2003. “The Post-Washington Consensus and Economic Representations of Women in Development at the World Bank.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 5(3): 397–419. doi: 10.1080/1461674032000122759[Taylor & Francis Online], , [Google Scholar]; Arturo Escobar 2011 Escobar, Arturo. 2011. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). Women’s deficiency in human capital endowments is expressed as “gaps” (Jorge Saba Arbache, Alexandre Kolev, and Ewa Filipiak 2010 Arbache, Jorge Saba, Alexandre Kolev, and Ewa Filipiak, eds. 2010. Gender Disparities in Africa’s Labor Market. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]; World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: xxii; World Bank 2013 World Bank. 2013. “Gender at Work: A Companion to the World Development Report on Jobs.” World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 6). Conversely, their deficiency in physical endowments is expressed in multiple “lacks”: a lack of resources and assets, including land and fertilizer, a lack of access to credit and labor. But there are also less tangible lacks, such as the lack of access to governmental institutions and infrastructure and a lack of information and networks. The language of lacks was particularly salient, yielding ninety-one references in nine documents with coded text covering as much as 4.6 percent of one staff working paper (Morrison, Dhushyanth, and Sinha 2007 Morrison, Andrew R., Raju Dhushyanth, and Nistha Sinha. 2007. “Gender Equality, Poverty and Economic Growth.” Policy Research Working Paper 4349, World Bank, Washington, DC. openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1 openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7321/wps4349.pdf?sequence=1. [Google Scholar]) and 3.4 percent of a Development Committee text on the implications for the Bank of the 2012 WDR (Development Committee 2011 Development Committee. 2011. “Implications of World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development for the World Bank Group.” siteresources.worldbank.org/DEVCOMMINT/Documentation/23004019/DC2011-0011(E)WDR2012_Gender.pdf. [Google Scholar]). Gaps and lacks produce “gender inequality traps,” which need to be fixed and require government attention. The language of endowments thus pushes beyond the idea of an abstractly rational actor, but, unlike ideas from behavioral economics discussed earlier, it retains this actor as the ideal that needs to be approximated for individuals to succeed in a free market economy. The effect of this is to confirm the masculine connoted standard market actor while creating women as in need of intervention. The intervention itself takes the shape of an investment, a standard neoliberal technology. This is accomplished by imagining endowments – education and health in particular – as human capital that needs to be grown and tended to in order to generate income. A calculus over differential yields invites a conceptualization of women and men as vying over investment in themselves in a world of scarce resources. Thus the Bank’s 2001 report presents findings showing that, in the area of education, household “investments in females are more sensitive to price changes than investments in males” (World Bank 2001 World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Google Scholar]: 192–93), leading to the suggestion that policies need to target women because this generates results more rapidly. Following a neoliberal rationality, the market establishes women as most deserving of attention, using returns as a measuring rod. The language of human capital thus constructs women as deficient subjects who deserve investment. The justification for improving education and health for women is strictly instrumental and frames women as the objects of intervention. Its potential for realizing feminist agendas is thus closely circumscribed, allowing such agendas only to the extent women come to approximate the masculine standard. Agency and empowerment: From market actors to politics A much more promising opening emerges from the second approach of Bank experts to establishing economic subjectivities, the notion of agency. This is a new concept in the Bank’s gender expertise: in the 2012 WDR the term agency accounts for 0.16 percent of all words (rank 63), whereas it does not appear among the top 1,000 words in the 2001 Engendering Development. The expanded focus on agency and empowerment has its parallel in a burgeoning literature on these topics in feminist economics.44 For a recent overview see the 2016 Feminist Economics special issue, 22(1). View all notes The concept of agency draws on Sen’s theorizing of development as freedom requiring the unfolding of human capabilities, a framing previously embraced by the UNDP and central to the construction of the human development index (Sen 1999 Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Sakiko Fukuda-Parr 2003 Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. 