CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Foreign Aid and Gender Equality
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In the last two decades foreign aid and development assistance have rapidly shifted into a mutual agreement among countries, prioritizing human development indicators. The movement has evolved from a basic transaction of large amounts of money from country to country into a strategic and specialized cooperation. Though insisting pressure and past failures have dramatically changed development assistance over the years, the
controversies about its effectiveness continue.
Aid effectiveness is an on-going debate with several mixed combinations of perspectives;
some researchers suggest that aid has been effective in stimulating certain stages of development. There is existing evidence on the positive outcomes aid has had on achieving and spreading democracy and even economic growth (Finkel et al. 2007).
Other scholars like Dalgaard, Hansen and Tar re-examine the effectiveness of foreign aid theoretically and empirically, concluding in a central message of how aid can play a conductive role in reaching growth. Their results reflect that aid can be helpful on productivity, although it cannot be used as the single solution for poverty reduction, but as a helpful tool to achieve progress and growth. (Dalgaard, Hansen, and Tar, 2004)
In previous years, several scholars took the responsibility to further investigate important variables that make aid effective. In 2000, Svensson researched about the responsibility of recipient countries and how other institutions in the domestic scene can provide a better result and make aid successful. He suggests that when introducing a third party in the relationship between donor and recipients, developing governments will have an incentive to actually achieve international goals, highlighting that domestic actors like NGO’s and community groups can provide positive outcomes in developing countries.
(Svensson, 2000)
Easterly also researched upon the consideration of other variables to achieve
aid-effectiveness. He suggests that when recipient countries already have good policies, that
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include transparent trade and monetary policies, aid has a greater effect than when recipient countries have poor policies, strengthening the belief that foreign aid can create positive outcomes, but it will definitely vary from country to country. (Easterly, 2007)
Daalgard stated that aid is a positive incentive to achieve growth. Although the author was clear in pointing out that aid provides positive outcomes only when there is responsibility for the recipient government and a constant interaction relationship is introduced, than aid can be promising. (Dalgaard C.J., 2007)
Further empirical literature illustrates that foreign aid exhibits no effect on growth or any other indicators of poverty. An important economist expresses his critiques stating that aid has only contributed to enlarge government bureaucracies and enriched the elite in poor countries, not contributing and even harming growth in recipient countries. Bauer persistently condemned foreign aid, defining the process as a transfer of resources from one country to another. He stated that aid is not only failing to alleviate poverty but it is actually responsible for hurting economic development. (Bauer, 2000).
Like Daalgard, other scholar’s evidence supports the view that the impact of aid depends on the quality of state institutions and policies. The effect of aid on growth is conditional on the recipient’s institutions and policies; unfortunately developing countries have weak and corruptible policies, making foreign aid useless. “Aid has no positive effect in any institutional environment: it is always money down the rat hole.” (Burnside and Dollar, 2004,6)
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Usually the governments in highly vulnerable countries receive aid but have no incentive or the proper knowledge to decrease poverty rates. The aid agencies themselves operate within a difficult environment and often are not provided with the proper motivation to achieve the desired results. Developing countries are always willing to accept money, as grants or as loans, but there is pint-sized evidence on how it is spent or little has been done to assess them. (Easterly, 2007)
According to Peter Boone, aid has no relevant impact on human development indexes.
The evidences reflected on his work suggest that particular programs can be effective but long-term aid programs have had little impact over the years, without being able to manage or change governments or even provide them with incentives to carry out sustainable projects. Reflecting on his work, foreign aid has proven to be unable to raise growth rates in poor countries. (Boone, 1995)
The literature on the connections between aid and economic growth vary substantially, but one thing is sure; Foreign aid tendencies have rapidly changed into more gender equal objectives. There is now more attention from the international community regarding challenges that women face, specifically when it comes to unequal opportunities to access resources and positions of power in the political scene. (Hellsten, 2013) But despite the world’s newly acquired devotion to gender equality, few has been done in terms of showcasing the effectiveness foreign aid and development assistance have on achieving equality for women in the developing world. It is surprising that so few studies of social matter have incorporated gender into models of development. The exclusion of subjects of gender equity has a negative impact in the academic world, making it more difficult to specify the importance of sustainable and gender relevant measures, leaving incomplete and misleading models as a result. (Orloff, 1993) . Gender equality has been overlooked at its fullest due to its qualitative complexity. Unfortunately, gender equity and the complex movement behind the meaning cannot be restrained in numbers or indexes.
