73189 . IDA16 MID-TERM REVIEW ACCELERATING PROGRESS ON GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND GENDER-RELATED MDGS PROGRESS REPORT IDA Resource Mobilization Department Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships September 2012 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS AFR Africa AFREA Africa Renewable Energy Access Program ARD Agriculture and Rural Development CAS Country Assistance Strategy CEDAW Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women CGA Country Gender Assessment C-GAP Country Gender Action Plan CIF Climate Investment Fund CMU Country Management Unit CN Concept Note CPS Country Partnership Strategy CSC Corporate Scorecard DEC Development Economics Vice Presidency DFGG Demand for Good Governance DPL Development Policy Lending EAP East Asia and the Pacific ECA Europe and Central Asia EI Extractive Industries ESMAP Energy Sector Management Assistance Program ESW Economic and Sector Work FCC Fragile and Conflict-affected Country GAP Gender Action Plan GEDS Gender Equality Data and Statistics HDN Human Development Network HIV/AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome HNP Health, Nutrition and Population HRITF Health Results Innovation Trust Fund IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development IDA International Development Association IL Investment Lending ISN Interim Strategy Note LCR Latin America and Caribbean MD Managing Director MDB Multilateral Development Bank MDG Millennium Development Goal MNA Middle East and North Africa M&E Monitoring and Evaluation NGO Non Governmental Organization OPCS Operational Policy and Country Services PREM Poverty Reduction and Economic Management PRHCBP Population and Reproductive Health Capacity Building Program PRMGE PREM Gender Department RBF Results-based Financing RCBP Rural Capacity Building Project RGAP Regional Gender Action Plan RHAP Reproductive Health Action Plan RMS Results Measurement System ROC Regional Operations Committee SAR South Asia SDN Sustainable Development Network SPCR Strategic Programs for Climate Resilience SPL Social Protection and Labor SRH Sexual and Reproductive Health UFGE Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality UN United Nations WBG World Bank Group WBI World Bank Institute WDR World Development Report TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................... i I: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 1 II: WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2012: GENDER EQUALITY AND DEVELOPMENT......................................................................................................................... 2 III: PROGRESS IN IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS ON GENDER EQUALITY.................................................................................................................. 4 A. GENDER IN COUNTRY ASSISTANCE STRATEGY PRODUCTS ................................................................ 4 B. INCREASING GENDER-INFORMED IDA INVESTMENTS ........................................................................ 7 C. PREPARATION OF REGIONAL GENDER ACTION PLANS .................................................................... 11 D. CAPACITY BUILDING FOR STAFF AND COUNTRY PARTNERS ........................................................... 14 IV: TRACKING IDA’S SUPPORT FOR GENDER EQUALITY....................................................... 20 A. SECTORAL MONITORING INDICATORS ............................................................................................. 20 i. SOCIAL SAFETY NETS ................................................................................................................. 20 ii. AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................... 22 iii. HEALTH PROJECTS ...................................................................................................................... 23 B. GETTING TO EQUAL IN EDUCATION: THE EDUCATION SECTOR STRATEGY AND FURTHERING GENDER EQUALITY THROUGH EDUCATION ..................................................................................... 24 C. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ACTION PLAN................................................. 25 D. STRENGTHENING EFFORTS TO INTEGRATE A GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN IDA’S SUPPORT TO FRAGILE AND CONFLICT-AFFECTED COUNTRIES (FCCS) ................................................................ 28 V: IMPROVING THE RESULTS FOCUS ............................................................................................ 29 A. INTERNAL MONITORING OF GENDER-RELATED EFFORTS................................................................ 29 B. STRENGTHENING THE RESULTS MONITORING SYSTEM ................................................................... 30 TABLE Table 1: CAS Ratings, IDA, FY11-12 .......................................................................................................... 6 FIGURES Figure 1: A Significant Increase in Gender-Informed IDA Investments ...................................................... 8 Figure 2: MNA, LCR, AFR, SAR Lead the Way…Thanks Also to a Large Share of Projects with Gender-Informed Analysis ..................................................................................... 9 Figure 3: Increases in the Share of Gender-Informed IDA Projects ............................................................. 9 Figure 4: The Share of Gender-Informed IDA Projects Varies Across Sectors in FY12 ........................... 10 Figure 5: Home Page of New Gender Data Portal ...................................................................................... 20 TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONT’D) BOXES Box 1: Gender-informed CAS Products: Recent Good IDA Practices ......................................................... 7 Box 2: Reviewing and Rating the Gender Content of Operations ................................................................ 7 Box 3: Progress in Gender Mainstreaming ................................................................................................. 11 Box 4: Highlights of Regional Gender Action Plans in EAP and LCR ...................................................... 13 Box 5: Results from Capacity Building Efforts in Water in Kenya ............................................................ 15 Box 6: Recent Findings from Impact Evaluations (IEs) ............................................................................. 17 Box 7: Boosting Women’s Employment – Evidence from Recent Evaluations ......................................... 18 Box 8: Investing in Knowledge in New Frontiers; Voice, Agency and Participation ............................... 19 Box 9: Gender and Agriculture: Good Practice Examples of IDA Projects .............................................. 23 Box 10:Gender and Education: Good Practice Examples of Tools and Operations ................................... 25 Box 11: Selected Regional and Country Initiatives to Accelerate Progress in Reproductive Health ......... 27 Box 12: Gender in FCCs: Selected Recent Good Practice Examples ......................................................... 29 ANNEX ANNEX 1: GENDER INFORMED IDA OPERATIONS BY REGION AND NETWORK/SECTOR FY10-12 ............ 33 Executive Summary i. Gender is one of the four special themes identified for the IDA16 Replenishment period (FY12–FY14). As part of the IDA 16 policy framework, Management committed to take specific measures to accelerate progress on gender mainstreaming and gender-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper provides an update on progress made to date in meeting these commitments. The update presents an overview of the implementation of the gender agenda over the last year and a half, highlights key areas of progress and constraints in implementing the strategic directions for IDA’s work on gender equality, and lays out the priorities to be tackled in moving forward. ii. Good progress has been made in implementing IDA16 gender-related commitments. Key measures include: • In September 2011, the World Bank Group (WBG) completed and launched the World Development Report (WDR) on Gender Equality and Development. The report documented significant gains in gender equality, as well as persistent gaps. The WDR has been widely disseminated, including launches in 27 part II countries (including 12 IDA countries) and through the global think EQUAL campaign. • In FY12, 100 percent of IDA Country Assistance Strategies (CASs) were informed by gender diagnostics and were rated highly satisfactory from a gender perspective. Most CAS teams are doing a better job in integrating gender considerations upstream, informed by diagnostic knowledge and consultations early in the process. • The share of gender-informed IDA projects has increased. In FY12, 86 percent of IDA projects were gender-informed, an increase of 16 percentage points from FY11. In terms of volume, this translates to about US$12.9 billion (or 90 percent) of IDA commitments in FY12. A large share of gender-informed IDA projects (74 percent) included gender analysis and more than two-thirds of projects (68 percent) coupled the analysis with gender-informed actions and/or monitoring and evaluation. Almost all regions and networks have seen an increase in the share of gender-informed projects over the period. • The East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR) regions have completed regional gender action plans. The four other regions are preparing their plans and expect to finalize them by the end of calendar year 2012. • Significant progress has been made in integrating and tracking gender dimensions in IDA’s support to education; reproductive health; safety nets; agriculture and rural development; and Fragile and Conflict-affected Countries (FCCs). iii. To support these goals, a range of steps have been undertaken to increase the capacity of staff and country counterparts to incorporate gender into their work. This includes the preparation of good practice notes for operational staff on how to integrate gender into Country Assistance Strategies, Development Policy Lending (DPL), and Investment Lending (IL). The learning strategy has been reorganized and includes the Gender and - ii - Development Seminar Series and a new Community of Practice; and gender related modules have been included in the CAS and DPL academies and economist boot camps, and in major events which are typically held in partnership with other development actors. iv. Efforts are also ongoing to strengthen gender data and information. The Gender Equality Data and Statistics working group aims to better coordinate the Bank’s activities on this front. This heightened focus led to the launch of the Gender Data Portal in July 2012, an interactive and dynamic platform that draws in data from a variety of sources—including the World Development Indicators, national statistics agencies, and UN databases. v. Despite progress achieved, challenges remain. They include heterogeneity in the level of attention to gender, which vary across IDA portfolios, weaknesses in data, limited knowledge about what works, and the need for more support to staff and country authorities. Across the board, teams need to find ways to support gender work as part of existing task budgets, with some support for innovation and impact evaluation from trust funds and other sources. vi. Priorities for promoting progress on the long term gender equality agenda include: providing country teams and authorities with the support needed to advance the agenda on the ground; scaling up efforts in lagging sectors and regions; addressing knowledge and data gaps; and ensuring continued attention to results. I. Introduction 1. Gender inequality is manifestly unfair. It is also bad economics: under-investing in women puts a brake on poverty reduction and limits economic and social development. Gender equality is a longer-term driver of competitiveness and equity that is even more important in an increasingly globalized world. No country can afford to fall behind because it is failing to enable women and men to participate equally in the economy and society. 2. Despite major progress over the past three decades, serious gender disparities persist in many countries. Some of the major challenges are: 1 • Most regions are off track to achieve MDG5, to cut maternal mortality by three- quarters. The largest gaps persist in Africa (AFR) and South Asia (SAR). These include excess deaths of girls and women - the likelihood of women dying during childbirth in Africa and parts of South Asia is still comparable to that of Northern Europe in the 19th century. Two countries account for a third of all maternal deaths – India accounted for 20 percent (56,000 deaths annually) and Nigeria for 14 percent (40,000 deaths) – and in 2010 Africa had the highest maternal mortality of any region, at 500 deaths per 100,000 live births. • Gender segregation in economic activity and earnings gaps remain pervasive. Women in agriculture, especially in Africa, operate smaller plots of land, have less access to inputs including economic services, and farm less remunerative crops, while female- owned businesses are significantly less profitable than male-owned ones in many countries, including in South Asia. • Disparities in voice and agency persist – fewer than one in five members of national parliaments are women, and an estimated 510 million women will be abused by their partner in their lifetime. 2 3. IDA Deputies identified “accelerating progress on gender mainstreaming and gender-related MDGs� as a special theme for IDA16, calling on IDA to strengthen gender mainstreaming in its operational and analytical work, introduce a robust results framework and implement an action plan to accelerate progress on the gender-related MDGs. Specifically, IDA Deputies asked Management to implement, monitor and report on the following actions: • completion of the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development; • 100 percent of IDA CASs will draw on and discuss the findings of a gender assessment, which would be supported through the issuance of a guidance note on the World Bank 1 For more details see section III of the World Bank 2012 “Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group�. 