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Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective 1
Marina DURANO

In assessing whether ODA has contributed to the promotion of genderequality and womenʼs empowerment, reference is made to the recent increasing trend of aid ﬂows and aid allocations for gender equality. Some issues on
tracking aid ﬂows and evaluating aid activities need to be recognized, however. Others look into institutional arrangements in and analyze gender policy
documents of development cooperation agencies to assess progress in gendermainstreaming. Two other dimensions are necessary to complete a feminist
analysis. One is the macroeconomics framework used to guide aid allocations,such as the PRSP. Another is the eﬀect of aid ﬂows on macroeconomic aggregates. Concerns over macroeconomic stability can trump ODAʼs potential contributions.

Keywords：ODA, gender mainstreaming, gender policy, macroeconomics

Introduction
Surveying the history of the international aid system since the 19th century, Hjertholm and White(1998) concluded that aid programmesʼ claims of development have been distorted by commercial andpolitical objectives. Hjertholm and White (1998) and Kanbur (2003) cite, for example, the United Kingdomʼs 1929 Colonial Development Act that provided loans and grants for the development of infrastructure in British colonies to facilitate provisioning of inputs to British manufacture. In more recent
years, these commercial interests have been discussed as tied aid, where bilateral aid agencies require the purchase of goods and services from donor country contractors and providers (Boyce, 2002).
Political motivations were especially clear during the Cold War as the United States released most of
its aid through the 1951 Mutual Security Act in an attempt to prevent countries from leaning towards
the USSR (Hjertholm and White, 1998; World Bank, 1998). Similar political motivations were also foundin Soviet aid to China during the same period (Singh, 2002). Even when looking at the aid system after
the Cold War, Rogerson, et al. (2004) and Woods (2007) also recognize the inﬂuence of “multiple foreignand security policy objectives” shaping the more recent evolutions of the international aid system.
Woods (2007) highlights increased security concerns after 9/11 shifting aid allocations of major donors,
which reinforces the argument that “geopolitical concerns often play the most decisive role in donor
priorities (Boyce, 2002: 241).”

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Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective

Kanbur (2003) also notes that the evolution of development thinking has been a factor in theshaping of the international aid system 2 . The aid system in its current form is marked by the emergence of the aid effectiveness agenda as an overarching framework whose entry into the aid discourse began in the late 1990s, although its roots lie a decade earlier. The ground was laid for it in
the previous decade when the 1980s saw the emergence of balance-of-payments problems in the developing world aggravated by an external debt crisis leading towards an emphasis on adjustment aid,
including debt relief (Hjertholm and White, 1998). The search for solutions to the external debt crisis
prompted the launch in 1999 of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the use of
the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) as a tool for using debt relief properly (Ryan andToner, 2003). Ryan and Toner (2003) go on to say that “the HIPC Initiative is more directly related tothe machinery for delivering development assistance (aid) than the machinery for sovereign debt
workouts (Rieﬀel, 2003: 179)” and that “the preparation of the PRSP has assumed a wider signiﬁcancein terms of shaping development policy and the way assistance is allocated and delivered. There is
now a distinct possibility that PRSPs may have a greater impact on development practice than on
debt relief (Ryan and Toner, 2003: 31).”
Hjertholm and White (1998) also noted in their historical survey that there have been shifts inthematic emphasis of aid. In the early to mid-1990s, some attention was given to environment andgender but this was short-lived. Swiss (2011), on the other hand, argues that there was an increase in
adoption of gender policies and that this increase has been inﬂuenced by the adoption of womenʼsrights into the global agenda for development. The objective of this paper is to analyze the international aid system from a gender perspective taking into account the inﬂuences raised above. Most of
the literature looking at ODA 3 has focused on gender mainstreaming and this will be reviewed.
There are other considerations that need to be taken into account and the framework used by thispaper hopes to give a broader viewing of the aid system. There are three dimensions covered in thispaper in addition to gender mainstreaming in development cooperation: trends in ODA ﬂows and issues around tracking these ﬁnancial ﬂows, the macroeconomic framework that guides ODA allocation,and the macroeconomic eﬀects of ODA ﬂows. This paper argues that looking at all these dimensions
can enhance evaluations of the contributions of ODA to gender equality and womenʼs empowerment.
This paper is structured as follows. The following section reviews the literature analyzing the aid
system from a gender-aware perspective. This is followed by trends on oﬃcial development assistance using the Creditor Reporting System (CRS) of the Overseas Economic Cooperation Development (OECD)ʼs Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The sectors in which aid ﬂows are concentrated are shown, including those aid ﬂows that are classiﬁed in the CRS as having been allocatedwith gender equality as the only policy objective. Rather than analyze what explains the trends, theﬁgures are used to illustrate measurement issues, particularly on tracking aid ﬂows. The third section
reviews the literature analyzing the gender mainstreaming eﬀorts undertaken by development cooperation agencies. A fourth section discusses the evolution of frameworks that attempt to govern how
aid might be allocated. This section traces the history of aid frameworks, particularly the shift from50

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project-based aid to program and policy-based allocations, including the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid
Eﬀectiveness. Existing analyses of these frameworks from a gender perspective focus on institutional
aspects similar to earlier analyses of development cooperation agencies. There is little feminist analysis of the macroeconomic policies that underpin these aid frameworks and principles despite the extensive literature on gender-aware macroeconomics. A ﬁfth section is a short note that takes anotherstep with macroeconomic analysis by looking at the eﬀects of aid ﬂows on conditions of macroeconomic stability. Feminist economists have analyzed macroeconomic stability issues looking at episodesof ﬁnancial crisis and yet these have not been applied to aid ﬂows.

Gender Mainstreaming: Institutionalization and Instrumentalism
The literature on the aid system from a gender perspective remains a limited set. Two subsets
of analysis can be said to exist. The ﬁrst subset analyzes the gender policies declared by development
cooperation agencies. The second subset focuses on analyzing the gender mainstreaming process at
the level of organizational structure and mechanisms of development cooperation agencies. These two
subsets are connected such that policy documents signal intent while organizational practices signal
capacity for implementation. Oppenheim-Mason (2007), which is the most recent survey of development cooperation agencies, concluded that of the 27 members of the DAC that responded to the survey, only one did not have a policy on gender equality at the time the survey was conducted. Within
the DAC, a Guidelines on Gender Equality and Womenʼs Empowerment in Development Cooperation
was released in 1997, which was made possible by the stewardship of the United Kingdomʼs Department for International Development or DFID (Beall, 1998). The release of these Guidelines may haveencouraged the remaining DAC members to formulate a gender policy of their own.
As of this writing, a content analysis of all these gender policies in comparative and historicalperspective appears to be needed, especially since there have been many developments in the aid architecture since the DAC Guidelines was ﬁrst released. Swiss (2011), while demonstrating conformity
among donors to establishing a gender unit or formulating gender policies, does not provide an analysis of the thematic content and approaches across the gender policies. In particular, it would be helpful to understand how these gender policies relate with, if at all, geo-political motivations as well as
the changing development agenda referred to in the introduction. For the latter, existing literature
traces the inﬂuence of women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD) approaches
in the formulation of gender policies of development cooperation agencies. Among recent developments that need to be taken into account in such an analysis would be the 2005 Paris Declaration on
Aid Eﬀectiveness (henceforth, Paris Declaration), the War on Terror, and the Millenium Development
Goals (MDGs). In addition, developments in the ﬁeld of feminist theorizing such as those covering sexual orientation and gender identity should also be included in the survey.
The literature focuses on various aspects of gender mainstreaming. These assessments focus onorganizational aspects. Moser and Moser (2005), for example, compare the components of the gender51