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The idea that foreign aid has impact in gender equality is a challenging matter to respond for a number of reasons, including the time frame over which gender impacts can be expected to occur and taking into consideration the multidimensional characteristics gender entails.
In 2000, Tarp suggested that the effectiveness of gender-aid is conditional to the way interventions are structured. He stated that aid could potentially obstruct gender equality if it is delivered in a way that promotes existing inequalities in the recipient country. How much impact can there be if money for gender equality is been sent and directed though agencies that do not include women or understand the importance of their role? The existing deficiency relies on the development assistance model in where little
responsibility is placed on recipients and little attention is directed to structures within donor interventions. (Tarp, 2000)
The outcome on gender equality from aid interventions may also change depending on the cause that is being alleviated. Previous studies imply that aid is effective in reducing maternal mortality as well as increasing literacy rates, no matter what the policies or conditions are in recipient countries, but other aspects such as women’s political participation showcase mixed effects of indicators, proving initial conditions extremely important to achieve desired outcomes. (Pickbourn and Ndikumana, 2013)
Related studies show that reproductive health programmes transferred from industrialized countries to the developing ones, have been instrumental when tackling issues such as obstructed labor, ruptured uterus or puerperal sepsis, although there has been little influence on maternal mortality ratios. The main reason maternal mortality interventions fail can be related to the fact that it is done without a clear vision of the political and social conditions in developing countries, were strategies, as efficient as they might seem in industrialized countries, need to be complemented with adequate knowledge in order to achieve true efficiency. (DeBrouwere and Tonglet, 1998)
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In terms of foreign aid and its impact on women’s education, girls and women still lag behind when compared to men in educational opportunities, although, studies suggest that differences between primary school enrollment rates for boys and girls have changed over time. Enrollment rates at all school levels have been rising in the developing world;
which can be linked with international interventions. Unfortunately, a rise on enrollment does not necessarily translate into decreased gender disparities (Hill and King, 1997).
Despite the increased ratio of enrolment for both boys and girls, the rates of girls remain much lower than those of boys. Overall, there exists a positive effect of development assistance on primary school enrolment, but it is important to acknowledge that universal primary education requires increased efficiency from both spending by donors and national governments. The partnet countries’ initial political and institutional
backgrounds do have an impact and where bad governance prevails, the impact of aid on enrolment can actually become negative. (Michaelowa, 2004)
In the other hand, foreign aid on women’s political participation indicates a positive correlation in some areas in the developing world. In the Middle East and North Africa, for example, foreign aid reflects an increased participation. Official development assistance to women’s equality organizations and institutions is effective in increasing women’s political empowerment. Evidence suggests that when aid is given to women’s groups it has an impact in parliamentary seats, which are later, gained by women.
(Baliamoune-Lut, 2013) In Latin America, women have been severely under-represented in office and women’s presence in political decision-making has never been the same as men’s. Although, the Latin American countries have adopted quota laws establishing minimum levels for women’s participation, the results vary depending on electoral rules, party submission and additional conditions in the different countries. Regrettably, public attitudes stemming from the culture that characterizes Latin America has left little women in power and in official commitments to women’s equality. There is little to no evidence about gains made from international interventions. (Htun, 2002)
Some scholars propose that donor countries give more aid to partner countries that already have greater gender equity rates. However, when improvements are reflected in education and health, usually donors reduce aid. As opposed to improvements in women
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in parliament where aid is usually increased. (Dreher, Gehring, & Klasen, 2013). As far as how aid is allocated, the results on the previous study also indicate that the type of policies within donor countries and political circumstances affect how aid is directed.
Donor countries where female representation in parliament is high seem to be more sensitive to gender issues, therefore providing more tools to recipient countries in the subject matter.
2.2 Gender Equality in Latin-Central America
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Unfortunately, the process used to assessing the different implications for women and men of any planned policy action is one of the hardest ambitions within the development structure. The overall gender mainstreaming strategy5 is significantly demanding for donor countries. Recent studies of multilateral development organizations suggest that
“gender mainstreaming’s is compromised by the lack of resources, not only financial but in the form of gender knowledge and expertise, reflecting the importance of gender equality specialists within development institutions. (True, 2010) It is not enough that gender equity has been incorporated into international and national budgets; gender should be incorporated into all stages of project implementation, where women or men that are accountable for gender-equity knowledge become an active part of policy construction.