2 The WDR 2012 defines agency as the ability to make choices and take actions related to oneself, one’s situation in the household, and one’s situation in the public sphere and indentifies it with five primary expressions: control over resources; freedom of movement; decision making over family formation; freedom from the risk of violence; and voice in society and political decision making. See World Bank 2012, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. -2- gender policy, training for staff on how to mainstream gender issues in CASs, and more robust corporate review of gender analysis of CASs by the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) network; • increase gender-informed IDA investments and monitor progress; • continue to track three indicators to measure IDA’s support to gender-based country outcomes in the percentage of: (i) safety nets projects designed to mitigate risk and vulnerability for women and girls; (ii) agriculture and rural development operations that target women; and (iii) health projects that address high fertility and maternal mortality; • the preparation of Regional Gender Action Plans; • implementation of the Reproductive Health Action Plan with a focus on 52 priority countries with high maternal mortality and total fertility rates, including 25 countries in the Africa region; • completion of the Education Sector Strategy and subsequent implementation of a program of action targeting gender issues in high priority countries; and • strengthen efforts to integrate a gender perspective in IDA’s support to fragile and conflict affected countries. 4. IDA Deputies requested that an update on progress on these actions be prepared for the IDA16 Midterm Review. This paper responds to that request. 3 Because of the short period of time covered, any preliminary emerging trends about the progress in these areas should be interpreted with caution, since the full IDA16 picture will only be available after the completion of FY14. This report is structured as follows. Section II reports on the completion, findings and dissemination of the World Development report 2012 on “Gender Equality and Development�. Section III reports on progress in implementing strategic directions for gender equality, with a focus on specific commitments in IDA16. Section IV looks at tracking IDA’s support, and section V discusses how to further improve the results focus, including ways to strengthen the IDA Results Measurement System (RMS). 5. This paper focuses specifically on performance on monitorable actions under IDA16. Readers interested in a fuller update should refer to the 2012 Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group. The update provides an overview of the implementation of the gender agenda over the last year, highlights key areas of progress and constraints in implementing the strategic directions for the World Bank’s work on gender equality, and lays out the priorities to be tackled in moving forward in all countries, IDA and IBRD. II. World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development 6. Last fall, the WBG launched the World Development Report 2012: Gender and Development (WDR 2012), the first in the series to focus on gender. It documented significant progress in educational enrollment, life expectancy, and economic opportunities, but also pointed out that these gains have not been universal. For example, while a number of 3 This paper is complementary to the World Bank 2012 “Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group�. -3- countries have closed education gaps in basic levels of schooling, major disparities remain in parts of Africa, such as in the Central African Republic and Chad, where there are fewer than 70 girls per 100 boys in primary school. Overlapping disparities -- with class, ethnicity and location compounding disadvantage -- exacerbate these patterns. In Pakistan, for example, there is a 43 percentage point school enrollment rate gap between the most disadvantaged group, low-caste girls, and the least disadvantaged, high-caste boys. 4 Similarly, in Latin America and the Caribbean gaps in schooling and health have largely been closed, but important challenges remain with respect to voice and agency - gender based violence and teenage pregnancy are both highly prevalent and households led by women are poorer than those headed by men. 7. The WDR 2012 identified areas where domestic policy efforts as well as the support of the international community are required to address persistent inequality, since experience shows that higher incomes alone will not reduce existing gaps: reducing excess deaths of girls and women and eliminating remaining gender disadvantages in education; narrowing disparities between women and men in earnings and productivity; diminishing gender differences in household and societal voice; and limiting the reproduction of gender equality across generations. 8. The WDR has been widely disseminated, including launches in over 27 part II countries (including 12 IDA countries) providing a major opportunity to promote discussion and debate on gender equality. These events typically attracted not only ministries and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that normally focus on gender, but also drew participants from ministries of finance and planning, along with other public and private sectors practitioners, civil society, and media. For example, in response to a request by the Government of Nigeria following the WDR 2012 launch, the World Bank and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) hosted gender policy dialogues in several cities around the country, and are working with the Government to experiment with innovative policies and programs. 9. Companion reports were prepared for the East Asia and the Pacific, the Europe and Central Asia (ECA), the Middle East and North Africa (MNA), and the Latin America and the Caribbean regions, and for the Human Development (HDN) and Sustainable Development (SDN) networks. 5 A regional companion report for Africa will soon be released. These reports were informed by extensive consultations which provided a platform for debate on important policy issues related to gender. For example, using the opportunity of the global WDR dissemination in the MNA region in October 2011, there were extensive consultations in several countries, including Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Kuwait and West Bank and Gaza around the publication of a summary report that highlighted main messages. These consultations were held at a time when countries like Egypt and Tunisia were undergoing political transformations in the midst of the Arab Spring movement. 10. Building on the launch of the WDR, the World Bank kicked off a global ThinkEqual campaign, for raising and sustaining worldwide awareness of gender equality. As of 4 Jacoby and Mansuri 2011. Crossing Boundaries: Caste, Stigma, and Schooling in Rural Pakistan. 5 The regional and network companion reports can be found at http://go.worldbank.org/Q4YNH3HE20 -4- February 2012, the #thinkEQUAL Twitter hashtag had reached more than 44 million people in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, and has been mentioned more than 20,000 times. Efforts to raise awareness of gender inequality and highlight progress and results remain an important communications priority for the Bank. III. Progress in Implementing Strategic Directions on Gender Equality 11. Alongside the launch of the 2012 WDR, the World Bank prepared a new strategic document, Implications of World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development for the World Bank Group, which was endorsed by the Executive Board in August 2011 and the Development Committee in September 2011. 6 The paper outlines five strategic directions for the World Bank Group’s work, namely: informing country policy dialogue; enhancing country-level gender diagnostics; scaling up lending for domestic priorities; investing in gender-relevant data and statistics; and leveraging partnerships. 12. In line with the IDA16 commitments and the WDR strategic directions, the Bank has strengthened efforts to mainstream gender in IDA’s work. This is evident in CAS products and operational and analytical work, as well as new initiatives to build capacity for staff and country partners, as detailed in the following section. There is also an acceleration of progress on the leading indicators used to measure gender mainstreaming in most areas. At the same time, and as identified also in the one-year implementation report “Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group�, unevenness remains. While an increasing share of Bank operations are gender informed, there are still operations where analysis needs to be followed up with actions, and where monitoring arrangements need to include measures to track expected gender effects. The level of attention to gender is not the same across all sector or region portfolios, and gender does not always figure as a priority at the country level. Weaknesses in data can limit local understanding, as in Africa for example. Much remains to be learnt about what works. Training needs to be better targeted to meet the needs of country managers and field based staff. Across the board, teams need to find ways to support gender work as part of existing task budgets, with some support for innovation and impact evaluation from trust funds and other sources. 13. Going forward, priorities to promote further progress on the Bank’s work on the gender equality agenda include: providing country teams with the support needed to advance the agenda on the ground; scaling up efforts in lagging sectors and regions; addressing knowledge and data gaps; and ensuring continued attention to results. A. Gender in Country Assistance Strategy Products 14. The Country Assistance Strategy (or Country Partnership Strategy, CPS) identifies key areas and related Bank-supported programs to help a country achieve its sustainable development and poverty reduction goals. CASs are normally prepared every four years in 6 This report superseded the Gender Action Plan (GAP) Transition Plan. -5- collaboration with the government and in consultation with civil society, development partners, and other stakeholders. Other CAS products – Interim Strategy Notes (ISNs) - are typically prepared when a country is either inactive, or where IDA is re-engaging after a period of inactivity. 15. Country-level gender diagnostics are instrumental in ensuring the mainstreaming of gender into CAS products. For example, the Vietnam Country Gender Assessment (CGA) was produced along the lines of the WDR 2012 framework and the regional companion report, 7 examining gender gaps in endowments, economic opportunities and agency. Vietnam has made progress in narrowing gaps in health, education and labor market opportunities, but challenges persist in the segregation of women in fields of study and occupations, over-representation in informal jobs, continuing domestic violence and a rising male ratio at birth, and the CPS was informed by these findings. Similarly, the CGA in Lao PDR was instrumental in informing the CAS and helping to fill knowledge gaps, and is generating debate around gender equality internally and among partners. In Honduras, the PREM-Gender regional team provided a just- in-time clinic, carried out basic analysis for the CAS based on the Central America Gender Study: “A gender (R)evolution in the making,� which was widely disseminated and discussed with civil society and the Government, and other rapid diagnostics, and is working on additional inputs and technical assistance. In Kosovo, the findings from a country gender assessment and a gender portfolio review informed the CPS and resulted in actions being integrated into a land project to protect and promote women’s property rights; monitoring gender in an education project; and strengthening the gender dimensions of an agriculture project by including targeted awareness campaigns, doubling the number of agricultural grants awarded to women. The Africa region has developed guidance notes to raise the attention of teams preparing CASs on the relevance of gender in their strategic pillars, through a set of guiding questions and country gender worksheets. 16. Recent practice meets the requirements of the Bank’s operational policy on gender and development (OP4.20). The policy states that all CASs should draw on, and discuss, the findings of a recent country gender assessment. Table 1 provides a breakdown by region, and Box 1 provides recent good practice examples. 17. Table 1 shows that in FY11 and FY12, 100 percent of IDA CAS products were gender-informed and that, from a gender perspective, the quality has been improving. In FY11, 3 of 10 CASs were rated by the PREM Gender Department (PRMGE) more satisfactory and 7 of 10 were rated highly satisfactory. In FY12, all IDA CASs were rated highly satisfactory. 8 18. PREM recently developed and published guidance on “How to integrate gender into CAS,� which clarifies the Bank’s corporate policy on gender in CASs, and outlines good practice steps towards integration. The note was issued by PREM and Operations Policy and 7 Toward Gender Equality in East Asia and the Pacific: A companion to the World Development Report. World Bank 2012. 8 Satisfactory reflects compliance with OP4.20, more satisfactory means gender-informed analysis was reflected in the design of the CAS program and highly satisfactory means the strategy incorporated gender considerations into the results framework, as well as the analysis and content of the program, that is, all three dimensions. -6- Country Services (OPCS) and complements the gender module delivered as part of the CAS Academy and other training courses targeted at Country Economists and Task Team Leaders. Table 1: CAS Ratings, IDA, FY11-12 Highly Unsatisfactory Satisfactory More Satisfactory Total number Satisfactory FY11 AFR 3 3 EAP 2 2 ECA 1 1 LCR 1 1 MNA SAR 1 2 3 Total 3 7 10 FY12 AFR 3 3 EAP 5 5 ECA 4 4 LCR 3 3 MNA SAR 3 3 Total 18 18 19. Since October 2011, PREM has undertaken corporate reviews of CAS products to ensure compliance with OP/BP 4.20. PREM now formally reviews all CASs/CPSs/ISNs at the Concept Note (CN) stage and at the Regional Operations Committee (ROC) stage to gauge the strategy’s compliance with OP4.20, provide guidance to mainstream gender into CAS products and identify gaps and opportunities. Specifically, the review seeks to identify and suggest entry points for strengthening the gender focus in diagnostics, program design, and results monitoring, as well as through CAS/CPS consultations. At the ROC stage, PREM reviews whether OP4.20 has been met; if not, remedial steps are suggested. 