Statement read by Gigi Francisco on behalf of the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (June 2008)

The women’s consultation observed that much more needs to happen to address the national, international and systemic challenges of financing development spawned by an environment of intensified and unregulated trade and financial liberalization processes that often bear unpredictable negative consequences for productivity, growth, poverty eradication and income distribution goals. The current financial, food and climate change crises are stark realities in a volatile environment marked by runaway competition processes. A gender analysis raises further questions on the connection of these trends and volatilities to (a) women’s wages, employment and unpaid labor, (b) state of social reproductive and social protection capacities, resources and services, and (c) intra-country and intra-household sharing of financial risks and shocks. Gender inequality is embedded in asymmetrical social structures and systemic processes that underpin the globalization and concentration of risks and economic disparities which are experienced most acutely by those most disadvantaged especially women. For example, empirical evidence show that women in developing countries who work for very low wages in the large informal sector also carry a disproportionate share of financial risks as household finance managers in a context where there is inadequate or non-existent publicly provided social welfare and protection for the poor.

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