There is significant amount of money directed to gender trainings and gender awareness seminars but when it comes to the implementation of gender equality in actual practice, the initial theoretical goals are not transformed in power relations or inclusive approaches for women, failing to achieve what is really desired. (Weber, 2014). The often case is that the international organizations are good at targeting women instead of incorporating them into the implementation.
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5 Gender mainstreaming is a strategy emphasized in the Beijing Platform for Action and builds on years of previous experience in trying to bring gender perspectives to the center of attention in policies and
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When donor countries do tackle gender equality, they focus on promoting it through workshops or providing basic education to women and girls, in some cases money is offered to women to make female businesses like food sales instead of offering them the opportunity for financial access to agricultural supplies or other activities outside the already imposed gender roles. The donor countries are not empowering women with incorporating them into international budgets but when they include female roles in decision-making or incorporating gender equality in broader and more inclusive human rights and practice. (Baranyi and Powell, 2005)
Constant and often dependent, developing countries in Latin and Central America, opportunely receive donor’s aids in a continuous matter. Regrettably, aid continues to be a source of power, and despite commitments to gender equality, donors continue to impose their values through their aid, not necessarily addressing domestic needs. In Latin America specifically, women have become the central form of social capital and the main source of aid money when it comes to receiving international funds for poverty relief programs, but when translating that aid into actual incorporation of women into these programs aid often fails. (Molyneux, 2002)
2.3 Gender Equality in Honduras
Honduras in particular has little experience from participation of civil society organizations in foreign aid policy design and formation for development programs.
Although since the 1990’s, the country has received constant money for programs with the World Bank and the IMF, certainly few to no women have been in charge of such policy designs for these programs. Programs that both the World Bank and IMF have largely promoted as gender equal. An interesting example of the limited domestic power within development programs the country faces was brought up by the analysis of Dijkstra in his research in 2011 where using Honduras as one of his cases studies he examined that the Poverty Reduction Strategy approach demanded by the international system in order to qualify for concessionary IMF loans intended to include Honduran society in the process as a strategy to increase aid effectiveness. Unfortunately, the reality translated into a donor ownership of the strategies for poverty reduction were domestic
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empowerment remained limited, and local political processes were not taken seriously by donors who also refused to better plans basis for aid delivery. (Dijkstra, 2011)
As pointed out by Ferguson, International Organizations have made gender equality an essential component of any policy, programme or project in Honduras. She examined the country as a ‘pilot’ country for World Bank, specifically in development projects related to the tourism microenterprise. In this case she argues that ‘gender’ is only used as a synonym for women, further contributing to the disparity. Gender equality in reality is very ambiguously integrated into policy design, feeding the already conservative interpretations within the culture that exceedingly promotes men in power. The very specific subject to her approach on the development policies considered in the tourism industry in Honduras, suggest a construction of gender awareness around a very conservative notions of gender roles where the country understood the significance of accepting “gender mainstreaming” to receive aid but not moving passed the actual meaning of equal participation for women and men. Her findings advocate a need to continue to pay attention to the ways in which gender is constructed at all levels of the policy-making and implementation process in order to actually achieve gender-equal development interventions that could actually help struggling women. (Ferguson, 2010)
Like tourism projects other development structures in Honduras are affected by this vague content and analysis of gender in documents and seminars, not successfully incorporating women to receive equal opportunities, employment, health care and education. In order to achieve gender-oriented development goals, gender equality shall come from within, providing the tools and skills to properly insert women in program construction and practice. In addition to the aid allocation, qualitative aspects of aid are increasingly recognized to be important for effectively meeting recipient needs.
Certainly, the new challenge relates to aid allocation and in particular what systems need to be in place to ensure outcomes of gender equality. Will women be included in budget allocation and policy design in order to achieve gender-aid effectiveness?
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2.4 Research Questions
• Does foreign aid impact gender equality on education?
• Does foreign aid impact gender equality on health?
• Does foreign aid impact gender equality on empowerment?
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CHAPTER 3: CURRENT SITUATION OF GENDER EQUALITY IN