20. The experience over the past year suggests that many country teams are doing a better job in integrating gender considerations upstream, with investment in diagnostic knowledge and consultations early in the process of CAS products preparation. In the few cases where this was not the case, teams made major efforts to integrate PREM comments at the ROC stage. As a result, all of the recent CASs that went to the Board complied with OP4.20, and indeed, all IDA CASs were highly satisfactory, as illustrated in Table 1. -7- Box 1: Gender-Informed CAS Products: Recent Good IDA Practices Gender related issues identified in the Honduras CPS for 2012-2014 include low female labor force participation and high teenage pregnancy rates. Boys that drop out of school and lack employment opportunities are at risk to be involved in gangs as well as in crime and drug trafficking. The CPS details how the existing portfolio addresses gender issues and commits to work with other partners to identify areas where the Bank’s input may be most useful and ensure gender-sensitive design and/or monitoring and evaluation of future operations. The Mozambique CPS for FY12-15 identifies gender gaps in workload responsibilities, employment and income, access to land and agricultural production, and education and health levels. Gender-based violence is also an obstacle to gender equality as well as a “feminization� of poverty due to the concentration of women in the agricultural and informal sectors, in relatively low-paid occupations. The CPS reports that about 64 percent of projects in the current portfolio have gender-informed design and about 70 percent of pipeline projects would generate results about gender impacts. The Vietnam CPS for 2012-2016 addresses gender in four areas: (i) support Government in the implementation of the Law on Gender Equality and the National Strategy on Gender Equality; (ii) support development of a national gender data system, building on the National Gender Statistical Indicators System; (iii) identify opportunities to integrate gender more systematically into Bank operations, including by making the collection of gender-disaggregated data a guiding principle; and (iv) help to close the knowledge gap through quantitative and qualitative research on gender issues. The Kosovo CPS for FY12-15 identifies significant gender disparities, in particular: (i) large gender gaps in literacy, educational attainment and secondary school enrollment, (ii) high maternal mortality and overall low life expectancy more pronounced for women, (iii) exceptionally low women’s labor force participation and employment rates, and (iv) low representation of women in entrepreneurship and management, as well as in senior government positions. The CPS details results from a gender portfolio review, particularly specific actions to improve gender mainstreaming in selected projects; it also includes a gender-sensitive monitoring framework. B. Increasing Gender-Informed IDA Investments 21. Using the method described in Box 2, 86 percent of IDA projects were classified as gender-informed in FY12 (Figure 1). This reflects an increase of 16 percentage points since FY11, the year preceding IDA16. In terms of volume, IDA gender-informed investments stood at about US$12.9 billion, corresponding to about 90 percent of IDA lending commitments in FY12. This represents an increase of 15 percentage points since FY10, when gender-informed lending stood at 75 percent of IDA commitments. Box 2: Reviewing and Rating the Gender Content of Operations Operations are rated by looking at three dimensions: analysis, actions, and M&E. If at least one of the dimensions systematically considers gender, then the project is deemed gender-informed. The new World Bank system for tracking gender activities was adopted following in depth discussions across the World Bank with senior management, regions and networks. Beginning in July 2012, Task Team Leaders (TTLs) are asked to indicate whether the analysis and/or consultation include gender related issues; whether the operation includes specific actions to address the distinct needs of women and girls, or men and boys, and/or positive impacts on gender gaps; and whether mechanisms to monitor gender impact to facilitate gender-disaggregated analysis are in place. PREM and other networks regularly verify the results through detailed checks on a sample of projects. Source: “Gender Equality Corporate Actions and Strategy� www.worldbank.org/genderstrategy -8- 22. All regions have achieved the 60 percent target and almost all regions have seen an increase in the share of gender-informed IDA projects in FY12 compared to FY10—SAR (from 88 to 93 percent), LCR (from 57 to 92 percent), AFR (from 72 to 89 percent), and ECA (from 25 to 75 percent) were the most noticeable, while MNA has held steady at 100 percent gender-informed over the period. EAP has seen a decrease from 81 to 61 percent, and is the region with the lowest share of gender-informed IDA projects (Figure 2, left panel). This drop appears to be influenced mainly by the combination of two factors: a) a change in the composition of the IDA projects over the period which included three aviation related projects in the Pacific, and b) a decline in the total number of IDA operations. The region is undertaking a number of steps to better identify opportunities to integrate gender, to strengthen its Gender Community of Practice, and to track efforts and results. These activities range from a more systematic review of gender content of operations and Analytical and Advisory Activities (AAA), beginning at the Concept note stage and with clear accountabilities, support for innovation, evaluation and scale-up, especially in “non-traditional� sectors, increased knowledge sharing, support to task teams by Country Gender Focal Points and the regional Practice Group, training of country teams, real-time support to teams on demand (e.g., CPS/CAS, project preparation), and region-wide roll out of a gender results framework. Figure 1: A Significant Increase in Gender-Informed IDA Investments (share of gender-informed projects, FY10-12) 90% 86% 80% 72% 69% 70% 60% 50% 40% FY10 FY11 FY12 Gender informed IDA operations 23. Most gender-informed projects in FY12 included gender-informed analysis, underscoring the importance of country-level diagnostics: for example, in AFR, 75 percent and in LCR 83 percent of IDA projects have gender-informed analysis—this is a significant increase since FY10, when the shares stood at 52 and 43 percent, respectively. Most of these projects in AFR and LCR follow up the analysis with gender-informed actions and/or Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). In Africa in FY12, 71 percent of IDA operations coupled analysis with gender informed actions and 79 percent included gender informed M&E. In LCR in FY12, 83 percent of IDA operations included gender informed actions, and fully two-thirds had gender informed M&E. All of the IDA projects in MNA were gender-informed, although the total number of projects in the region is small. -9- Figure 2: MNA, LCR, AFR, SAR Lead the Way... …Thanks Also to a Large Share of Projects with Gender-Informed Analysis (share of gender-informed IDA projects, FY10-12) (breakdown of gender-informed IDA projects, FY12) Analysis FY10 FY11 FY12 Analysis + (Actions OR M&E) All (Analysis + Actions + M&E) 100% 100% 80% 80% 60% 60% 40% 40% 20% 20% 0% 0% AFR EAP ECA LCR MNA SAR AFR EAP ECA LCR MNA SAR (92) (18) (16) (12) (5) (28) 24. Most networks have increased the share of gender-informed IDA projects since FY10 (see Figure 3). The Human Development Network still leads the way with about 97 percent of projects rated gender-informed in FY12, followed by the Finance and Private Sector Development (FPD) Network (89 percent), and the SDN and PREM networks (both at 82 percent). Figure 3: Increases in the Share of Gender-Informed IDA Projects Percentage of gender-informed IDA projects, FY10-12 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% FY10 50% FY11 40% FY12 30% 20% 10% 0% FPD HDN PREM SDN 25. Figure 4 shows the leading and lagging gender informed sectors in FY12. Leading the way for gender informed IDA projects are education; health, nutrition and population; finance and private sector development; poverty reduction; agriculture and rural development; social development; and water. For some sectors, notably education and social development, this - 10 - result replicates the good performance of previous years. For others, there has been a sharp improvement, including for health, nutrition and population; poverty reduction; and water. Figure 4: The Share of Gender-Informed IDA Projects Varies Across Sectors in FY12 (# of operations in parentheses) 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Education (11) Economic Policy (23) Health (15) Transport (12) Energy, Mining (16) Poverty Reduction (4) Social Dev. Sector (3) Public Sector (7) Soc. Protect. (11) Environment (5) Water (10) Urban Dev.(10) Other FPD sectors (5) Agr. and Rural Dev. Finance & Private Infor. & Comm. (4) Sector (4) (31) FPD HDN PREM SDN 26. Some sectors are lagging but a set of concrete actions, focused on strategic planning, implementation and enhanced monitoring, are being adopted to advance the agenda and overcoming the challenges faced in mainstreaming gender: • In the case of the SDN sectors, the Steps and Strides Report (2012) 9 identifies the following challenges to gender mainstreaming: the type of projects, the existence of an evidence base, incentives and resource constraints. Key SDN commitments to overcome these challenges include allocating core Bank budget for gender work, a knowledge agenda and an SDN gender notes series to share good practice. Progress will be monitored by the SDN Council through quarterly reporting, and will be complementary to PRMGE reporting at the corporate level. Box 3 provides examples of ongoing progress. • The Urban Development sector has identified the following priorities in its action plan: (i) gender disaggregation in selected key core urban indicators (to be identified); (ii) documenting good practices in gender and urban development in the forthcoming SDN gender notes series; (iii) building staff capacity through knowledge generation activities, including technical expertise related to safety of public spaces and prevention of gender based violence; and (iv) providing incentives to teams alongside the SDN Gender Award. • A gender action plan for transport commits the sector to strategic actions to further mainstream gender issues and to better document and share good practices within and 9 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/01/16400624/steps-strides-sustainable-development-networks- companion-world-development-report-2012 - 11 - outside the Bank. Actions include establishing a gender coordination team with staff from the anchor, regional transport specialists and gender focal points to provide guidance and technical assistance, and producing sector notes to capture and disseminate good practice and knowledge from project interventions. • Plans to improve gender integration in public sector projects include targeted outreach to operational staff, strengthening gender in public expenditure review work and issuing a guidance note on integrating gender into public sector activities. New Directions in Justice Reform, a companion piece to the March 2012 governance and anticorruption strategy, 10 commits the Bank to strengthening the gender component in justice programs, and to develop expertise and guidance to assist country and Bank teams in this work – a review is underway to move this agenda forward, building on case studies in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu under the Justice for the Poor Program. • FPD is reviewing options to improve gender mainstreaming across various activities, to complement work on the Women Business and the Law database and the Global Findex (see para. 70). Box 3: Progress in Gender Mainstreaming The Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) together with the Africa Renewable Energy Access Program (AFREA) have been supporting the mainstreaming of gender into energy operations through a "learn-by-doing approach" by providing World Bank energy teams and governments with just in time technical assistance targeted at developing project components, activities and actions that can be integrated into existing and future operations and programs. Based on these efforts which are currently taking place in 5 countries (Mali, Senegal, Benin, Tanzania and Kenya), toolkits, case studies and knowledge materials are being developed to support the energy sector in further mainstreaming gender. Considerable lessons can be learned from the World Bank’s Oil, Gas and Mining group which has developed the Gender and Extractive Industries (EI) Program in 2007, to identify priority areas for intervention and support integration of gender into World Bank EI projects. The program is now in full implementation and it provides the foundation for the gender sensitive approach adopted in most of the mining Technical Assistance operations. Guidance, toolkits and methodologies have been established and gender actions have been identified and are under implementation in mining projects in Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, and Lao PDR. C. Preparation of Regional Gender Action Plans 27. As per the IDA16 commitments, every region would develop a gender action plan. Both EAP and LCR have completed Regional Gender Action Plans (RGAP) that have set regional priorities, and include common features such as commitments to increase both the number and quality of country-level gender diagnostics and ensure gender mainstreaming in CAS products and operations. In LCR, as part of the Regional Gender Action Plan, each country management unit (CMU) has committed to produce one in-depth study directed to understand one or more constraints affecting the country. Country level diagnostics in LCR suggest that 10 Strengthening Governance, Tackling Corruption: The World Bank Group’s Updated Strategy and Implementation Plan, March 6, 2012. - 12 - constraints arising from lack of agency are significant. Box 4 presents highlights from already- completed regional gender action plans. 