Gender and social accountability at the IMF: What is the impact of the global law of public finance on gender inequality in Latin America?

Date
Thursday June 6th 2019
Time
17:00
Venue
Blavatnik School of Government, Seminar Room 3
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By shaping the global rules of public finance, the IMF has a direct impact on economic distribution in countries across the world, and in turn, on gender inequality. This study investigates the bureaucratic politics of the IMF’s impact on gender equality, focusing on Latin America.

First, it suggests the IMF frames gender equality as a pure macroeconomic issue, moving away from the legal perspective of human right. This choice leads to the “apoliticisation” or “domestication” of the question of gender equality. This is reflective of competing  bureaucratic rationalities within the IMF: some of the Fund's departments seem more geared towards gradual changes in the IMF's global responsibilities when others, notably the legal department, would be more conservative. Second, the interface with Ministries of Finance as the key national counterparts to the IMF further enhances the focus on macroeconomic policies as a means of achieving gender equality, rather than a human rights perspective. 

 

Speaker: Camila Villard Duran, Assistant Professor of Law, University of São Paolo and Researcher, ISJPS Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

 

The seminar is a part of the Political Economy of Finance series, generously supported by the Institute for New Economic Thinking