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Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective

policies in the institutions included in their study and ﬁnd that these organizations employ a dual
strategy of integration (or as a cross-cutting theme) and women-speciﬁc approaches in programmingand staﬃng. Their study concludes that there is a need for analytical skills and training for gender,
the importance of women in decision making structures, resource availability, and monitoring andevaluation mechanisms as part of the accountability structure. Even when studies focus on sectorwide approaches rather than on speciﬁc donor agencies, the gender analysis is still about the organizational aspects of gender mainstreaming. ODI (2000), for example, is a study in this vein whichlooked into gender mainstreaming in sector-wide approaches to eduation in Ghana, Uganda and India.
A similar observation can be made of Theobald, Tolhurst and Elsey (2002), which is an edited collection of studies on gender mainstreaming in sector-wide approaches in health, as well as by Longwe(2003) that reported on a workshop on HIV/AIDs in Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia. In 2002, theOECD-DAC released “Gender Equality in Sector-Wide Approaches: A Reference Guide” that contained recommendations largely around strengthening organizational capacity.
Among the ﬁrst to look into this area of gender mainstreaming in international agencies were Jahan (1995), revisited in Jahan (1996), and Razavi and Miller (1995). Jahan (1995, 1996) raises the importance of diﬀerentiating between the integrationist approach and the agenda-setting approach to gender mainstreaming and proposes that:
Within the international agencies, an agenda-setting approach will involve greater attention to thesubstantive objectives of the womenʼs movement: gender equality and womenʼs empowerment.
The agenciesʼ preoccupation with instrumental objectives̶such as integration and mainstreaming, and WID/GAD institutionalisation will have to give way to prioritising operational issues-removing legal and institutional barriers to womenʼs equal participation and designing and implementing gender-responsive policies and interventions. (Jahan, 1996: 829)
Razavi and Miller (1995), looking at the institutionalization processes of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank (WB), and International Labour Oﬃce (ILO) as case studies,conclude that in these agencies there has been poor implementation of commitments made to
womenʼs issues despite the increased procedural and institutional mechanisms that have been established. Moser and Moser (2005), involving an analysis of fourteen 4 international agencies, reached similar conclusions. Oppenheim-Mason (2007) also concluded that despite the overwhelming number of development cooperation agencies that did have gender policies, very few of them seemed to have theorganizational capacity to implement these policies. Budlender (2008) found in a study covering ten recipient countries of ODA from the European Commission that the Country Strategy Papers, which isthe basis of the amount of aid reﬂected in the National Indicative Programmes, always mentions gender as a cross-cutting issue but “that there was limited evidence of how gender would be addressedbeyond general statements about this being a cross-cutting issue (Budlender, 2008: 14).” However, other donors were better at gender equality and Spainʼs approach in Peru and Morocco was mentioned
as being clear about the gender equality goals in the recipient countries. The resulting gap between
policy and implementation has been referred to as policy evaporation 5 .

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Moser and Moser (2005) also found in their analysis that instrumentalism, which has also been referred to as an eﬃciency argument for gender equality, in the gender policy can be a constraint. Thisrefers to the argument that gender equality is valuable for its contribution to development rather
than viewing it as an end in itself. The approach is often defended as inevitable, a necessary compromise that has the potential to subvert neo-liberal discourse (Moser and Moser, 2005). Critics, on theother hand, argue that instrumentalism can lead to a depoliticisation of the feminist agenda (Moser
and Moser, 2005, citing Miller and Razavi, 1998). Beall (1998), for example, in analyzing the gender
content of DFIDʼs “Eliminating Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century” (also known as the White
Paper), released in 1997 as DFIDʼs policy for development cooperation, noted the eﬃciency approachin relation to sustainable development and natural resource management and in the social returns toinvesting in women, although Beall (1998) qualiﬁes the observation by saying that the approach does
not permeate the White Paper. MacDonald (2003), which undertakes a similar analysis as Beall (1998)
but working with additional documents, concludes that DFID documents “vacillate between a rightsbased approach to gender equality and one based on eﬃciency… with the result that it is not clear if
DFID has a common gender analysis or shared understanding of gender mainstreaming (MacDonald
2003: 6).” In the case of AusAid, Australiaʼs development cooperation agency, Kilby and Olivieri (2008)
found the loss of rights language, which was fairly strong in their gender policy of the mid-1990s. By
2007, Kilby and Olivieri (2008) note that AusAIDʼs gender policy was focused on womenʼs economicrole in promoting growth but was less clear on the agenda for human rights. In Bytown Consulting
and C.A.C. Consulting (2008), an evaluation undertaken in 2007 of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) 1999 Policy on Gender Equality, also noted the dual approach of gender equality
as an end as much as a means to sustainable development and poverty reduction but the evaluation
did not have a critical view of this dual track.
It is likely that this combination of the integrationist strategy with an instrumentalist gender policy could be the reason why the expected social transformation has not occured despite the amountof ODA resources made available. Jahan (1996), early on, found that agencies monitored the mechanisms of institutionalization rather than the impact of the programmes being funded. The aid eﬀectiveness agenda is meant to respond to some of these aid management issues and this will be discussed in a later section.

Concentration of ODA for Gender Equality
In order to get a better understanding of the types of activities that ODA has funded, it will be
helpful to look into trends in ODA ﬂows. One method of tracking ODA is through the reporting mechanisms of the DAC. The members include almost all aid agencies from industrialized countries but do
not include new and emerging donor countries, such as the Peopleʼs Republic of China and Brazil. The
DAC maintains a Creditor Reporting System (CRS) database, which is an aid information system thatgathers the reports on aid activities of development cooperation agencies that are members of the53

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OECD-DAC, although non-DAC donors are encouraged to share their information. Reporting directives
are available to guide DAC members in answering questionnaires and reports. The database is publicly available at the OECD website (http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=CRSNEW).
This section will present the trends for gross ODA disbursements rather than commitments between 2002 and 2009. These are the years for which data is available that distinguishes among diﬀerent types of aid activities as well as the policy objectives that the aid activities were intended tomeet. All ﬁgures are in constant 2009 United States dollars, which means exchange rate ﬂuctuations
and inﬂation have already been taken into account thus allowing for comparison of ﬁgures across theyears observed and across DAC members. Let us begin with general trends ﬁrst before presenting
the aid allocations across sectors and policy objectives.
Table 1. ODA Gross Disbursements, 2002 to 2009 (in constant 2009 US$ millions)

Year
All
Total Sector Allocable
Commodity aid/generalprogram assistance
Action relating to debt
Humanitarian aid
Administrative costs ofdonorsSupport to NGOs
Refugees in donor
countries
Unallocated/ unspeciﬁed

2002
78,572
41,371

2003
86,51747,006

2004
91,31455,201

2005
128,436
67,373

2006
167,41770,8592007
117,096
78,283

2008
126,865
85,887

2009
135,104
96,137

6,943

6,510

5,449

5,808

6,123

5,952

7,440

9,935

10,052
4,231

14,157
6,098

10,8386,559

30,941
10,66269,6598,989

12,825
8,374

10,26910,878

5,941
10,765

1,941

2,253

2,782

3,797

4,352

5,778

6,369

6,446

983

1,306

1,874

1,369

1,634

1,473

1,550

742

690

768

2,194

2,828

1,826

1,776

2,415

3,146

12,361

8,419

6,418

5,657

3,974

2,636

2,058

1,992

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

From Table 1, total aid increased during the period covered from US$78.6 billion in 2002 to
US$135.1 billion in 2009, peaking at US$167.4 billion in 2006. In 2009, 71.2 percent of ODA gross disbursements was classiﬁed as sector-allocable, up from 52.6 percent in 2002. Humanitarian aid 6 accounted for 8.0 percent of total aid in 2009 while 7.4 percent is accounted for by commodity assistanceand general program assistance 7 . It should be noted that when ODA reached its peak in 2006, 41.6
percent of that was classiﬁed as actions related to debt, which means that much of the aid duringthat year was accounted for by the debt cancellations given to developing countries. (See Table 2 fordetails.)54