28. RGAPs are presently under preparation for the four other regions, and are expected to be completed by the end of calendar year 2012. The South Asia Regional Action Plan, which is at an advanced stage of preparation, will target both women and men as agents of change, and will be framed around four pillars: (i) support for the preparation and implementation of stand-along projects and initiatives aimed at addressing the most persistent, egregious, and intractable gender issues in the region; (ii) strategic mainstreaming of gender into CASs products and projects with a particular focus on sectors that have a greatest impact on gender disparities and changes in gender roles; (iii) supporting research and knowledge creation, including impact evaluations to build evidence on effective gender interventions; and (iv) communications and capacity building of internal and external partners. The Europe and Central Asia region's RGAP is also in the final stages of preparation, and will focus on: (i) improving the inclusion of gender in the portfolio, (ii) knowledge generation on critical gender gaps, (iii) expanding the availability of gender relevant data, and (iv) investing in innovation. A cross- sectoral gender team is designing the RGAP to ensure a bottom-up approach to the inclusion of gender in the portfolio. In the Middle East and North Africa region, the RGAP, which is expected to be completed by December 2012, will be underpinned by the policy priorities that emerged in the MNA WDR companion report on gender. By and large, the region's gender challenges lie in economic empowerment and agency, although there are countries like Yemen and Djibouti as well as regions within many middle income countries where concerted effort is needed on reducing gender disparities in human development. The regional gender action plan aims to provide a strategic framework to mainstream gender in country partnership strategy, policy dialogue, analytical work and operations also highlighting implications for cross sector work, resources and staffing. In the case of AFR, the region held a two day management retreat on this issue, there have been consultations with all sector directors and a range of sector managers, and a final draft of the RGAP is now under preparation. - 13 - Box 4: Highlights of Regional Gender Action Plans in EAP and LCR EAP: Under its RGAP, the EAP region commits to: (i) improve the diagnosis of gender issues at regional and country levels; (ii) establish priorities for policy dialogue with governments, non-state actors and development partners; (iii) strengthen mainstreaming of gender issues in Bank operations; (iv) define clear roles and responsibilities for the implementation of these actions; (v) establish a set of indicators and targets to monitor progress; and (vi) provide country teams with additional capacity building and technical backstopping support. To help achieve these objectives, 8 countries have prepared Country Gender Action Plans (C-GAP), based on country-level prioritization exercises that included internal and external consultations. Overall implementation of C-GAPs in EAP is progressing on track, and early signs indicate that the process is contributing to enhanced integration of gender in new CAS products. The region is now piloting a “C-GAP Results Framework� that helps country offices report on gender-related results achieved during the past fiscal year, keep track of gender targets, and monitor country level adherence to CAS products, and corporate and regional commitments to gender. EAP deliveries in FY12 included three country gender assessments along with a number of other analytical and operational results addressing gender inequalities areas in endowments, economic opportunity, and agency. Examples of analytical work addressing economic opportunities include: “Gender Investment Climate Reform� and “Women Entrepreneurs in the Aid Economy� reports (Solomon Islands) and studies on resource distribution and share of benefits for women and girls in relation to mining (Papua New Guinea). Recent project examples include: off-season job creation for ethnic minority women in Lao Cia Province, Vietnam; piloting of a gender- sensitive model to facilitate partnerships between lead firms and rural households in the Lao silk production sector; and skills development for young women in the urban labor market in Papua New Guinea. LCR: LCR has identified three priority areas: improving boys’ academic enrollment and achievement; facilitating labor market entry for vulnerable groups and supporting female entrepreneurs to expand and grow their businesses; and addressing gender based violence and teenage pregnancy. The plan is anchored in three pillars: mainstreaming gender into CAS products and relevant financial and knowledge programs with a focus on those sectors with corporate commitments; addressing persistent and priority areas of inequality identified in analytical work and consultations; and gathering and sharing evidence to build and disseminate evidence on what works for gender interventions and mainstreaming. Recent highlights of implementation in IDA countries include the joint World Bank and Commonwealth regional Caribbean initiative “on boys at risk�, the Haiti Adolescent Girls Initiative, the work done under the Gender Based Violence Rapid Social Response Trust Fund in Haiti to address gender based violence in five internally displaced persons camps, and the Empowering Rural Women in Nicaragua project. LCR is supporting gender components in several large IDA operations, in particular in agriculture and rural development (Honduras and Nicaragua), energy (Haiti), and maternal health (Nicaragua and Honduras). Following the RGAP, recent CAS products have been gender-informed. Good practices include the CAS for Honduras (see Box 1), and the Haiti ISN, which includes many gender-focused activities, such as a Rapid Social Response grant to provide residents of internal displacement camps with gender based violence prevention training and the inclusion of women’s safety issues into neighborhood reconstruction efforts through street lighting and the provision of safe spaces. Ongoing activities include the preparation of country scorecards with gender indicators on endowments, economic opportunity, and agency and indicators on the extent of gender- informed projects. A new IDA16 project will strengthen security at the local level and support measures to prevent violence in Honduras, the country with the highest rate of homicides in the world. The project will support various preventive measures, including those addressing violence against women which is common and widespread in Honduras, and has increased in recent years as recorded by a 6 percent increase in female homicides in 2010 compared to 2009. - 14 - D. Capacity Building for Staff and Country Partners 29. One priority to accelerate progress on gender mainstreaming and gender-related MDGs is the need to build capacity – both among staff and at the country level. A range of steps are being undertaken to ensure that World Bank staff is equipped to incorporate gender into its work, promote the gender equality agenda to a broader external audience, help build capacity in developing countries through strategic partnerships, improve and harmonize data collection, and strengthen gender-informed policy-making. These are highlighted below. 30. Recently-developed good practice notes for operational staff show how to integrate gender into CAS products, Development Policy Lending, and Investment Lending, outlining the steps towards gender integration and providing successful examples. The notes (available at Gender and Development - Gender Equality: Corporate Actions and Strategy) have been issued by PREM and OPCS and complement the gender module offered as part of the DPL Academy and other training courses targeted at Country Economists and Task Team Leaders. 31. The Learning Strategy has been reorganized around three broad strands: research and policy, operational, and major external events. The first strand includes a Gender and Development Seminar Series and the PREM Forum events. Audio and video links for live coverage and post-event dissemination of materials help increase the outreach to and participation of country and field-based staff. 32. Operational tools include dedicated gender modules in existing training such as the CAS Academy, DPL Academy, economic policy mapped economist bootcamp, and the disaster risk management course; as well as a series of events offered during PREM learning days. In response to requests from country management units and project leaders, regional gender staff provides tailored advice, feedback and support to teams through just-in-time clinics, including supporting CAS preparation in Honduras, Haiti, Guatemala, Vietnam, The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Malawi and South Sudan as well as an upcoming sector gender clinic with social development. A new Gender and Development Community of Practice seeks to share good practice operations and knowledge, and support the broader community of staff interested in the agenda. Each session attracts an average of 60 staff, with strong regional staff participation. Examples include sessions on innovations in DPLs, gender budgeting, “Thinking Equal in Trade Facilitation and Logistics�, “Gender Statistics and Tools for Gender Analysis�, and the 'One Day on Earth' initiative, which recorded many compelling stories on impact of projects on gender equality. 33. Major events have been held in partnership with other development actors, including UN Women, NGOs, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and the OECD. An event on the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Women’s Rights, a panel discussion on New Frontiers in Women’s Empowerment and Voice, several sessions at the Busan High-Level Forum, a Conference on Women’s Economic Empowerment through Rural Development, with UN Women, a side event at the 56th UN Commission on the Status of Women and a Gender and Employment workshop jointly organized with EBRD (April 2012, Turkey) are just some examples. To improve the operations of the Climate Investments Funds, the Bank is involved in an MDB working group focused on gender and the Climate Investment Funds (CIFs). The group is currently guiding the undertaking of a - 15 - gender impact assessment of the CIFs which is building on the Strategic Environment, Social and Gender Assessment of the CIFs prepared in 2010. The aim is to complete the assessment and share the findings and recommendations at the Joint Meeting of the CTF-SCF Trust Fund Committees in November 2012. 34. At the country and regional level, a number of capacity building activities took place in FY12. Selected examples help illustrate the range of activities that are underway: • Collaboration between the Bank, the Water and Sanitation Program and the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Kenya, which was recognized in the 2012 UN Public Service Award, integrated gender into the water sector through a series of capacity-building initiatives (see Box 5). This included collection of gender-disaggregated data, policy dialogue around how to include gender in water laws, and South-South learning in Colombia, India and Peru. 11 Box 5: Results from Capacity Building Efforts in Water in Kenya An IDA US$150 million Water and Sanitation Service Improvement Project approved in 2007 is supporting Kenya’s to expand access to safe water and sanitation services. The project initiated a capacity building program targeting 24 utilities. The results are described below. • Improving access: following the utility training, the Githunguri Water Company changed its connection policy. It no longer requires women to provide title deeds to secure a connection or to register under their father’s or husband’s names. Meters can now be rented and connection payments made by installments. As a result, between January and May 2011 the company received 18 applications from women. Following the change of policy and awareness creation, within six weeks 50 women had signed up for new connections and 29 had been connected. Similar efforts were recorded with the Kiambu Water Company which reduced connection fees from US$93 to US$67 and made it payable by installments, targeting increased applications from women. • Improved understanding for targeting women’s and men’s needs: gender-disaggregated data generated through a socioeconomic baseline survey for informal settlements is being used to inform infrastructure designs for WASSIP in the Athi Board area. • Gender-sensitive customer care: all 12 Athi Water Services Board utilities have reformatted their complaints forms and are disaggregating complaints by sex to better respond to the needs and interests of men and women. • Increased participation by women in planning for services: the Limuru Water Company consulted women and men separately for the first time on sites for new water kiosks. • Increased equity in access to paid work: sensitization by the Gatundu South Water Company GDOs has increased the participation of women from zero to 56 of 195 workers employed for dam desilting. • Increased attention to compensation for men and women for resettlement: the Athi Water Services Board is disaggregating data on compensation for resettlement and plans an audit of the impact on compensation of projected-affected men and women. http://smartlessons.ifc.org/smartlessons/lesson.aspx?id=1492http://smartlessons.ifc.org/smartlessons/lesson.aspx?id =1492) • A senior gender specialist was recruited in Pakistan to support capacity building for project teams through direct technical support and sectoral gender briefs, such as 11 IFC Smart Lessons: Real Experiences, Real Development, September 2011. Truly Teaming: Partnering to integrate gender into Kenya’s water sector. Available at: http://www- wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2011/11/07/000333038_20111107011654/R endered/PDF/652790BRI0IFC00Lesson0Truly0Teaming.pdf - 16 - education sector gender briefs for provincial Secretaries of Education Country Gender Focal Points, who number around 50 in total, play a key role and are present in many country offices. The ECA SDN unit has also assigned a gender focal point to work with project teams to ensure increased gender focus in projects and develop knowledge and capacity. • The ieGender program uses the Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME) technology to develop communities of practice, generate local knowledge and expand policy adoption of gender policies. 