2003. “The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen’s Ideas on Capabilities.” Feminist Economics 9(2–3): 301–17. doi: 10.1080/1354570022000077980[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). It specifically seeks to counteract the tendency to construe women as passive objects of development and opens up an understanding of women as bearers of rights. Agency is a basic development freedom, which Bank experts from the gender unit have defined as “the capacity to make decisions about one’s own life and act on them to achieve a desired outcome, free of violence, retribution, or fear” (Jeni Klugman, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria 2014 Klugman, Jeni, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria. 2014. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: xv). The definition follows Sen and resembles those put forward by other feminist economists (Sarah Gammage, Naila Kabeer, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers 2016 Gammage, Sarah, Naila Kabeer, and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers. 2016. “Voice and Agency: Where Are We Now?” Feminist Economics 22(1): 1–29. doi: 10.1080/13545701.2015.1101308[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). Appropriated into Bank discourse, the concept allows for the construction of women as market actors who need agency in order to be able to take advantage of opportunities and in order to be able to take risks. It captures more broadly the choices women are able to make in the course of their lives, recognizing that such choices are socially and politically embedded, that the ability to seize opportunities and take risk is circumscribed by norms. Thus, “it is not sufficient to learn about women’s ability to make choices without looking at the extent their agency is reflected in their life choices and the conditions under which they exercise their agency” (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 11). This leads Bank gender experts to discuss agency as an aspect of empowerment. There has been considerable critique of the way in which the Bank has adopted the notion of empowerment as a means to create subjectivities that operate in markets (Aradhana Sharma 2008 Sharma, Aradhana. 2008. Logics of Empowerment: Development, Gender, and Governance in Neoliberal India. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]; Mason 2014 Mason, Corinne L. 2014. “‘Cripping’ the World Bank: Disability, Empowerment and the Cost of Violence against Women.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(3): 435–53. doi: 10.1080/14616742.2014.941252[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]). However, experts in the gender unit have rewritten this meaning and defined empowerment as an expansion of agency, that is “the expansion of freedom of choice and action as a result of a process of gaining power” (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 12; Klugman et al. 2014 Klugman, Jeni, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria. 2014. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: xv, 15). Empowerment thus is framed as a kind of self-determination or autonomy that allows women to pursue all kinds of goals, not just those linked to participation in the market. Autonomy provides an agent the capacity to reflect on existing power relations and to take action to change them (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). Thus autonomous agency enables critique. An example illustrates the matter: women may agree that it is justified for a man to beat his wife under certain circumstances. True agency would give her the tools to reflect on the rules that allow for such violence. Empowerment requires enhanced control over material and nonmaterial resources that allows individuals to “gain capacity to exercise the right to determine their own choices” (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 12). Moreover, empowerment needs an element of achievement – it is a situation where agency meets with success. Thus, far from narrowing empowerment to a matter of creating subjectivities for economic growth, the Bank’s gender experts have adopted feminist understandings of empowerment combining resources, agency, and success (Naila Kabeer 1999 Kabeer, Naila. 1999. “Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment.” Development and Change 30(3): 435–64. doi: 10.1111/1467-7660.00125[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) and opened up intellectual space to interrogate power in various ways: as control over resources, as self-determination, and as the ability to generate change. The introduction of the concept of agency has allowed the Bank to take up topics not typically associated with a narrowly defined notion of development as economic growth. Importantly, it has given the Bank a language to address issues of violence against women and reproductive rights. Violence against women has received a chapter in the WDR, which argues that it is the opposite of freedom (World Bank 2011 World Bank. 2011. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]); data gathering on norms against violence has started under the Women, Business, and the Law project (World Bank and International Finance Corporation 2013 World Bank and International Finance Corporation. 