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Table 2. ODA Gross Disbursements, 2002 to 2009, shares to total in percent

Year
All
Total Sector Allocable
Commodity aid/generalprogram assistance
Action relating to debt
Humanitarian aid
Administrative costs ofdonorsSupport to NGOs
Refugees in donor
countries
Unallocated/ unspeciﬁed

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

52.7%

54.3%

60.5%

52.5%

42.3%

66.9%

67.7%

71.2%

8.8%

7.5%

6.0%

4.5%

3.7%

5.1%

5.9%

7.4%

12.8%
5.4%

16.4%
7.0%

11.9%
7.2%

24.1%
8.3%

41.6%
5.4%

11.0%
7.2%

8.1%
8.6%

4.4%
8.0%

2.5%

2.6%

3.0%

3.0%

2.6%

4.9%

5.0%

4.8%

1.3%

1.5%

2.1%

1.1%

1.0%

1.3%

1.2%

0.5%

0.9%

0.9%

2.4%

2.2%

1.1%

1.5%

1.9%

2.3%

15.7%

9.7%

7.0%

4.4%

2.4%

2.3%

1.6%

1.5%

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

There are three major policy objectives that are tracked in the CRS reporting mechanism andthese are, gender equality, environmental sustainability and participatory development or good governance. Combinations of any two or of all three are possible. Not all aid activities have policy markers
as shown in Table 3 and Table 4. In 2009, about 58.9 percent of aid activities did not have any of thethree policy markers attached to them. Of the remaining share, 8.1 percent had gender equality as
the only policy objective. Another 10.2 percent of total aid in 2009 had a gender equality policy marker along with one or two of the other policy markers. While these ﬁgures seem signiﬁcant, OECDDAC (2011) notes that most of the aid activities with a gender policy marker classify the objective as
signiﬁcant, meaning that is one of several other objectives rather than principal, meaning that genderequality is the focus of the intervention. Looking at data for 2007 and 2008, OECD-DAC (2002) foundthat only 2 percent of aid has gender as a principal objective.
Table 3. Gross Disbursements by Policy Objective, 2002 to 2009 (in constant 2009 US $ millions)

Year
(All)
Only gender
Only environment
Only participatory development/good governance
Gender and Environment
Gender and Participatory
Development/Good Governance
Environment and Participatory Development/Good
Governance
Gender and Environment
and Participatory Development/Good Governance
Other (No mark)2002
78,572
2,154
4,126

2003
86,517
2,180
3,448

2004
91,314
2,064
3,844

2005
128,436
2,059
5,125

2006
167,417
3,494
6,208

2007
117,096
4,062
6,812

2008
126,865
9,317
9,821

2009
135,104
10,995
12,124

8,334

6,683

7,846

13,287

13,411

14,131

15,88016,026

639

686

602

354

647

556

1,492

1,800

2,054

2,163

3,119

3,255

6,283

5,708

6,321

7,669

1,261

1,327

2,081

1,703

2,172

2,257

2,781

2,559

914

1,171

1,640

992

3,174

3,070

4,203

4,324

59,09068,85970,118

101,661

132,028

80,50077,05079,607

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

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Table 4. ODA Gross Disbursements by Policy Objective, 2002 to 2009, shares to total in percent

2002
All
Only gender
Only environment
Only participatory development/good governance
Gender and Environment
Gender and Participatory
Development/Good Governance
Environment and Participatory Development/Good
Governance
Gender and Environment
and Participatory Development/Good Governance
Other (No mark)

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2.7%
5.3%

2.5%
4.0%

2.3%
4.2%

1.6%
4.0%

2.1%
3.7%

3.5%
5.8%

7.3%
7.7%

8.1%
9.0%

10.6%

7.7%

8.6%

10.3%

8.0%

12.1%

12.5%

11.9%

0.8%

0.8%

0.7%

0.3%

0.4%

0.5%

1.2%

1.3%

2.6%

2.5%

3.4%

2.5%

3.8%

4.9%

5.0%

5.7%

1.6%

1.5%

2.3%

1.3%

1.3%

1.9%

2.2%

1.9%

1.2%

1.4%

1.8%

0.8%

1.9%

2.6%

3.3%

3.2%

75.2%

79.6%

76.8%

79.2%

78.9%

68.7%

60.7%

58.9%

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

Maral-Hanak (2009) is critical of this policy marker that is meant to monitor the intent of an aid
programme or project and describes the system as oversimpliﬁed. While the markers are a useful reminder to development cooperation agencies of gender equality as a policy objective, these are unable
to capture the complex social interactions in which gender is embedded (Maral-Hanak 2009). Certainly, OECD-DAC (2011) is careful to point out that the amounts attached to the policy markers indicate
support but they do not show the impact of aid.
An immediate parallel can be drawn with gender-responsive budgeting exercises that also facechallenges in categorizing public expenditure. Sharp and Broomhill (2002) describe how early analysis
involving South Australiaʼs budget needed to categorize public expenditures into one of three categories: women-targeted spending, civil service equal opportunities, and general spending. It was quickly
shown that most of the spending went to the third category. This means that only a small portion of
the budget went to women-speciﬁc spending and that seems to be the case with the gender policy
marker for ODA. As with the gender policy marker, budget categories classify monetary inputs andthe type of budgeting exercise can determine the extent to which these monetary inputs can be related with outputs and outcomes, which would be easier for performance-based budgeting and less sofor line-item budgeting (Sharp 2003).
Even when the gender policy marker is accepted as a signiﬁer of intent, the scoring decision depends on the interpretation of the aid oﬃcial who assigns codes to submit the reports to the CRS.
Murray, et al. (2010), who looked into the IrishAidʼs use of the gender policy marker, noted “the diﬃculties relating to the quality and subjectivity of the marker (Murray, et al. 2010: 36)” while acknowledging the markerʼs usefulness. Budlender (2008) also noted how aid oﬃcials interviewed in the tencountry study failed to mention the gender policy marker despite explicit questions about tracking
aid for gender.