12 A series of capacity building activities for country counterparts integrates gender into impact evaluations and serves as a platform to discuss gender issues and to bring gender into the policy dialogue. Around 60 percent of DIME’s US$7 billion Agricultural Adaptation Initiative portfolio and 50 percent of the US$1 billion DIME-linked FPD portfolio adopted gender-specific interventions and/or plans to estimate gender-related impacts. Box 6 provides examples of recent impact evaluations findings. • Knowledge sharing from experience and South-South exchanges is part of the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI). At an August 2012 AGI technical workshop in Liberia, 35 participants from 7 IDA countries shared experience with interventions to help adolescent girls transition from school to productive employment. They exchanged lessons on design and implementation, discussed monitoring and evaluation results and gained insights on positioning for scale-up of pilots. • In FY12, the Demand for Good Governance (DFGG) Learning Program, the Asia Foundation and the Ministry of Interior in Cambodia co-hosted a DFGG "theme" focused on the dual aspects of gender: (i) gender impacts of social accountability and (ii) how women can be empowered to demand accountability. A training curriculum was developed for the use of government and non-state actors. • In FY12, EAP organized trainings for the Region Gender Focal Points and country training sessions/clinics on gender, such as the gender training for the country office in Vietnam. The training was successfully completed and a follow-up will take place later in the year (training of trainers). • Under the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), three countries (Mozambique, Nepal, and Samoa) undertook gender disaggregated consultations during the preparation of their Investment Plans. The PPCR sub-committee has also recently approved an investment in Nepal on Building Resilience to Climate Related Hazards, which recognizes that vulnerability to weather-related hazards is an important obstacle to growth and disproportionately affects women and children, and has designed the project to be responsive to these beneficiary groups. 12 For more information, see website http://go.worldbank.org/9I3YHPZZZ0 - 17 - Box 6: Recent findings from impact evaluations (IEs) A woman’s time is money: In Malawi, extension services do not reach farmers effectively, and women are disproportionately excluded. The government set gender targets and worked with the IE team to test ways of extending service delivery without increasing the ministry’s fiscal burden. They created non-remunerated peer farmer positions and reserved half of those positions for women farmers—an attempt to place women at the center of extension service delivery. A large-scale randomized control trial showed that, when given a bag of seeds and fertilizer as a small incentive to boost adoption, women lead farmers are as effective as their male counterparts in getting men and women to adopt technology. Absent the incentive, however, women lead farmers performed significantly worse. The lesson is that a woman’s time is particularly scarce: unless they receive compensation, women cannot afford to devote time to training others. While this work helped the ministry meeting its targets for gender in extension services, these results have been used to scale up the role of gender in agriculture. Mozambique tested a similar intervention and isolated similar constraints. Results are forthcoming. Data for gender action: In Ethiopia, a baseline household survey was conducted as part of an impact evaluation for the Rural Capacity Building Project (RCBP). Combined with qualitative work, these data showed that women were less likely than men to visit the extension officer and participate in extension training courses. The evaluation team prepared a note highlighting factors associated with the gender gaps in access to extension. This was discussed with donors and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Ethiopia who decided to take action. They worked with the evaluation team to rigorously test new modes of extension service delivery in the next generation of agricultural projects. Vocational training, marriage and childbearing in Malawi: IE results of an apprenticeship training program in Malawi support the case that educational or vocational training interventions can also have significant effects on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. While female participants were less likely to be married, the share of female participants that had given birth was halved compared to the control group. The impact of the program on SRH outcomes was positive as early sexual experience, marriage, and childbirth are some of the main constraints to female schooling and empowerment. 35. In FY12 the World Bank Institute (WBI) undertook a scan of its learning products to identify gaps where gender lessons from the WDR could be included in order to improve offerings in selected thematic areas. The areas identified for greater gender emphasis include: collaborative governance; growth and competitiveness; urban development; health systems; and cross-cutting themes, including fragility and conflict, results, knowledge exchange, and partnerships. In FY13, WBI will launch a distance-learning course on the WDR 2012 main messages for staff, development practitioners and country counterparts. WBI also plans to integrate a gender module into its Parliamentary Strengthening Program, and will develop a learning course on how to integrate gender into national budgets building based on a 2011 pilot in southern and east Africa. 36. PREM and the Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) are developing the ADePT Gender software to facilitate micro-level gender related analysis in Economic and Sector Work (ESW). Initially funded under the Gender Action Plan (GAP), ADePT Gender is now being redesigned to fulfill the needs of country gender diagnostics along the lines proposed by the 2012 WDR. 37. The Gender Data Portal, launched in July 2012, is an interactive and dynamic platform that provides a one stop source of information and resource on gender equality data and statistics. Visitors to the portal have user friendly access to data from World Development Indicators, national statistics agencies, United Nations databases, and World Bank- - 18 - conducted or funded surveys, as well as analytical work on frontier areas such as access to finance and legal discrimination. The topics covered are employment and access to productive activities, education, health, public life and decision-making, human rights of women and girls, and demographic outcomes. 38. Other major new regional initiatives to foster the knowledge on what works have emerged over the past year. These include the Africa Gender Innovation Lab, which takes a collaborative approach to evaluating interventions, providing a space for policy dialogue as part of the process and the recent Southern Sudan: Food for Training evaluation, which measured the impacts of a livelihood development program that combined food aid with skills development training and financial services for female household heads. In MNA, Jordan NOW is a rigorously evaluated active labor market policy pilot, informing current policy discussions, the national employment strategy and the jobs compact in the context of youth employment issues. Results of evaluations of active labor market projects supported by the GAP and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Initiative revealed gender differential impacts (Box 7). Recent initiatives also include The Women’s Leadership in Small and Medium Enterprises work program, which was launched with financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development and aims to identify ways to support women-led small- and medium-sized enterprises through impact evaluations and knowledge sharing. In May 2012, a competition conducted in collaboration with the Regional Chief Economists identified seven projects across five regions. These include: training women agricultural producers in Haiti; measuring the effect of interventions for increased market access and capacity building in six African countries; and piloting innovative lending mechanisms for female entrepreneurs in Pakistan. Box 7: Boosting women’s employment – evidence from recent evaluations Evaluations are generating a range of specific results about what works to boost women’s employment. Some illustrative examples reported in the last year include: • In Uganda cash transfers given for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs increased hours spent on employment outside the home much more for women (by 50 percent compared to 25 percent for men). In some cases however, greater aggression was experienced by women in the program, which is being further explored. • In the Dominican Republic, mid-term results show technical and life-skills training have larger impacts on female disadvantaged youth compared to males. • The evaluation of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act shows that the program draws women into the labor force, but women are less likely than men to be aware of their entitlements under the program or have the means to access them. These results informed the design of social protection programs in Bihar. • Evidence from Sri Lanka suggests for women already in business, training had no impact on business performance, while training did appear to increase the profitability and business practices of start-ups. The Adolescent Girls Initiative is adding to this body of research by testing interventions that aim to smooth young women’s transition into productive employment in Afghanistan, Haiti, Jordan, Lao PDR, Liberia, Nepal, Rwanda and South Sudan. Source:http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTGENDER/0,,contentMDK:23203906~pagePK: 210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:336868,00.html and World Bank, and Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group. - 19 - 39. As reported also in the Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group, there remain however significant gaps in knowledge about what works and what does not work to reduce gender disparities. Complementary resources are needed to finance investments in evaluations and knowledge, which are crucial in helping to close persistent gender gaps. Moreover, knowledge sharing is as important as knowledge generation, and this will become an increasingly important focus: • The Africa Gender Innovation Lab and LCR Gender Impact Evaluation Initiative, which have important public good elements in generating results of broader significance, are expected to expand in the coming year (with support from the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE). • Upcoming work on voice, agency and participation will seek to fill critical knowledge gaps in these dimensions (Box 8), alongside continued focus on economic empowerment. • A new Gender Knowledge Space for researchers, think tanks, practitioners, activists, civil society, policy makers and governments is proposed. The Space will aim to bring together a variety of experts and practitioners, from inside and outside the World Bank to improve and synthesize knowledge to make it accessible and user friendly, identify gaps and improve the ability and capacity to collect and analyze data and statistics and to increase the impact of knowledge by strengthening links between research and policy. Discussions are underway with UN Women and other partners on this front. Box 8: Investing in knowledge in new frontiers: voice, agency and participation The WDR 2012 identifies women’s voice, agency and participation as one of three key dimensions of gender equality, alongside endowments and opportunities, and as a major policy priority for future action. This refers to women’s access to and control over resources; freedom of movement; freedom from gender based violence; sexual and reproductive health rights; and political participation. This is a relatively new frontier for the Bank, where initial investments in knowledge and learning from innovation and the experience of others will be key in defining implications for future WBG operations. A flagship report on voice, agency and participation is planned for FY13 to deepen the evidence base and provide policy conclusions that can inform WBG operations. This work will seek to deliver policy-relevant conclusions, and inform important World Bank modalities, such as IDA17. Source: Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group 40. Looking ahead, the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality, building upon the accomplishments of the GAP, will support work on frontier issues to strengthen awareness, knowledge, and capacity building for gender-informed policy-making. It provides a single vehicle through which trust fund resources for gender will be channeled, including future contributions to the AGI. The UFGE is anchored in the Bank’s three-tiered Results Framework for Gender Mainstreaming, as laid out in the Corporate Scorecard and IDA16. It will complement, but not fund, the Bank’s gender mainstreaming activities by investing in their ‘public goods’ aspects. - 20 - Figure 5: Home page of new Gender Data Portal IV. Tracking IDA’s Support for Gender Equality 41. IDA committed to tracking specific sectoral indicators to monitor IDA’s support for gender equality in IDA 16—in social safety nets, agriculture and rural development operations, and health projects that address high fertility and maternal mortality. It also committed to tracking gender dimensions in the implementation of the Education Sector Strategy and the Reproductive Health Action Plan as well as in IDA’s support to Fragile and Conflict-affected Countries. While this section updates the status on IDA specific indicators and presents good practice examples in this area, IDA supports also operations that aim at empowering women. Among the recent examples, The Ethiopia’s Women's Entrepreneurship Development Project is a US$50 million IDA operation that was approved in May 2012 that aims to promote small and medium enterprises owned or partly owned by female entrepreneurs. The project has three components: access to microfinance; developing entrepreneurial skills, technology and cluster development; and project management, advocacy and outreach, monitoring and evaluation and impact evaluation to provide lessons about what works. A. Sectoral Monitoring Indicators i. Social Safety Nets 42. There are important gender dimensions to safety nets. First, social safety nets (SSNs) address important gaps in gender opportunities: in many developing countries, women still have less access to education, systematically lower earnings and less access to a range of assets and productive resources (i.e., land and credit) than do men. Safety nets help address gender gaps in - 21 - education, health, access to productive resources and credit as well as gaps in such other outcomes such as (self)-employment, earnings and psycho social well-being. Impact evaluation evidence shows that safety nets programs can improve women’s empowerment, decision-making power and optimism toward the future. Second, there is a need to protect women and girls with SSNs: impacts of shocks on women/girls and men/boys often differ since inequalities in access to resources might lead women to be more vulnerable to shocks and to rely on different risk pooling mechanisms. The recent global financial crisis led to substantial job losses in Cambodia, for example, especially for women, who also comprised the largest share of new workers in agriculture and in the informal sector. 