Debt and Women
March 2007
Poor countries' crippling debt burden has a particularly severe impact on women and girls. This briefing paper explores how it is women who take on most of the extra burdens created by a debt crisis, and how debt cancellation needs to work for their benefit.
Jubilee Debt Campaign has worked with ActionAid UK, Oxfam GB and WOMANKIND Worldwide to produce a briefing which explores the impact of debt on women, using analysis, case studies and illustrative facts.
Download the detailed briefing on debt and women, and the accompanying PowerPoint presentation, using the links on the right.
Globally, women and girls are more likely to be poor and disadvantaged. They are routinely excluded from decision-making at all levels, and have almost no independent control over resources: only 1% of the world’s land and property belongs to women. Despite this systematic discrimination, societies worldwide depend on the skills, work and knowledge of women to weather poverty: finding food to put on the table, caring for the sick, and bringing up the next generation.
Both women's disadvantages and this role in supporting families and communities and providing essential services are intensified in a debt crisis. Debt drains poor countries of resources, and places them further under the control of the international financial institutions, who often demand further cuts in public spending as a condition of loans or debt relief. It is women who lost out most from the loss of services, and who make up the shortfall by caring for others.
For instance:
When countries charge fees to attend school, girls are more likely to miss out on education than boys.
When healthcare and social services are cut, women take on the work of caring for the young, sick or elderly.
Where water privatisation reduces access to water, this can increase the workload of women, who tend to have the role of fetching water.
However, there is also some good news: where debts have been cancelled, spending on social services has increased, with clear benefits for women and girls. For instance:
The abolition of school fees by countries like Uganda, after they received debt relief, have hugely increased girls' attendance at school.
Bolivia and Mauritania have directed debt relief savings towards improving healthcare, including for pregnant women. There has since been a huge increase in the number of mothers with access to mid-wives and doctors.
Benin, Bolivia and Tanzania are among the countries that are using funds from healthcare to provide training on nutrition and family planning for mothers.
But clear problems remain. Many countries still have severe and unjust debt burdens; and policies around contraction, payment or forgiveness of debt - including conditions for debt cancellation - still ignore or even violate women's rights. The impact on ordinary women and girls is severe.
We are calling for governments to uphold the commitments they have made to women and ensure that agreements concerning loans, debt and debt cancellation do not violate their rights. Rich countries must immediately cancel all illegitimate and unpayable poor country debt, without imposing conditions from outside. And both debtor and lender governments must ensure that women play a full role in deciding how the funds released by debt cancellation are used and monitored.
Debt and Women presentation - can be used in conjunction with the briefing or independently; slides may be omitted if a shorter presentation is required.
Includes speaker notes.