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Table 5. ODA Gross Disbursements by Major Type of Aid Activity, Gender Only as Policy Objective,
2002 to 2009, (in constant 2009 US$ millions)All
Total Sector Allocable
Commodity aid/generalprogram assistance
Action relating to debt
Humanitarian aid
Administrative costs ofdonorsSupport to NGOs
Refugees in donor countries
Unallocated/ unspeciﬁed

2002
2,154
2,024

2003
2,180
2,070

2004
2,064
1,972

2005
2,059
1,865

2006
3,494
3,203

2007
4,062
3,600

2008
9,317
8,249

2009
10,995
9,994

21

33

19

70

48

107

463

299

1
76

2
60

1
62

2
88

13
192

･･
328

0
397

･･
576

0

0

0

5

-0

1

9

6

18

1

2

6

4

12

123

68

0

0

1

7

21

4

0

19

13

13

7

15

12

10

75

33

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

Table 6. ODA Gross Disbursements by Major Type of Aid Activity, Gender Only as Policy Objective,
2002 to 2009, shares to total in percent

Total Sector Allocable
Commodity aid/generalprogram assistance
Action relating to debt
Humanitarian aid
Administrative costs ofdonorsSupport to NGOs
Refugees in donor countries
Unallocated/ unspeciﬁed

2002
4.9%

2003
4.4%

2004
3.6%

2005
2.8%

2006
4.5%

2007
4.6%

2008
9.6%

2009
10.4%

0.3%

0.5%

0.3%

1.2%

0.8%

1.8%

6.2%

3.0%

0.0%
1.8%

0.0%
1.0%

0.0%
0.9%

0.0%
0.8%

0.0%
2.1%

3.9%

0.0%
3.7%

5.4%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

-0.0%

0.0%

0.1%

0.1%

1.8%

0.1%

0.1%

0.5%

0.2%

0.8%

7.9%

9.2%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.3%

1.2%

0.2%

0.0%

0.6%

0.1%

0.2%

0.1%

0.3%

0.3%

0.4%

3.7%

1.6%

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

The CRS allows for the identiﬁcation of the sectors in which aid activities are undertaken. Speciﬁcally for aid activities with gender as a policy marker, these amounts can be broken down by major
aid activity and their shares are shown in Table 5 and Table 6 below. Most aid is classiﬁed under sector-allocable aid activity and this can be further broken down into sub-sectors. Focusing only on sector-allocable ODA with gender equality as the only policy objective, ODA is concentrated in social,economic and productive sectors as shown in Table 7 and Table 8, but primarily on the social sectors.
Between 2002 and 2009, the share of the social infrastructure and services to total sector-allocable
ODA was 82.1 percent and most of this is spent on education (average of 40.8 percent over the 8-year
period) and health, including population and reproductive health (average of 19.9 per cent). Population
and reproductive health expenditure has been receiving an increasing share of ODA to the services
sector as seen in Table 9. Sometimes this result is due to a lack of common understanding within (andperhaps across) aid agencies of how gender mainstreaming is to be implemented. MacDonald (2003:14),
for example, takes issue with UK DFIDʼs inconsistent application of its gender equality commitments

57

Marina DURANO

Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspectivewith some key documents focusing “narrowly on the health and education-related MDGs/IDTs,” referring to the Millennium Development Goals or internationally agreed development targets rather thanan approach involving a broader set of sectors. The extent to which the MDGs have inﬂuenced aid allocations has yet to be tested.
Table 7. ODA Gross Disbursements by Sub-Sector with Gender Only as a Policy Objective,
2002 to 2009, (in constant 2009 US $ millions)

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Total ODA

2,153.8

2,180.1

2,064.2

2,059.2

3,494.3

Total Sector-Allocable ODA

2,024.3

2,069.8

1,972.0

1,865.3

3,203.3

4,061.5

9,316.9

10,994.8

3,600.3

8,249.2

100: I. SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE & SERVICES

9,994.3

1,569.9

1,733.2

1,689.6

1,542.8

2,621.3

2,893.1

6,471.1

8,614.6

110: I.1. Education

680.9

680.5

640.2

625.5

1,247.8

1,199.9

2,516.9

3,202.3

120: I.2. Health

315.0

436.7

390.1

349.7

507.4

496.7

654.1

1,007.8

130: I.3. Population
Pol./Progr. & Reproductive Health

182.2

225.4

261.1

273.2

461.4

615.7

2,134.7

3,339.1

140: I.4. Water Supply& Sanitation

132.4

131.0

121.1

54.6

96.9

90.5

67.9

81.3

150: I.5. Government& Civil Society

145.3

129.4

138.4

125.8

126.4

335.0

515.5

386.7

160: I.6. Other Social
Infrastructure &Services

114.3

130.1

138.7

114.1

181.3

155.3

582.0

597.4

200: II. ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICES

185.5

146.3

133.5

149.0

285.4

385.4

962.4

496.2

210: II.1. Transport &Storage

77.5

61.0

45.3

30.7

74.1

64.0

99.4

22.4

220: II.2. Communications

3.4

7.2

2.0

2.1

4.6

5.7

11.8

22.4

230: II.3. Energy

10.6

7.7

4.5

1.1

26.5

12.9

17.8

22.4

240: II.4. Banking &Financial Services

77.2

49.2

65.8

112.0

160.1

172.1

442.0

381.4

250: II.5. Business &Other Services

16.9

21.1

15.9

3.1

20.1

130.7

391.5

47.5

300: III. PRODUCTION SECTORS

148.3

101.0

80.3

87.2

130.8

154.1

385.0

578.5

310: III.1. Agriculture,
Forestry, Fishing

111.7

73.0

61.2

72.7

108.1

116.8

294.0

477.4

320: III.2. Industry,
Mining, Construction

35.5

24.1

16.6

5.7

17.6

30.9

75.4

62.2

331: III.3.a. Trade Policies & Regulations

0.6

3.2

1.8

6.2

3.6

4.4

11.1

16.9

332: III.3.b. Tourism

0.5

0.7

0.8

2.7

1.6

1.9

4.5

22.0

120.6

89.3

68.6

86.3

165.9

167.8

430.7

305.0

400: IV. MULTISECTOR /CROSS-CUTTING

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

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Table 8. ODA Gross Disbursements by Sub-Sector with Gender Only as a Policy Objective,
2002 to 2009, (shares in percent)450: V. TOTAL SECTOR ALLOCABLE (I+II+III+IV) Share to Total
ODA
100: I. SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE& SERVICES (share to total sectorallocable)
110: I.1. Education (share tototal social infrastructureand services)120: I.2. Health
130: I.3. Population Pol./
Progr. & Reproductive
Health140: I.4. Water Supply &Sanitation
150: I.5. Government & Civil
Society
160: I.6. Other Social Infrastructure & Services
200: II. ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE & SERVICES (share to total
sector-allocable)
210: II.1. Transport &Storage (share to total
economic infrastructure andservices)
220: II.2. Communications
230: II.3. Energy
240: II.4. Banking & Financial Services
250: II.5. Business & Other
Services
300: III. PRODUCTION SECTORS(share to total sector-allocable)
310: III.1. Agriculture,
Forestry, Fishing (share tototal production sectors)
320: III.2. Industry, Mining,
Construction
331: III.3.a. Trade Policies &Regulations
332: III.3.b. Tourism
400: IV. MULTISECTOR / CROSSCUTTING

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

94.0%

94.9%

95.5%

90.6%

91.7%

88.6%

88.5%

90.9%

77.6%

83.7%

85.7%

82.7%

81.8%

80.4%

78.4%

86.2%

43.4%

39.3%

37.9%

40.5%

47.6%

41.5%

38.9%

37.2%

20.1%

25.2%

23.1%

22.7%

19.4%

17.2%

10.1%

11.7%

11.6%

13.0%

15.5%

17.7%

17.6%

21.3%

33.0%

38.8%

8.4%

7.6%

7.2%

3.5%

3.7%

3.1%

1.0%

0.9%

9.3%

7.5%

8.2%

8.2%

4.8%

11.6%

8.0%

4.5%

7.3%

7.5%

8.2%

7.4%

6.9%

5.4%

9.0%

6.9%

9.2%

7.1%

6.8%

8.0%

8.9%

10.7%

11.7%

5.0%

41.8%

41.7%

34.0%

20.6%

26.0%

16.6%

10.3%

4.5%

1.8%
5.7%

4.9%
5.3%

1.5%
3.4%

1.4%
0.8%

1.6%
9.3%

1.5%
3.4%

1.2%
1.8%

4.5%
4.5%

41.6%

33.7%

49.3%

75.2%

56.1%

44.6%

45.9%

76.9%

9.1%

14.4%

11.9%

2.1%

7.1%

33.9%

40.7%

9.6%

7.3%

4.9%

4.1%

4.7%

4.1%

4.3%

4.7%

5.8%

75.3%

72.3%

76.2%

83.4%

82.6%

75.8%

76.4%

82.5%

23.9%

23.9%

20.7%

6.5%

13.4%

20.1%

19.6%

10.7%

0.4%

3.2%

2.2%

7.1%

2.7%

2.9%

2.9%

2.9%

0.4%

0.7%

1.0%

3.0%

1.2%

1.3%

1.2%

3.8%

6.0%

4.3%

3.5%

4.6%

5.2%

4.7%

5.2%

3.1%

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 4 October, 2011.