13 Moreover, female health can be more susceptible to shocks in developing countries than male health. 14 Third, women and men may have different ways of pooling risk. In Ghana, for example, risk pooling appears to be gender-related: women tend to pool risk with other women in their villages, while men pool risk with a more geographically diffuse group of men. 15 Finally, it is well established that increases in the resources controlled by women commonly translate into a larger share of household resources going to family welfare, and especially to expenditures on children. For example, the Honduran Conditional Cash Transfer Project (Bono 10000) is benefitting 35,343 families. More than 90 percent of the benefits are received by women who ensure compliance with the education and health conditionalities. 43. Most safety nets projects do incorporate gender elements into their design. For example, nearly all Conditional Cash Transfer programs (now implemented in over 40 countries, in 30 with active Bank support) target women and typically transfer payments to women. Non- conditional targeted cash transfers projects, which constitute the majority of safety net projects in the IDA portfolio, target and seek to empower women, including through directing transfers to women. Likewise, in workfare programs, program design incorporates social norms about gender-appropriate behavior, as well as gender-specific responsibilities with respect to household and market work. Good legislation and policy design are key prerequisites but sometimes they need to be accompanied by repeated awareness and sensitizing campaigns aimed at both men and women. For example, The India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was designed to encourage women’s participation and empowerment. While the evidence so far suggests that the MGNREGS has succeeded in attracting women into the workforce (see also Box 7), there is huge variation in how MGNREGS is working across the states of India. For example, contractors appear less likely to provide work to women and women’s awareness of their rights, off MGNREGS stipulations, and how to get work is generally very low ( World Bank Social Protection and Labor strategy, 2012). 44. A common approach has been to include a quota or a pre-determined percentage for women’s participation in project activities. Among 18 Bank-executed projects in Africa that were recently reviewed, 15 followed this approach (AFTSP 2010). It is however important to look at broader impacts, and a wider set of criteria is therefore used to complement quota targets. 13 Bruni et al., 2010. 14 Strauss and Thomas, 2008. 15 Goldstein, 1999. - 22 - 45. The specific indicator included in IDA16 is the share of safety net projects designed to mitigate risk and vulnerability for women and girls. Among the 93 IDA projects coded as supporting safety nets, all (100 percent) specifically included women or girls among their beneficiaries. 16 46. There is a need to improve the mechanisms used to track performance. Most safety net operations monitor the number of beneficiaries. However, only about one-eighth of the reviewed projects presented gender disaggregation of the beneficiary data. Where the information is available, women average about half of the beneficiaries. In the Yemen Social Fund for Development III, almost 52 percent of beneficiaries are females, and in the Pakistan Second Poverty Alleviation Fund Project, women constituted almost half of the beneficiaries. Core Sector Indicators for Social Protection and Labor (SPL) were developed as part of the new social protection and labor strategy, and launched in FY12 and are now effective. The two gender disaggregated coverage indicators measuring the number of SSN and labor market programs beneficiaries are now mandatory for projects mapped to SPL. ii. Agriculture and Rural Development 47. With 75 percent of the world’s poor living in rural areas and most involved in farming, agriculture remains a fundamental instrument for economic growth and poverty reduction, especially in Africa. Women play a vital role from the farm to the market. Many constraints, including limited access to and control over productive assets, services, and lack of political voice and collective action, result in less food grown, less income earned and more poverty and food insecurity. 48. The Bank’s Agriculture Action Plan FY10-12 calls for a focus on the ultimate client, especially women. In support of this goal, the 2008 “Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook� provides guidance for mainstreaming gender into agricultural interventions and the 2012 genderinag.org e-platform includes publications, videos, toolkits, lessons and other resources on gender issues in agriculture. A 20-hour online e-learning course based on the modules in the Sourcebook and including a new module on gender, agriculture and climate change is currently under development. A “gender in agriculture� focal point system, comprising approximately 13 Bank staff from the regions and staff from the IFC, continues to support this work. 49. The specific indicator included in IDA16 is the share of agriculture and rural development operations that target women. Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) is now one of the leading sectors at the World Bank in gender-informed operations, a significant shift since the mid-2000s. Using the methodology described in Box 2, 100 percent of IDA agricultural and rural development operations were rated gender-informed in FY12. About 90 percent of operations included gender-informed analysis, actions, and monitoring and evaluation – which is a major achievement. Recent good practice examples are highlighted in Box 9. The focus going forward is on supporting project implementation to achieve desired development impacts. 16 Review completed by the HDN Anchor. - 23 - Box 9: Gender and Agriculture: Good Practice Examples of IDA Projects The Ethiopia Agricultural Growth Project (US$150 million) aims to accelerate broad-based sustained agricultural growth that will create employment and reduce poverty and food insecurity, with the specific objective of increasing agricultural productivity and market access for key crop and livestock products in targeted woredas with increased participation of women and youth. The project recognizes that obstacles to women’s participation in economic activities lower their economic growth potential in agriculture and argues that a particular focus on women and youth will result in the highest increase in economic growth and the largest reduction in poverty. Special attention will be devoted to building knowledge on gender and youth issues. The project will help to develop capacity among women and youths to form producer groups, teach leadership skills (particularly for productive organizations), and stimulate active participation in meetings; and includes monitoring indicators that measure increases in yield and in commercialization and value-addition of agricultural and livestock products of participating households, with special analysis of the impact on women’s agricultural activities. The Nicaragua Land Administration Project (additional financing of US$10 million) is a land administration pilot project in the Pacific and Central regions launched in 2003. This gender-focused effort developed a range of instruments to increase female participation in the land regularization and titling process. The scheme prevents unfair redistribution of land that favors men and raises awareness of women’s economic stake in the process. The Kosovo Real Estate Cadastre and Registration Project (US$12.3 million) will promote women’s property registration by: (i) increasing outreach targeting women to register their land; (ii) ensuring protection of women’s property rights on first registration through inter alia redesign of forms to encourage registration of all owners (not just head of household); (iii) modification of municipal cadastre office practices to ensure full compliance with the Law on Gender Equity and Family Law in areas of inheritance and land transactions; (iv) specific training for municipal cadastre offices on women’s property rights and sensitivity to the special challenges faced by women in property issues; and (v) ensuring that the project’s planned social survey provides a baseline to monitor progress of gender indicators in annual follow up surveys. Based on existing data it is estimated that about 20 percent of land is either individually owned by women or jointly titled (2011). The project will support Government’s efforts to achieve an increase in women’s land ownership of about an additional 10 percent by 2015. iii. Health Projects 50. The specific indicator included in IDA16 is the share of health projects that address high fertility and maternal mortality. As of August 2012, 32 out of 46 active health projects in IDA countries with high fertility or maternal mortality addressed these issues. Nine projects that include a focus on reproductive health issues were approved in FY12. 17 Projected IDA16 commitments for FY13 show that about one third of lending for reproductive health is in the Africa region. 18 51. The Bank is leveraging results based financing grants for maternal and child health under the Health Results Innovation Trust Fund (HRITF). As of the end of FY12, 11 of the 19 Country Pilot Grants (CPGs) approved by donors and the Health, Nutrition, and Population Sector Board were approved by the Executive Board. 19 Eight of these have signed Trust Fund Agreements. 20 This translates into approved commitments of US$111.8 million from HRITF and 17 Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Senegal. 18 As of August 2012 (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Liberia). 19 Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Laos, Nigeria, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 20 Afghanistan, Benin, DRC, India, Lao PDR, Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. - 24 - US$132 million of IDA for RBF. This fund also supports knowledge and learning, through grants to 24 countries to gather and disseminate lessons learned and is building an evidence base through its support of rigorous impact evaluations on the causal effects, costs, and operational feasibility. Evaluation grants (currently 23) will contribute to local evidence-based policy decision making, while cross-country meta-analysis will contribute to global knowledge. B. Getting to Equal in Education: The Education Sector Strategy and Furthering Gender Equality through Education 52. Over the decade to 2010, the ratio of girls to boys enrolled in primary education (gross) rose from 88 to 94 percent in IDA countries. Over this period, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Yemen experienced the largest improvements in gender parity, from 19 to 26 percent. More than two thirds of IDA countries now have a primary-enrollment gender parity index of at least 90 percent, and girls even outnumber boys in primary school in 19 IDA countries (UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2010). These trends reflect how effective policies and sustained investments in education have expanded the availability of schools even in rural areas and have lowered the cost of attending school, especially for the poor. 53. In 2011, the World Bank released its education strategy Learning for All: Investing in People’s Knowledge and Skills to Promote Development. The strategy promotes gender equality by identifying where educational disparities are widest, exploring the factors that explain them, and promoting the expansion of interventions that are most likely to help reduce these gaps. To sustain progress towards gender equality, the World Bank must continue to work to get girls into school and to keep girls in school from pre-primary to tertiary education. This requires system-wide education reforms along with targeted programs, based on a strong evidence base, to address the specific constraints of certain demographic or economic groups. For example, scholarships and non-formal learning programs may be needed to assist out-of- school children, whether they are boys or girls. The recruitment and training of female teachers may be needed in locations where a dearth of trained female teachers deters girls’ enrollment and attendance. Likewise, for girls who leave school early - often either to marry or support their families – second-chance and non-formal learning opportunities must be available to ensure that they, too, can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to lead healthy, productive lives. Also, it is important to note that in the Caribbean region boys are underperforming in schools and engaging in risky behavior; hence interventions should target boys in areas where this is shown to be an issue. 