Closing Gender Gaps in Voice and Agency - Liveblog & webcast

Tuesday, May 1

Agency and voice are key to understanding how gender outcomes emerge. According to the World Development Report 2012 (WDR), agency is the ability of individuals or groups to make effective choices and transform those choices into desired outcomes.  It is the process through which women and men use their endowments and take advantage of economic opportunities to achieve desired outcomes. The selection of outcomes is closely associated with people’s ability or inability to make certain choices.  The expressions of agency are multi-dimensional ranging from control over resources and mobility to decision making over family formation and freedom from the risk of violence as well as the general ability to have voice in the society and influence policy. Economic growth alone will not and cannot eliminate gender differences in voice and agency.

Following the findings of WDR 2012, closing gender gaps in voice and agency has become one of the World Bank’s frontier areas for action. Policy interventions identified in the WDR include increasing societal voice by better representation at the political and economic levels, enhancing voice within the household by reforming laws which negatively impact women, improving enforcement and access to justice and changing social norms and the legal regime relating to domestic violence.

The panel examined the rationale for focusing on gaps in voice and agency as well as the ways to operationalize the concept on a policy level and actions on the ground.

Featuring:

- Sri Mulyani Indrawati | Managing Director, The World Bank
- Otaviano Canuto | Vice President of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network, World Bank
- Anousheh Ansari | CEO PRODEA Systems
- Yasmeen Hassan | Global Director, Equality Now
- Aili Mari Tripp | Director, Center for Research on Gender and Women
- Carolyn Turk | Lead Social Development Specialist, The World Bank

Replay the discussion below and keep the conversation going on Twitter with hashtags #wblive or #thinkEQUAL.