Under economic infrastructure and services, ODA with gender equality as the only policy objective is concentrated on banking and ﬁnancial services with an average share of 52.9 percent. Much ofthis aid supports micro-credit initiatives as can be seen by the high share of informal/semi-informal

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intermediaries receiving the money and targeting gender equality (OECD-DAC 2011). Under the production sectors, ODA with gender equality as the only policy objective is concentrated in agriculture,
forestry and ﬁshing with an average share of 78.1 percent. OECD-DAC (2011) explains that a large
share of agricultural education/research/services, forestry, and rural development have gender equality markers but agricultural inputs do not. The imbalance is feared to constrain women farmersʼ productivity (OECD-DAC 2011).
While these are the areas that receive much of the attention on gender equality, it is insightful toalso look at the areas that are ignored. As mentioned in the introduction, Woods (2007) discussed how
the War on Terror has inﬂuenced aid allocation. Attention has been given to fragile states, partly as areaction to the integration of diplomacy, defense, and development by donor countries after 9/11 (Paducel and Salahub, 2011). “Fragile states” is a term that is broadly deﬁned in Baranyi and Powell (2005)
as a general failure to provide public goods and range in degree from nominal states to partial delivery and is often used to refer to states engaged in armed conﬂict, both within or across their borders,or to states that are in the process of rebuilding after conﬂict resolution. Paducel and Salahub (2011),
which updates Baranyi and Powell (2005) and Hollander (2009), conclude that no new policies were developed by the donors included in their study since these were ﬁrst released nor has there been any
new policy for those donors that did not have any policy previously. It is not that there is no ODA focused on gender equality in fragile states but that there is very little, particularly when comparedwith the relatively greater needs of the people in those countries. A similar conclusion is reached byPatel, et al. (2009) in a study tracking ODA for reproductive health in eighteen conﬂict-aﬀected countries between 2003 and 2006. Although these are not necessarily focused on gender equality, a large
portion of reproductive health activities involve women and can still be informative. Two types of inequities were found by the authors: one involved greater disbursements to non-conﬂict countries andthe other involved greater disbursements for HIV/AIDS-related activities compared to other reproductive health activities. Where there is ODA, the results have been less than expected. Abirafeh(2005), in discussing aid programming for gender in Afghanistan, echoes the diﬃculties of translating
policy into practice. The analysis also highlights the disconnection that occurs between the women
beneﬁciaries and the gender advisers and aid oﬃcers preventing eﬀective communication from occurring despite policies highlighting the importance of participation and inclusion.
In sum, the ODA allocations are concentrated in education and health and, to a lesser extent, microﬁnance and the agricultural sector. It is possible that targeting women as beneﬁciaries is easier forthese sectors at the same time that MDGs and other IDTs also focus on these sectors. Winship (2004)
points to the number of gender strategies that were released after 2000 that referenced the MDGs andrecognized that all goals have gender dimensions. The main issue is the identiﬁcation of activities that
promote gender equality since “not all expenditures targeted to women promote gender equality, andmany programmes that are not speciﬁcally targeted to women have an equality-enhancing impact on
women (Elson, 2006: 51).” Banerjee (2003) cited in Elson (2006) suggests 3 categories for classifying expenditures: expenditures targeted to women in distress; expenditures that support womenʼs needs giv-60

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en their stereotypical roles; and, expenditures that promote equality or remove a gender-based handicap. The classiﬁcation is not necessarily easier to implement and these require an even greater degreeof analysis regarding the social context in which the expenditure is being undertaken (Elson, 2006).
The discussion in this section highlights the importance of improving 8 the tracking of aid allocations and disbursements for gender equality and the need for better evaluative measures to obtain amore accurate picture of the ﬂows and, therefore, having a more solid foundation for analysis. In addition to improvements in tracking, there is a need to have reliable methods that link ﬁnancial inputs
with expected outcomes as mentioned above. One approach has been to look into monitoring andevaluation processes and the feedback mechanisms that will inform future allocations and disbursements. For example, some countries have a Performance Assessment Framework attached to themonitoring of general budget support and these contain a set of indicators agreed between donors
and the recipient governments. As with the country strategy papers, however, Budlender (2008)
found that only a few of those covered in her study have indicators that are speciﬁc to gender equality, at least sex-disaggregated, or that the gender indicators are a few in a very long list of indicatorsthat need to be monitored. There other review mechanisms but the structures depend on the recipient country (Budlender, 2008). However, even with improvements in tracking, monitoring, and assessment, there will still be a requirement to specify a framework that reﬂects a theory of change̶WID,
WAD, GAD, rights-based, or any other̶resulting in gender equality, which in turn helps with therecommended analysis of the social context in which the expenditures are to be made.

Frameworks for Aid Allocation
Thus far the discussion has raised some of the challenges faced by gender mainstreaming eﬀorts
in ODA. Policy evaporation and an integrationist approach were highlighted as organizational constraints. Tracking and accounting for resources and linking with gender equality outcomes are another set of challenges faced by aid donors and recipients. These have been acknowledged by the ODA
community and eﬀorts have been expended to learn lessons by linking planning with results and improving aid management. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness oﬀered a framework to respond to the challenges of managing aid but it deﬁnitely was not thought of as a response to the challenges of promoting gender equality through ODA. Gender equality advocates in the aid community,
however, saw the Paris Declaration as an opportunity to improve aid delivery for gender equality.
Authors such as Gaynor (2006) and Alami and Goetz (2006) discuss how gender equality can be built
into the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness and attempt to show how each of theﬁve principles (see Box 1) that the Paris Declaration hoped to promote in the aid community could include gender equality goals and be used to support the implementation of gender equality commitments.

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Below are the ﬁve principles of the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness as described in
the OECD-DAC website dedicated to the Paris Declaration.
1. Ownership: Developing countries set their own strategies for poverty reduction, improve their
institutions and tackle corruption.
2. Alignment: Donor countries align behind these objectives and use local systems.
3. Harmonisation: Donor countries coordinate, simplify procedures and share information to avoid
duplication.
4. Results: Developing countries and donors shift focus to development results and results getmeasured.
5. Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for development results.
Source: OECD-DAC website(http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343,en̲2649̲3236398̲35401554̲1̲1̲1̲1,00.html,
accessed 5 January 2012.)
Box. 1 Principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness 2005