54. IDA’s efforts have been reinforced by the education strategy’s dictum: invest early, invest smartly, and invest for all. Nine out of eleven education projects in IDA countries in FY12 focus on disadvantaged children. For example, in Mongolia and Bangladesh, project interventions are strengthening pre-primary education systems – particularly in terms of ensuring access for girls and rural children. In April 2012, the World Bank education team hosted Getting to Equal in Education: Addressing Gender and Multiple Sources of Disadvantage to Achieve Learning, a day-long colloquium that brought together over 200 leading researchers, representatives from the public and private sectors, and practitioners to discuss interventions that help address multiple sources of educational disadvantage, with a focus on gender. - 25 - 55. Building on the World Development Reports on equity (in 2006) and the WDR 2012, as well as the education strategy, there are a number of related research initiatives underway. The World Bank is collaborating with United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF) on a Simulation for Equity in Education model that was launched in August 2011 and will enable countries to develop cost-effective and pro-equity education strategies for one or multiple groups of excluded children. Knowledge efforts currently being carried out by the education team include developing an evidence database of 300 impact evaluations collating country case studies focusing on identifying multiple sources of disadvantage in education, developing new methods to assess gender gaps in school attainment and analysis of global trends in child marriage and econometric estimates of the impact of child marriage on education. Financing for gender equality in education, the colloquium (see para. 54) and ongoing research programs reaffirm the World Bank’s commitment to gender equality and to reducing multiple sources of disadvantage through education. Recent good practice examples are presented in Box 10. Box 10: Gender and Education: Good Practice Examples of Tools and Operations In Punjab, Pakistan, home to 60 percent of the country’s population, IDA is helping expand access to quality education and promote better governance and accountability in the education system. Under the government’s Bank-supported program, more than 400,000 eligible girls receive targeted monthly stipends tied to school attendance; and the government supports approximately 2,000 low-cost private schools serving nearly a million low-income students. A complementary program in Punjab has seen the primary net enrollment rate increase from 50 percent to 54 percent since 2007 and the ratio of female-male primary net enrollment rise in rural areas from 61 percent to 76 percent. With financing from IDA, the Basic Education Development Program aims to increase school enrollment in Yemen with a particular focus on gender equality in impoverished districts and improve the quality of teaching. As of 2011, the project had built or rehabilitated about 3,700 classrooms and trained over 90,000 teachers. To close the gender gap in education, since 2008 the project has provided conditional cash transfers to approximately 34,000 girls from the most underprivileged rural households. The project has also focused on recruiting and training female teachers (more than 500 female teachers recruited in rural areas) to make girls’ education more culturally acceptable. The gross school enrollment rate in basic education (grades 1-9) rose from 62 percent to 86 percent over the period 1999–2011, with larger gains for girls than for boys. This improvement in overall basic education also contributed to a considerable rise in the grade 6 completion rate for girls, from 38 percent in 2001 to 51 percent in 2010. C. Implementation of the Reproductive Health Action Plan 56. The World Bank’s Reproductive Health Action Plan (RHAP) focuses on improving reproductive health outcomes of women and men, laying out the key issues, challenges, priorities and opportunities. A central focus is on strengthening country health systems and efforts to accelerate progress toward MDGs 4 and 5. The RHAP prioritizes interventions in 57 countries 21 to address maternal mortality and fertility; strengthening of health systems; provision 21 High Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR)-High Total Fertility Rate (TFR) Countries (TFR 3 or more; MMR 220 or more): Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Benin, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Botswana, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Congo, Rep., Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Liberia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Mauritania, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, - 26 - of services to the poor; increased focus on the needs of the youth; and leveraging partnerships to improve reproductive services and strengthen outcomes. Box 11 highlights regional and country initiatives to accelerate progress in reproductive health. 57. Since the RHAP was launched in 2010, reproductive health has become more prominent in the Bank’s overall lending, technical assistance, and policy dialogue. Between July 2010 and January 2012, ten countries with high MMR and/or Total Fertility Rate (TFR) that had new CAS products incorporated reproductive health issues. 22 Reproductive health also features strongly in IDA16 with three reproductive health indicators being monitored at the country level (maternal mortality, 23 adolescent fertility, 24 and births attended by skilled personnel 25). Recent work of the Bank in supporting this agenda includes: • analytical work and technical assistance including the development of reproductive health profiles for 51 of the RHAP priority countries to provide key data and information on MDG5 that can be incorporated into project documents, policy dialogue with governments and CAS products. • in collaboration with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH), undertook analysis to understand why some countries have been more successful than others in improving maternal and child health outcomes, to support policy and programmatic dialogue. The expected completion date is in the second quarter of FY13. • preparation of a guidance note on use of family planning in results-based financing (RBF) projects at the specific request of Task Team Leaders. • a key pillar of the RHAP is addressing the needs of adolescents and youth. This year the Bank has initiated a global ESW that aims to identify the drivers of poor adolescent sexual and reproductive health, both within and outside the health sector. This is supported through the Bank Netherlands Partnership Program (BNPP) and is expected to be completed in FY14. 58. Capacity building activities continue to be an important part of the RHAP implementation, with activities over the past year including: • Eighteen Reproductive Health Focal Points across all regions actively coordinate and facilitate RH activities in their respective regions with support from the Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Anchor. Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Sudan, Senegal, Solomon Islands, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Chad, Togo, Timor-Leste, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 22 Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Lesotho, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tanzania. 23 Available at http://corporatescorecard.worldbank.org/tier1.html?cmdk=23109318 24 Available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.ADO.TFRT/countries 25 Available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.BRTC.ZS/countries - 27 - Box 11: Selected Regional and Country Initiatives to Accelerate Progress in Reproductive Health Recent good practice projects in Africa include the Burundi Health Sector Development Support Project (US$25 million), a national results-based financing program which has helped to increase utilization of reproductive health services: (i) an increase in facility based births by 25 percent; (b) increase in prenatal consultations by 20 percent; (c) 35 percent increase in curative care consultations for pregnant women; and (d) 27 percent increase in family planning services obtained through health facilities during its first year of implementation (FY11). Knowledge efforts include Demographic Dividend in African Countries which focused on addressing the policy implications of population growth and economic development, identified country-specific factors for capturing the demographic dividend, and estimated the expected size and duration of the additional population and economic growth. Work in South Asia includes “Strengthening Commitment to Sexual and Reproductive Health� which has provided grants of almost US$800,000 to support regional priorities. Lessons from Bank-led analytical work on access barriers to reproductive health services have been integrated into national plans in India and the Maldives. Good practice projects in the region include the Afghanistan Strengthening Health Activity for Rural Poor Project, which was successful on several fronts: the share of facilities with skilled female health workers increased from 25 to 83 percent, and outpatient visits increased four-fold during 2002-2007. The ongoing Nepal Second HNP and HIV/AIDS Project emphasizes maternal health, with a 36 percent increase in skilled attendance at birth; increase in use of contraceptives by 43 percent; and an 85 percent increase in pregnant women attending at least one antenatal consultation. In East Asia and the Pacific, regional work in the Pacific on Delivery strategies for sexual and reproductive health and second chance education and training for youth has supported policy changes, identifying effective strategies in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. The region also undertook a review of global evidence on both demand-side financing mechanisms and performance-based financing programs for reproductive health. The findings were disseminated in a workshop in Bangkok (January 2012) and in a country consultation in Timor-Leste (February 2012). Two additional country consultations are scheduled for FY13. Good practice examples include the Cambodia Second Health Sector Support Program, which has improved health outcomes and MDGs, with over 300,000 pregnant women receiving antenatal care, and nearly 325,000 children being immunized with support from the program. The Lao PDR Health Services Improvement Project aims to increase utilization and quality of health services for poor women and children in eight rural provinces. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Bank has initiated work on sexual and reproductive health and rights among adolescents in Argentina, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. This includes a review of legal framework of legal rights on teen pregnancy, completed for Nicaragua in December 2012. Ongoing work includes a study on universal health coverage that examines the extent to which maternal health services are provided and maternal health outcomes, measuring indicators for contraceptive prevalence, antenatal visits, skilled attendance at birth, and maternal mortality; and a review of projects in the region with maternal and child health indicators. This information has been disseminated through such products as the enBreve briefs and information posters. A regional study on teenage pregnancy is underway, for release in FY13. This is a key issue in several IDA LCR countries: according to the latest WDI data, the percentage of women aged 15-19 who have had children or are currently pregnant was 22 percent in Honduras (where 92/1,000 births are to women aged 15-19, the second- highest in LCR) and 25 percent in Nicaragua. The study establishes the magnitude and potential implications of the problem; understands the risk factors, motivations and impacts in terms of poverty; sheds light on coping mechanisms and social implications; highlights gender-related questions; and provides information to support specific policies. In the Middle East and North Africa Region, the Safe Motherhood Vouchers Program has provided services to poor households in Sana’a, Yemen, through vouchers aimed at pregnant women. The project enrolled 9,500 poor eligible women and delivered births to about 7,000 cases. The political climate and security concerns have slowed work in 2012 and have created additional barriers to improving health outcomes, as witnessed by the closure of health centers in Yemen (for example), which will need to be reviewed and addressed moving forward. • In April 2012, the Bank conducted the regionally adapted course for “Achieving MDG5 in South Asia: Reproductive Health, Poverty Reduction and Health System Strengthening� in Sri Lanka, with 42 participants from all countries in the South Asia - 28 - region alongside 11 Bank staff. A major outcome was the commitment to a 100 day rapid results agenda (to be finalized and monitored). • The Population and Reproductive Health Capacity Building Program (PRHCBP), providing grants for civil society projects aimed at reducing maternal mortality and morbidity; increasing access to and choice in family planning; promoting the reproductive health care and services of adolescents; increasing attention to gender-based violence; and promoting gender equity, participation and inclusion. In 2012, grants of about US$1 million were made to 11 civil society organizations working in low income countries. D. Strengthening Efforts to Integrate a Gender Perspective in IDA’s Support to Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries (FCCs) 59. While the direct impact of violence in FCCs falls primarily on young men, who comprise the majority of fighting forces, women and children often suffer disproportionately from conflict. During periods of conflict, gender roles and relations might also change – for example in the absence of men, women assume the role of household heads – and offer an opportunity to reassess and transform those roles for positive change. Key gender issues related to Fragile and Conflict-affected Countries include economic empowerment in post- conflict environments, sexual and gender-based violence, young men at risk, and voice and participation of women and girls. Box 12 highlights recent good practice examples. 60. Significant efforts have been made to integrate a gender perspective into country strategies in FCCs. All the ISNs presented to the Board in FY12 specifically address gender issues. 