Women can lead push for growth

Across the Global South, painful austerity measures such as benefit caps, pay freezes and subsidy cuts have followed donor governments' recent cuts to foreign aid.

- ANISHA CHUGH LAURA LEONELLI MOREY TERESA ZAPETA MENDOZA

Members of the State Enterprises Workers' Relations Confederation call for better welfare for women labourers during a demonstration on March 8, 2021.BANGKOK POST

The policy pivot has had an especially dramatic impact on women — costing them jobs, services and protections — and is causing widespread economic hardship in many developing countries.Against this backdrop of shortsightedness, "Give to gain", the theme of this year's International Women's Day, reminds us that investing in women yields outsize returns. As former World Bank president Robert B Zoellick once put it, "Gender equality is the right thing to do. And it is also smart economics".

Budgets are never neutral: Policy choices, from supporting extractive industries to weakening health systems, can erode women's livelihoods, augment the burden of unpaid care work and increase poverty rates. Today, 708 million women are outside the labour force because of care responsibilities, reflecting policymakers' failure to recognise or value such work.

Moreover, the International Monetary Fund has found that gender-responsive budgeting improves resource allocation and transparency by shifting financing away from harmful policies and towards priority areas such as income support for survivors, childcare and workplace safety.