As the previous section has shown, there are also possibilities for learning from gender-responsive budgeting initiatives considering that many of the issues faced in aid allocations, tracking, andmonitoring are also faced in gender-responsive budgeting. An approach that has brought this discussion closer to responding to the challenges raised in the previous section is found in Budlender (2008)
that sought to respond to the question of how gender-responsive budgeting can enhance the genderresponsiveness of the aid eﬀectiveness agenda. Budlender (2008) looks at the interface of aid, particularly new aid modalities such as general budget support, and national budgets by analyzing what happens in the recipient countries rather than what happens at the aid agency headquarters and focusing
primarily on the results of ODA rather than on the aid delivery mechanisms. Of the many insightsfrom the ten-country study, the most interesting one regarding the interface of aid and gender-responsive budgeting is that while donors were inﬂuential in getting the gender-responsive budgeting
initiatives oﬀ the ground, very few of these initiatives engage with aid directly.
The country case studies have very few references to donors or aid. Nevertheless, virtually all
the GRB initiatives have been funded by donor agencies. In some cases donors were among the
key initial drivers and are still key drivers. Further, in most countries the GRB initiatives engage
with processes and structures that have been inﬂuenced by, if not created for, international ﬁnancial institutions and donors. Aid is thus deﬁnitely strongly present in the “context” even where
the initiatives do not engage with it directly, in terms of analysing and inﬂuencing donor funds.
But while GRB initiatives have generally been funded by donor agencies, the major donors involved in the “new” aid modalities have not always provided active encouragement at the country level. (Budlender, 2008: 42)
More importantly, these aid eﬀectiveness papers avoided the question of macroeconomic policies andtheir implications on promoting gender equality. Macroeconomic policies are particularly crucial for62ジェンダー研究

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discussions around general budget support and poverty reduction strategies that donors often pledge
to support. The importance of macroeconomic policies became central to aid discussions with the
emergence of adjustment lending in the 1980s (Hjertholm and White, 1998).
… the emergence of adjustment lending was not a response to a ʻdevelopment crisis.ʼ In general
there was no such crisis, although some African countries had begun a downturn. Rather it wasa response (though not exclusively) to balance-of-payments and debt problems, and the attendantrisk of ﬁnancial crisis in developed countries (i.e. as a means to avoid collapse of the commercial
banks involved). The experience thus clearly illustrates how the aid programme may readily respond to the needs and interests of major donors. The initial focus on macroeconomic policy also
gave the World Bank and the IMF, particularly the former, a pre-eminence they had not enjoyedbefore (hence the expression the ʻWashington Consensusʼ). The World Bank is without a doubt
the most important development institution, leading both policy dialogue and increasingly the research agenda. (Hjertholm and White, 1998: 13)
Rieﬀel (2003) also emphasises this absence of a ﬁnancial crisis when the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was formally launched in 1996. Rieﬀel (2003) goes on to state that “[t]he HIPC
Initiative is more directly related to the machinery for delivering development assistance (aid) thanthe machinery for sovereign debt workouts (Rieffel 2003: 179).” The HIPC consolidated the WorldBank and the IMFʼs dominant position in macroeconomic policy and at the same time accorded these
institutions and the regional banks with protection from outright debt reduction (Reiﬀel, 2003).The
overlap in the use of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in the HIPC and the aid eﬀectiveness processes should not be seen as surprising therefore.
During the same period the move towards direct budget support has been complemented by the
adoption of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), a tool introduced by the World Bank in1999 initially to ensure the proper use of debt relief under the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor
Countries (HIPC) Initiative. Since its introduction, the preparation of the PRSP has assumed awider signiﬁcance in terms of shaping development policy and the way assistance is allocatedand delivered. There is now a distinct possibility that PRSPs may have a greater impact on development practice than on debt relief. (Ryan and Toner, 2003: 31)
Under the context described above, it becomes very important to understand the process of aid allocation, especially that driven by the World Bank. According to the World Bank, the Comprehensive
Development Framework (CDF) describes the framework as the Bankʼs “new way of doing business.”
It is an important component of the aid eﬀectiveness agenda since, in its own words, “[t]he CDF principles are embedded deeply in the international development agenda. For example, implementing theParis Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness is tantamount to implementing the CDF” (WB website 9 ). The
CDF provides the basis for the PRS process and the PRS, in turn, is the basis for partnership in theaid eﬀectiveness agenda, as can be seen in Table 9. Certainly, monitoring of the implementation of the63Marina DURANO

Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective

Paris Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness uses the CDF Progress Report and its corresponding proﬁles
as well as the Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) that contains an economic core ofmacroeconomic and structural policies with peripheral concerns over governance and equity. These
procedures ultimately deﬁne the rules and procedures that allocate aid across recipients of WorldBank assistance 10 . According to van Waeyenberge (2004), “... while the CPIA conditions which countries have access to what, and the CAS rather than the PRSP prevails in determining the frameworkof engagement of the debtor country with the Bank, the PRS initiative fulﬁls an important function in
the regulation of domestic understandings of policy options, in accordance with CPIA priorities” (vanWaeyenberge, 2004: 21). These World Bank frameworks are able to inﬂuence the behaviour of other
donors (Kanbur, 2005). Budlender (2008) conﬁrms the key role that the World Bank plays among thedonors at the country level in aid negotiations. Unfortunately, there are inconsistencies within the
CPIA which are discussed in van Waeyenberge (2004), particularly between the economic core andthe peripheral governance and equity components. Having an economic core in the CPIA also signals
to potential recipients where the policy priorities lie.
Yet, at least as far as the aid disbursements are concerned, in Table 5 and 6 some proportion ofcommodity aid and general programme assistance has a gender policy marker. From these tables, asmall proportion of about 3.0 percent of total aid in 2009 with gender only as the policy objective iscategorized as commodity aid and general programme assistance. A closer look at the 2009 ﬁguresusing the CRS microdata, which is a matrix of responses to the CRS questionnaire, reveals that mostof the markers identify gender as a signiﬁcant objective rather than the principal objective (See Table
9). This is understandable when the ODA is meant to support the budgets for the implementation ofpoverty reduction strategies or national development plans in which gender equality is only one ofmany policy objectives stated in the plans. What is interesting is that several donors classiﬁed someof their general budget support as having gender equality as the principal objective. Germany, for example, did this for their general budget support to Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique,Peru, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia for ODA disbursed in 2009. Another example is Europeʼs CEC that provided general budget support to Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, and Zambia.
Unfortunately, the CRS microdata did not provide additional text describing the nature of the support.
Table 9 demonstrates the inconsistency further. It shows the aid agency, gives a short description of
the ODA, the amount disbursed and the policy marker assigned to the programme. Even though allthese agencies claimed that the aid activity was for general budget support, not all agreed that gender was a principal objective for the same recipient country.
In the case of Viet Nam, the Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) contains the policy commitments of its government and ODA as poverty reduction support or credit is meant to support theimplementation of Viet Namʼs SEDP. Despite having a single document as the basis for policy commitments, donor agencies gave diﬀerent markers. Canada CIDA, European Development Fund, Germany BMZ, and Switzerland SECO assigned “zero” to the gender marker. Denmark MFA, Spain, and
UK DFID assigned “one” to the gender marker, while Japan JICA assigned a “two.” Viet Namʼs SEDP

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has a section devoted to gender equality, youth movements, and the protection of childrenʼs rights inthe plan under the chapter on the social sector, although it is only one of seventeen sections under
the chapter (Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 2006).
Table 9. Use of the Gender Policy Marker in Selected Recipient Countries Receiving General Budget Support,
Gross Disbursements in million 2009 US dollars