26 Several are informed by gender studies and/or portfolio reviews of ongoing projects to identify current gaps as well as lessons learnt. For example, gender background studies and background notes are being prepared to inform the ongoing preparation of the Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Timor- Leste CASs, and for the South Sudan and Sudan ISNs. 27 The upcoming ISN for Yemen has sought every effort to mainstream gender in the pipeline of new projects proposed for the ISN period, underpinned by a careful ex-ante review. Gender-informed monitoring and evaluation are included directly in the results framework and/or at the project level. 61. Operations in FCCs are increasingly gender-informed over time, with a rise of 15 percentage points in the share of gender-informed operations since FY10; in FY12, 83 percent of operations in FCCs were gender-informed, compared to 68 and 66 percent respectively in FY10 and FY11. Indeed, the share of gender-informed operations in FCCs has been at least as high as the Bank average for non-fragile and conflict-affected countries. In Sub- Saharan Africa, which accounts for half of operations in FCCs, 86 percent of projects in FY12 were gender-informed, with 15 operations including gender analysis or consultations, 14 including specific actions which are expected to narrow gender disparities, and 17 also including gender-specific monitoring and evaluation. 26 ISN and CAS products for FCCs submitted to the Board in FY12: Nepal, Haiti, Tuvalu, Togo, Afghanistan and Kosovo. 27 All have tentative Board dates in FY13. - 29 - 62. In FY12, 69 percent of all operations in FCCs included gender analysis and/or consultations on gender related issues and the same share of operations included specific actions to narrow gender disparities. Interestingly, operations in FCCs in FY12 are as likely to include mechanisms to monitor gender impact and gender-disaggregated data collection and analysis as operations in non-conflict and fragile countries. Box 12: Gender in FCCs: Selected Recent Good Practice Examples Addressing At-Risk Youth and Employment. Current operations specifically addressing this issue in FCCs include the Afghanistan Skills Development Project (US$20 million from IDA and funding from other donors), the Liberia Youth, Employment, Skills Project (US$6 million from IDA and additional funding from the Catalytic Growth Fund), the Sierra Leone Youth Employment Support Skills Project (US$20 million from IDA) and the Côte d’Ivoire Emergency Youth Employment and Skills Development Project (US$50 million from IDA). These projects target low-skilled male youth and include provisions to assure participation of low-skilled female youth. Strengthening women’s empowerment and civic participation. In Afghanistan, support will continue for the National Solidarity Program (NSP, a US$40 million project financed by IDA) which creates Community Development Councils to implement small scale projects supported by men and women from the community. Building on previous phases of the NSP, efforts are made to ensure that women are adequately represented in elected bodies formed under the NSP, that their voices are reflected in Community Development Plans, and that they benefit from NSP projects. Combating Sexual and Gender Based Violence. In the Addressing Gender Based Violence in South Kivu (DRC) (a US$2 million project funded by the State and Peace Building Fund), an impact evaluation of selected activities is being carried out to identify low-cost and scalable interventions that demonstrably improve the psychological, social, physical and economic functioning of survivors of sexual and gender based violence. In the Protection from Gender-Based Violence Project in Côte d’Ivoire (a US$0.7 million project funded by the Development Grant Facility), an impact evaluation is identifying and assessing sustainable interventions for the prevention and mitigation of violence against women in rural areas affected by conflict. The evaluation also aims to understand the impacts of the project on attitudes toward and incidence of intimate partner violence, household decision making, and other gender norms. V. Improving the Results Focus 63. Improving the results focus of IDA’s work is important to increase accountability, as well as to track and ensure that results on the ground are consistent with leading indicators of performance. This section provides an overview of the frameworks for tracking results, which have been significantly strengthened over the past years, as well as planned improvements to address remaining weaknesses. A. Internal Monitoring of Gender-Related Efforts 64. In the fall of 2011, PREM began monthly monitoring of key operational indicators of gender mainstreaming, with a focus on CAS products and lending, identifying key constraints and highlighting innovations. These findings were discussed at monthly meetings with the Managing Directors (MDs), and subsequently folded into quarterly corporate scorecard - 30 - (CSC) days with all MDs and Vice Presidents. There was a specific focus on gender in the first two CSC days in February and June 2012. Senior management has thus been closely following progress over time. 65. Interactions with Executive Directors to discuss progress on gender include a technical seminar in February 2012 and a half day seminar in July (materials are available at www.worldbank.org/genderstrategy). Formal reporting on the Bank's gender mainstreaming strategy to the Board continues on an annual basis. The latest annual monitoring results were reported to the Board 28 as a background paper for the 2012 Annual Meetings’ Development Committee. 66. The extent of gender-disaggregation of data, such as of data related to project beneficiaries in sectoral operations, continues to improve. The majority of IDA operations now provide for gender-informed monitoring and evaluation. The share of new IDA operations including some gender-disaggregation of indicators or gender-informed evaluations has risen from 42 to 71 percent since FY10. Yet there is significant scope for further improvement on this front. 29 The use of standardized core sector indicators in project results frameworks is now mandatory for all IDA/IBRD operations and all projects should track the numbers of direct beneficiaries disaggregated by gender. 30 Additional efforts include for example, a new gender M&E framework piloted in 4 countries during FY12 by EAP; this M&E framework will be rolled out across the region in FY13. B. Strengthening the Results Monitoring System 67. The Bank is supporting several major global initiatives to strengthen gender data. The Interagency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics aims to improve accountability of gender data collected and supported by countries, and has identified a list of 52 core gender indicators covering 5 domains, namely: economic structures and access to resources, education, health and related services, public life and decision-making, and human rights of women and girls. These indicators are consistent with the data gaps identified in the WDR, and will form the basis for efforts to improve country-level statistical capacity. The Evidence and Data for Gender Equality Initiative (EDGE) was launched by the United States in November 2011 with UN Women, the OECD and the World Bank in a new partnership that seeks to push existing efforts to have comparable gender indicators on education, employment, entrepreneurship and assets. 68. A new Bank-wide working group on Gender Equality Data and Statistics (GEDS), with participation from all the regions and three networks (OPCS, FPD, LEG), is co-chaired by the DEC Data Group and PREM. Launched in March 2012, the GEDS is tasked with identifying 28 “Update on Implementation of the Gender Equality Agenda at the World Bank Group�, September 2012. 29 Outputs/outcome indicators cover access to urban services and housing for the poor, agriculture research and extension, biodiversity, conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction, education, health, information, communications and technology, irrigation and drainage, micro and small and medium enterprise financing, participation and civic engagement, roads and highways, social inclusion, social protection, and water supply. 30 Full list of Core Sector Indicators available at http://intresources.worldbank.org/INTOPCS/Resources/380831- 1177599583121/3719948-1248469457617/6332446-1330008912550/CoreSectorIndicators3-29-12.pdf - 31 - opportunities for expanding coverage and availability of gender-relevant data by sharing ongoing work in the regions and networks; encouraging identification and replication of best practices in data collection, analysis and use; and steering regional efforts towards areas in gender statistics that require additional methodological work. Looking ahead, the GEDS will identify “data poor� countries and opportunities in these countries to promote policy dialogue on gender-relevant data. The GEDS will also review the pipeline of statistical capacity building projects to encourage explicit focus on mainstreaming gender. 69. As part of efforts to improve gender statistics, the World Bank ASPIRE (Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity) initiative is an online tool with the most up-to-date compilation of global social protection and labor (SPL) estimates, including data from 56 countries—mostly in the developing world—from 2005-2010. ASPIRE provides open and accessible household-level data on populations’ social and economic status; assessments of SPL programs, including weaknesses such as low coverage and poor targeting; SPL program impacts on poverty and inequality; and ways to improve household data collection for SPL programs. 70. The Bank mainly tracks country-level indicators in education, health and labor force participation – because these are the areas where reliable data is regularly available. Although the WDR 2012 states that endowments, economic opportunities, and agency are equally important prerequisites for gender equality, Sectoral Monitoring Indicators seem to have a much stronger focus on endowments (health, education) and less on economic opportunities and agency. To address the increased demand for data on results, indicators for monitoring progress in IDA countries (Tier 1 indicators) could be broadened by using Bank-supported surveys that are comparable across countries. The Global Financial Inclusion database (Global Findex) provides gender disaggregated indicators for 148 (including 56 IDA) countries on use of financial services in three areas: use of a formal account, borrowing from a formal financial institution, and saving at a formal financial institution. The Women Business and the Law database provides data for 142 (of which 52 IDA) countries on whether laws and institutions formally treat women differently than men in the following domains: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit and going to court. Two new gender indicators are being considered for the Corporate Scorecard: in Tier I, percentage of women with a formal account, by sex, and/or female to male ratio of use of formal account (Global Findex); and in Tier II, share of women participants in Bank-supported labor market programs. It is however clear that further work is needed to identify good indicators, especially for voice and agency. Along this line, knowledge generation initiatives, such as the evidence generated in the impact evaluations (see Box 7) and the forthcoming work on agency and voice (see Box 8), need to be further scaled up. 71. Looking ahead, IDA country level activities will focus on supporting in-country dialogue to improve capacity for producing and using gender statistics. This approach will work only if there is close collaboration between gender policy initiatives and the production of data necessary to inform policy design and track performance. While the establishment of the GEDS working group is a good start, strengthening in-country dialogue on gender data requires gender and statistical specialists to work in very close collaboration. Country level work will - 32 - draw from country-specific initiatives that are underway, complemented by source material being developed at the global and regional levels. 72. The World Bank Group’s President, Jim Yong Kim, has expressed strong support for gender equality in the Bank’s work. An area of particular focus in the next year will be to improve data availability in two areas—women economic opportunities and women’s voice and agency—where data are currently missing. This will require concerted efforts to build statistical capacity in these countries, with an initial focus in ten countries which will be scaled up over time. Annex 1: Gender Informed IDA Operations by Region and Network/Sector, FY10-12 (total number of projects per category in parentheses) Region FY10 FY11 FY12 72% 72% 89% Africa (106) (134) (92) 81% 59% 61% East Asia Pacific (31) (32 ) (18) 25% 46% 75% Europe and Central Asia (20) (26) (16) 57% 67% 92% Latin America and Caribbean (14 ) (18) (12) 100% 100% 100% Middle East and North Africa (9) (4) (5) 88% 80% 93% South Asia (41) (45) (28) 72% 69% 86% Overall IDA ( 221) ( 259 ) (171) 60% 62% 80% All IBRD/IDA (384) (384) (259) Network/ Sector FY10 FY11 FY12 Human 100% 94% 100% Education Development (18) ( 16 ) ( 11 ) Network (HDN) 100% 75% 100% Health (17) ( 20 ) (15) 95% 64% 91% Social Protection (22) ( 14 ) (11) 98% 78% 97% Overall HDN (57) (50) (37) Finance & Private 38% 58% 75% Finance & Private Sector Sector (13) (19) (4) Development Other FPD sectors (CIP, FIP, ICP, FSY, 100% 100% 100% (FPD) FM) (1) (1) (5) 43% 60% 89% Overall FPD (14) (20) (9) Poverty Reduction 54% 53% 83% Economic Policy & Economic ( 26) (30) (23) Management 25% 75% 100% (PREM) Poverty Reduction (4) (4) (4) 33% 54% 71% Public Sector (6) ( 13 ) (7) 47% 55% 82% Overall PREM (36) (47) (34) Social 94% 89% 100% Agriculture and Rural Development Development ( 36 ) (38) (31) Network (SDN) 45% 48% 56% Energy and Mining ( 20 ) ( 23 ) ( 16 ) 75% 50% 80% Environment (4) (8) (5) 50% 75% 75% Information & Communications (4) (8) (4) 100% 100% 100% Social Development Sector (2) (3) (3) 53% 77% 67% Transport (19) (30) (12) 70% 67% 70% Urban Development ( 20 ) (21 ) (10) 67% 73% 100% Water (9) (11) (10) 70% 73% 82% Overall SDN (114) (142) (91)