2013. Women, Business, and the Law 2014: Key Findings. Washington, DC: International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group. [Google Scholar]: 25); and a recent Bank publication on Agency and Voice focuses on violence against women as well as sexual and reproductive health, in addition to ownership and control of land and housing. The publication introduces the notion of “agency deprivation,” which allows for the feminist idea of intersectionality in the form of “overlapping disadvantages” (Klugman et al. 2014 Klugman, Jeni, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria. 2014. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: 12–13). Cecilia Sardenberg (2008 Sardenberg, Cecilia. 2008. “Liberal vs. Liberating Empowerment: A Latin American Feminist Perspective on Conceptualising Women’s Empowerment’.” IDS Bulletin 39(6): 18–27. doi: 10.1111/j.1759-5436.2008.tb00507.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]) has labeled the understanding of empower ment as an expansion of agency liberal, as opposed to liberating, in the sense that it is purely focused on the individual (see also Fukuda-Parr [2003 Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko. 2003. “The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen’s Ideas on Capabilities.” Feminist Economics 9(2–3): 301–17. doi: 10.1080/1354570022000077980[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], , [Google Scholar]]). It ignores the structures that make disempowerment a patterned phenomenon, and it discounts the fact that processes of empowerment are intensely political and conflictual. According to Amy Allen (1998 Allen, Amy. 1998. “Rethinking Power.” Hypatia 13(1): 21–40. doi: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.1998.tb01350.x[Crossref], , [Google Scholar], 2000 Allen, Amy. 2000. Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [Google Scholar]), it approaches power as a capacity to act (power to) but ignores its collective aspect emerging from the ability to act in concert (power with). The critique is not entirely justified. The concept of agency in Bank literature appears in conjunction with the concept of voice, which was introduced in the 2001 Bank report on Engendering Development as one of three areas in which gender equality needs promoting (next to rights and resources). It was picked up again in the 2012 WDR and received extensive coverage in the Voice and Agency volume (Klugman et al. 2014 Klugman, Jeni, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria. 2014. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). The concept has allowed Bank gender experts to go beyond an exclusive focus on decision making in the household by examining in addition women’s participation in collective politics. In sum, gender experts have introduced problem constellations beyond the individual, recognized the contested nature of changing gender relations, and made recommendations ranging from changing family laws and promoting “positive gender norms” to proposing electoral quotas and even collective mobilization (Klugman et al. 2014 Klugman, Jeni, Lucia Hanmer, Sarah Twigg, Tazeen Hasan, Jennifer McCleary-Sills, and Julieth Santamaria. 2014. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity. Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). The starting-point for a notion of empowerment anchored in agency, however, remains at the level of individuals, and the language of agency and empowerment is easily coopted into a neoliberal, market-oriented rationality. This is visible in statements by various Bank influentials that narrow the notion of agency to “the ability to make effective choices,” or redefine it in relation to markets as the “power and opportunity to take risks, seize opportunities and shape one’s life” (Muñoz Boudet, Petesch, and Turk 2013 Muñoz Boudet, Ana María, Patti Petesch, and Carolyn Turk. 2013. On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Washington, DC: World Bank.[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]: ix). Arguing the need for voice and agency for women may create them as political actors (who ideally engage in critique and disturb patriarchal power relations), but it also preserves them as market actors who may want to seek their fortunes within the confines of an economy organized along capitalist principles. In this sense, introducing Sen’s capabilities approach into Bank discourse has enabled an opening for women’s political empowerment; but it also has made possible what Sylvia Chant has called “clever conflations,” suggesting the unproblematic compatibility of social justice and women’s liberation with liberalized markets, finance capitalism, and policies of austerity (Chant 2012 Chant, Sylvia. 