Donor and Short Description
Recipient = Vietnam
Canada CIDA through World Bank Group, Poverty Reduction Support Credit
Denmark, Support PRSC 8-9-10
European Development Fund, European Poverty Reduction Support
Programme in Vietnam (EPRSC)
Germany, BMZ, SME Development Program Loan-Program for Smalland Medium-Sized Enterprises
Japan, JICA, Eighth Poverty Reduction Support Credit; Eighth
Poverty Reduction Support Credit (Economic Stimulus)
Spain MFA through the World Bank Group, Other Contributions to
the World Bank; Supporting the Socio-Economic Development Plan
(SEDP) of the Government of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam
Switzerland Seco (IBRD channel), Vietnam Coﬁnancing of the Poverty
Reduction Support Credit
UK DFID, Poverty Reduction Support Credit 6-10
Recipient = Uganda
EU-CEC, Crown Agents-Technical Assistance to the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority; Landell Mills-TA to
Govʼt Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation; IBM-for the identiﬁcation
study EPA related support- 10THEDF Macroeconomic Support;
Programme Estimates N 3 UBOS 10/09/08 to 20/02/2010; Jasper
SEMU & Associates-UBOS; First Fixed Tranche
Germany BMZ, co-ﬁnancing of PRSC (Poverty Reduction Support
Credit) VII-IX
Norway MFA, Budget Support 2009/2010 and 2008/2009
UK DFID, Poverty Reduction Budget Support
Recipient = Zambia
Africa Development Fund, Poverty Reduction Budget Support II
EU-CEC, General Budget Support Tranches-MOFNP
EU-CEC, V-FLEX PRBS III-MDG-C Rider; Muleya Hakayuwa; HMIS
Database (ECORYS Nederland BV 2006/129758); PEMFA-Budget
Support Tranche Disbursements
Finland MFA, Poverty Reduction Budget Support of Zambia
Germany, BMZ, Poverty Reduction Budget Support II
IMF, General Budget Support (Semi-Aggregates)
Netherlands MFA, LUS PRBS 2008-2010
Norway MFA, Budget Support II
UK DFID, Gen budget support and P0034 for PRBS
US, AID, Basic Education-Cash Transfer-Cash Transfer

Gender Policy Marker

Amount

0

4.8

1

9.7

0

18.1

0

16.7

2

587.8

1

8.5

0

2.7

1

31.2

0

43.1

1

19.5

0
0

8.4
54.7

no marker
1

23.0
41.8

0

47.4

1
1
no marker
0
0
1
no marker

7.0
13.9
243.5
13.9
27.5
49.2
1.0

Source: OECD-DAC CRS, data extracted on 28 December, 2011.

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In the case of Uganda, only Germany BMZ gave its budget support a gender marker of one while
the other aid agencies assigned zero to the marker. Ugandaʼs Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP)
has a general commitment in its opening pages to gender equality in that importance is to be placedon distributional considerations on gender, childrenʼs rights, and environmental impacts (Uganda Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development 2000). There is no extensive discussion of gender equality although women are mentioned in relation to land rights, maternal mortality, education,
poverty and the rural areaʼs poor access to services. Budlender (2008) notes that there is the Uganda
Joint Assistance Strategy that binds donors to support the implementation of the Uganda Gender Policy and its plan of action. On the other hand, there was a tendency for donors in Uganda to prefer using the World Bankʼs Poverty Reduction Support Credit as the basis for aid discussions.
Zambia also has a section on gender and development as part of the chapter discussing cross-cutting issues in the Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP) (Government of the Republic of Zambia,
2006). The other cross-cutting issues are governance, HIV/AIDS, environment, and food and nutrition.
The FNDP takes gender mainstreaming seriously such that almost all the sector budget matrices
have a budget line for this activity, although most of them are non-core budget items. Gender mainstreaming is part of the core budget only for the youth and child development sector as well as, andfor obvious reasons, the gender and development sector. The aid agencies that gave their generalbudget support a score of one were EU-CEC, Finland MFA, Germany BMZ, and UK DFID; while
Netherlands MFA, Norway MFA, and another budgetary support programme of EU-CEC assigned azero. The latter shows in inconsistency in scoring even with the same aid agency. The ﬁgures forZambia also show that some aid agencies do not provide scores for the gender marker, namely Africa
Development Fund, the International Monetary Fund and the US AID. The assignment of a code in
the gender policy marker for general budget support implies a need to interpret the extent to which
gender equality is a principal or signiﬁcant policy objective in the poverty reduction strategy papers
and national development plans underpinning the budget. This discussion, however, is based on an informal survey, and a systematic and in-depth study is required before any strong conclusions can be
made.
In addition to noting the diﬃculties attached to using a gender policy marker for the major category of commodity assistance and general programme assistance, there needs to be another layer tothe analysis of the social context of gender equality that takes into account the macroeconomic policy
framework contained in the poverty reduction strategies or the national development plans. A similar
approach would be needed for the category on actions relating to debt relief as these are also tied tothe country strategies and national plans. These two categories accounted for 11.8 percent of total
gross ODA disbursements in 2009 as shown in Table 2. What there is are specific gender issues
raised in the country strategies or in the national plans but the macroeconomic component is generally left without analysis from a gender perspective. This is particularly important when noting that“feminist economists have identiﬁed numerous gender biases in structural adjustment and macroeconomic stabilization policies” (Floro, et al., 2004: 5). In other words, research and analysis on gender and66

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macroeconomics, including trade, abound but these have yet to be reﬂected or applied in many country strategies and national plans. In 2007, the OECD-DAC Network on Gender Equality released a
Guide for Non-Economists to Negotiate Poverty Reduction Strategies. Further investigation is needed
to understand the extent to which this guideline has changed, if at all, the way PRSPs are writtensince its release.
Zuckerman and Garrett (2003) analyzed thirteen PRSPs produced in 2002 for their gender content and found that a gendered analysis of macroeconomic policies was lacking or, if present, weak.
Stotsky (2006), citing the World Bank (2004), however, contradicts this conclusion by pointing to thesuccessful integration of gender in the PRSPs or in the process of writing a PRSP in South Asia.
Zuckerman and Qing (2004) studied the World Bankʼs new gender strategy Integrating Gender in theWorld Bankʼs Work: A Strategy for Action that was launched in 2002 and conducted interviews withWorld Bank staﬀ as well as analyzed some of their documents, and the study concluded that the institutional arrangements within the World Bank prevented a successful uptake of the strategy in country operations.
The Bank Gender Strategy centerpiece is the preparation of a Country Gender Assessment (CGA)
for each client country. The Strategy is premised on the assumption that CGA priority gender issues will feed into Country Assistance Strategies (CASs) and other analytical and lending instruments. But this sequence might not unfold because a consistent track record demonstrates that
Bank staﬀ heed, albeit minimally, mandatory incentives such as the environmental safeguard policies and ignore non-mandated policies like that of gender. Staff responds to incentives that areclearly structured to get loans approved by the [World Bank] Board. (Zuckerman and Qing, 2004: 4)
Unfortunately, Zuckerman and Qing (2004) do not provide an assessment of World Bank staﬀ capacity,
especially its gender experts, for analyzing macroeconomic issues from a gender perspective suchthat these can be incorporated into the country strategies as well as to inﬂuence the nature of the
CDF and the CPIA. Developing this capacity is feasible given readily available literature demonstrating how such an analysis might be undertaken. A similar observation was made by Elson and McGee(1995) that provided an early analysis of policy-related program assistance having noted the shift of
ODA from project-related assistance and the extent to which these incorporated gender equality objectives and approaches and used the Netherlands DGIS and US AID as case studies.
The study concluded that the key to ensuring that WID concerns are not marginalized with respect to program assistance lies in transforming current understanding of the interaction between gender relations and economic processes at national and sectoral level, and in operationalizing this new understanding at all levels of policy and procedures. A new policy perspective isneeded, which will both be supported by, and give rise to, procedural innovations. (Elson and McGee 1995: 1991).
The use of gender-aware analysis in macroeconomic policy documents can also be led by the recipient countries but this would require their respective Ministries of Finance to cooperate with theircounterparts in the national womenʼs machineries as well as with womenʼs organizations. Leadership,67

Marina DURANO

Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective

or “ownership” to use the language of aid eﬀectiveness, is itself diﬃcult to execute when the objectiveof aid negotiations is to obtain approval for the aid being requested. The scenario is similar to that
faced by gender equality advocotes working with development cooperation agencies. In other words,
national womenʼs machineries and womenʼs organizations in aid recipient countries need to engage
with gender issues around the CDF as it is applied in their country context and, more speciﬁcally,around the macroeconomic policy frameworks relied upon by their governments. The capacity to doso appears limited thus far. There is potential in gender-responsive budgeting initiatives to discussmacroeconomic policies but this has not been widely implemented (Budlender, 2004). Budlender (2008)
has shown that as far as the countries covered in her study where there were also gender-responsive
budgeting initiatives, aid was not part of the conversation so that while some GRB discussions may
include macroeconomic policy, aid processes were not part of it. If this is the case, then the genderaware analyses of aid, including those analyzing the aid eﬀectiveness agenda, have fallen short considerably because these have missed out on analyzing the frameworks for aid allocation.

