Gender in the World Bank's poverty assessments: six case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa

Concern with poverty within the World Bank has ebbed and flowed over time. What is different about current thinking is that awareness of "women in development" and "gender and development" is far more pervasive. The gender and poverty relationship, which has been readily taken up by development agencies such as the World Bank, is far from straightforward, and there are concerns that objectives about unequal gender relations will become subordinatied to an agenda about increasing welfare. This is the context within which this paper addresses gender in the World Bank's Poverty Assessments. By analysing six assessments from four countries the paper outlines ways in which gender concerns actually do, or do not, appear. It seeks to explain why gender appears in the forms it does and when it does. A number of points emerge not simply about the approach to gender within the World Bank, but also about the approach to poverty, to methodological issues and to policy.