2012. “The Disappearing of ‘Smart Economics’? The World Development Report 2012 on Gender Equality: Some Concerns about the Preparatory Process and the Prospects for Paradigm Change.” Global Social Policy 12(2): 198–218. doi: 10.1177/1468018112443674[Crossref], , [Google Scholar]). In this sense, the Bank’s discourse of women’s empowerment is about creating a different neoliberal market subject, a reflexive agent able to freely choose her insertion into the market. CONCLUSION The development of gender expertise at the World Bank since the turn of the new century can be interpreted as an effort to craft a new common sense about the relationship between markets, social protection, and emancipation out of the ashes of neoliberal economic orthodoxy. By constructing gender equality as an engine of economic growth, the new orthodoxy functions to buffer core tenets of neoclassical economics, albeit moderated by a focus on institutions and individual capabilities. At the same time, the new orthodoxy retains a neoliberal rationality that celebrates market efficiency as the measure of all things and as the main purveyor of truth. The result has been the reconstruction of neoliberalism so that it dons a feminist face. This reconstruction preserves the privileges of private enterprise, individual responsibility, and the wisdom of the market while recognizing the inequality-producing force of institutional biases, informal norms, unequal endowments, and power relations in the household and society. It is a blueprint for a new ideology that preserves core commitments to market rationality and squares them with demands for more equality. Neoliberalism with a feminist face defines the problem to be solved not only as underdevelopment, but also as inequality. Its logic goes as follows: Neoliberal economics and liberal feminist values of equality co-constitute each other. Development defined as growth produces gender equality, and vice versa, gender equality generates growth in productivity and income. This is not simply a matter of equality of opportunity, but needs also equality in resources, endowments, agency, and voice. Thus, in order to achieve equitable markets, it is necessary to eliminate biases in institutions – including, importantly, the modernization of cultural norms and of the institutions of the family. In addition, it is imperative to invest in women’s human capital, and to empower them economically and politically. Such investment is justified because of the pay-offs it produces in terms of economic growth and income. From a feminist perspective, this modified kind of neoliberalism produces substantial openings, bringing into view coercively gendered institutions traditionally considered private, such as those regulating relations in the family and provisions of care. Moreover, it decisively does away with the idea of the abstractly rational actor, introducing the notion of socially produced subjectivities and of capable, but differentially empowered, agents. The rational economic actor is replaced with an empowered and autonomous agent who does not simply respond to market incentives but is able to reflect on and change her own life. This specification of logics and causalities allows for thinking about gender in development in a way that takes on many feminist movement concerns, from the unequal distribution of resources and family laws cementing patriarchy to violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights. The gender-sensitive reformulations of development economics suggest a new understanding in which markets do not produce inequality but equality, in which the pursuit of profits and gender equality go hand in hand. This is not simply a matter of feminism coopted by neoliberalism: introducing ideas about embodied, rights-bearing subjects profoundly broadens the field of vision and fundamentally questions the viability of an economic theory that thrives on abstract actors and forces. In the encounter between feminism and neoliberalism the latter may have the upper hand, but the wholesale defeat of feminist agendas should not be a foregone conclusion. A feminist politics inside hegemonic institutions should not underestimate the subversive potential of powerful ideas. Supplementary appendix 1 Supplementary appendix 4 Supplementary Appendix 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Research for this article was carried out in the context of a collaborative research project on gender experts and gender expertise funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. I am grateful for stimulating discussions with my project colleagues Françoise Grange, Hayley Thompson, and Christine Verschuur at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and Rahel Kunz at the University of Lausanne. Supplemental material Supplementary Appendix 3 Download MS Excel (24 KB) Supplementary appendix 4 Download MS Word (15 KB) Supplementary appendix 1 Download MS Word (16 KB) Notes 1 For lists of documents, codes, and queries, see the online appendix to this paper on the publisher’s website. 2 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting me to this parallel. 3 This analysis seemingly contradicts findings by Kate Bedford (2009a Bedford, Kate. 2009a. Developing Partnerships: Gender, Sexuality, and the Reformed World Bank. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]), who has identified a tendency of Bank projects in Latin America to privatize care in the family through a focus on more equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men. It is an open question how these different types of gender expertise relate and how they circulate in the Bank. 4 For a recent overview see the 2016 Feminist Economics special issue, 22(1). 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Her research focuses on gender politics in international governance, in particular in the areas of development, agriculture, and conflict.