A Note on Macroeconomic Eﬀects of Aid Flows
It is not only the frameworks for aid allocation that need to be analyzed. Aid ﬂows themselves
have macroeconomic eﬀects that need to be understood from a gender-aware perspective. As an external ﬁnancial ﬂow, aid enters into the capital account of their balance of payments. The impact isfelt in the governments holding of foreign reserves and in domestic money supply. Regardless of theexchange rate regime, very large inﬂows of foreign aid can lead to an appreciation of the domestic
currency. If the appreciation is very large, this could lead to a reduction in exports as these will now
be more expensive, a phenomenon called the Dutch Disease, and this could lead to an even larger
trade deﬁcit thus threatening macroeconomic stability (Chowdhury and McKinley, 2006). The Dutch
Disease became a concern when there was a strong demand from the international community toscale up, particularly as a response to HIV/AIDS in 2005. The ultimate impact of the aid ﬂow, however, depends on how the receiving government responds to the inﬂow through its public investment,
credit allocation, and reserves management (Chowdhury and McKinley, 2006). It is especially important to understand how aid is used, whether it is spent resulting in a change in the budget deﬁcit, andabsorbed resulting in a change in the current account deﬁcit. A gender-aware analysis will take thisfurther by analyzing the social content of macroeconomic policies (Elson and Cagatay, 2000). There iseven less attention given to analyzing aid ﬂows in this way.

Concluding Remarks
This paper sought to expand the analysis of ODA beyond the usual assessment of gender mainstreaming eﬀorts in development cooperation agencies and the aid modalities and mechanisms. The
integrationist and instrumentalist approach are factors that contribute to the inability to produce so-68ジェンダー研究

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2012

cial transformation. Assessments have also shown a concentration of ODA for gender equality inhealth and education sectors as well as in micro-credit and agriculture since it is in these sectors that
accounting for gender equality is easiest and strongest and is also very closely tied to the genderequality goals expressed in the MDGs and other IDTs. It is important, however, to note that tracking
and monitoring aid remains a challenge. An even greater challenge is to link ODA resources with thedesired outcomes and development goals. Gender-responsive budgeting oﬀers interesting lessons inbridging aid tracking and monitoring of results but these have yet to be applied to the aid flows
themselves.
While some attention has been given to ODA through gender mainstreaming eﬀorts, there is lessof an eﬀort to interrogate the frameworks for aid allocation. In particular, the history of the eﬀectiveness agenda points to the shift towards adjustment lending in the 1980s and consequent response to
create new lending facilities that derives its impetus from the World Bankʼs CDF and its associated
PRS. This has been accompanied by a shift in ODA from project-based assistance to program-based
assistance, thus reinforcing the inﬂuential position of the World Bank in guiding where (countries or
sectors) development cooperation agencies might provide counterpart support. Thus far these aid allocation frameworks do not give gender equality a heavy weight in its assessments. Furthermore,
there is very little work available that supports a gender-aware formulation of macroeconomic policies, especially coming from the aid recipient countries. Finally, ODA as external ﬁnancial ﬂows has
macroeconomic eﬀects and these too need to be analyzed from a gender-aware perspective. There iseven less attention being given to this type of analysis.
Gender mainstreaming and gender as a cross-cutting issue eﬀectively means covering all the different aspects of ODA. This is a very expansive approach to gender equality. It requires from genderexperts an understanding of the internal workings of a development cooperation agency, an understanding of the development cooperation architecture involving the relationships among the various
agencies as well as their relations with the governments of the recipient countries, an understandingof macroeconomic policies that deﬁne aid allocation as well as provide predictions of the potential impact of aid ﬂows. These layers of understanding also underscore the embeddedness of institutions
within other institutions. If we are to respond to the question of ODAʼs role in promoting genderequality and womenʼs empowerment, then these layers of understanding need to be fully revealed.
（Marina DURANO, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Universiti Sains, Malaysia）

Notes
1

Comments from participants at the 2nd Congress of the Asian Association of Womenʼs Studies in Penang, Malaysia andPublic Seminar on Gender Issues in the Macroeconomy in Tokyo, Japan are appreciated.

2

Swiss (2011) argues that another set of literature explaining aid highlights the humanitarian motivation.

3

The International Monetary Fund (2003) deﬁnes oﬃcial development assistance as “ﬂows of oﬃcial ﬁnancing administeredwith the promotion of the economic development and welfare of developing countries as the main objective, and which are

69

Marina DURANO

Analyzing ODA from a Feminist Perspective

concessional in character with a grant element of at least 25 percent.” White (2004) clariﬁes that these ﬂows do not include
military aid and export credits.
4

These are UK DFID, Canada CIDA, Swedish Sida, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, WB, UN
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), UN Habitat, UN Childrenʼs Fund (UNICEF), UNDP, ActionAid, Oxfam GB, Hivos,
and ACORD.

5For DFID, see Beall (1998), MacDonald (2003), Khan (2003), and COWI Evaluation Team and Jensen et al. (2006). For CIDA,
see Bytown Consulting and C.A.C. Consulting (2008). For SIDA but with little discussion on speciﬁcs, see Danielson and
Wohlgemith (2005). For Japanese ODA, see Sunaga (2004) and Kana (2011). For the EC, see Khan (2003). For IrishAid, see
Murray, Swaine and Doody (2008). Winship (2004) provides an overview of the gender strategies of bilateral and multilateralagencies but oﬀers very little in analysis.

6This covers emergency response, reconstruction relief and rehabilitation, and disaster prevention and preparedness.

7

This covers general budget support, development food aid or food security assistance, other commodity assistance (includes
import support of capital goods and commodities). Sector-wide approaches or SWAPs are coded as part of their respective
sectors. For further details, see Annex 5 of DCD/DAC (2002) 21 entitled “Reporting Directives for the Creditor Reporting
System̶Addendum 2.” Updates to reporting guidelines are also available in DCD/DAC/STAT (2011) 12 entitled “Guidelines
for Reporting in CRS++ Format.”

8

This discussion has not taken into account the inconsistencies in total aid, between commitments and disbursements on
the side of the donors, and how these figures might match with the receipts, allocations, and actual spending of therecipients. There are other inconsistencies associated with aid estimates and some of these are discussed in Budlender (2008).

9

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/CDF/ 0,,contentMDK:20072662~menuPK:60
746~pagePK:139301~piPK:261885~theSitePK:140576,00.html, visited on 9 April 2007.

10

An inﬂuential publication particularly on aid eﬀectiveness is the World Bankʼs “Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesnʼt,

and Why.”

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