The Inter-American Development Bank hosted the Multilateral Development Banks’ Working Group on Gender meeting June 7 and 8, the 2016 Global Gender Summit. The event facilitated the exchange of evidence-based approaches for advancing women’s economic empowerment.
Approximately 200 thought leaders from multilateral development banks, governments, the private sector and civil society came together to highlight innovations and discuss lessons learned in advancing the gender equality agenda. Attendees included representatives from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDBG), European Investment Bank (EIB), European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), International Finance Corporation (IFC) and World Bank, Asia Development Bank (ADB), African Development Bank (AFDB), Islamic Development Bank (ISD), Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Speakers at the conference, “Stereotypes & Opportunities: Women’s Economic Empowerment,” highlighted the importance of connecting economic value to women’s empowerment in order to make the case to key stakeholders, noting that achieving women’s full economic participation will take efforts from multilateral development banks, governments and the private sector alike – and both men and women.
The need for more and better data on the female economy was also noted, with GBA gender data partner Data2X offering insights on the paramount importance of sex-disaggregated data that will help us understand the gender gaps and how to fill them. The panel, “Data Use for Women’s Economic Empowerment,” also discussed the case of Chile, which is the only country GBA research found to have been collecting sex-disaggregated data on its financial system for more than 10 years.
The event was followed by an informal luncheon hosted by the IDB, where IDB Executive Vice President Julie T. Katzman and GBA Chief Executive Inez Murray shared how GBA works and how IDB’s collaboration with GBA has benefited both organizations. Katzman noted that the Alliance’s Study Tours, Mentoring Program, Summits and research efforts have helped both IDB team members and financial institution clients to build their capacity to develop Women’s Market programs. She said the IDB’s partnership with the GBA has had four key results: 1) An increase in the number of banks targeting the Women’s Market using holistic value propositions, 2) Improved quality of Women’s Market programs among IDB client banks, 3) Improved capacity of the IDB to support clients, and 4) Additional knowledge products that build the business case and help develop the market. In his remarks to the group, Peer Stein, Financial Services Group at the IFC, noted the highly complementary role GBA plays in supporting development finance banks to achieve results with bank clients on impacting the Women’s Market.
GBA currently has partnership agreements with the IDB, IFC and FMO and is seeking to work with more development finance banks in order to expand the number of banks targeting the Women’s Market.
You can learn more about the 2016 Global Gender Summit and watch a replay of the event in its entirety here.
