Highlights

Systemic gender inequality precludes women’s economic, political, and social empowerment and is a key barrier to sustainable and inclusive growth in Papua New Guinea.

The World Bank Group’s focus on addressing gender inequality and gender-based violence (GBV) intensified over time in country strategies. The Bank Group also made a more convincing case for gender equality and increasingly recognized GBV risks to the portfolio. It relevantly rolled out a “smart economics” approach to gender integration by using data and analytics to show the economic benefits of women’s empowerment to the country, thus giving gender issues more traction in the agriculture and transport sectors. It also used a culturally appropriate family and community-based engagement model that sensitizes the whole of family and community to the household benefits of improving women’s labor opportunities.

More evidence is needed about what works to achieve gender-related outcomes in different contexts. Tested in the agriculture sector, the smart economics approach to gender—implemented through a family engagement model—reportedly helped achieve increased agency for women in the sector and household but mainly in matrilineal versus patrilineal areas, and data are hard to validate. Other sector efforts to employ women safely faced implementation challenges because of a lack of household discussions about labor allocations. Gender-related results have also not been reported at the strategy level.

The World Bank’s recent shift toward building a human development program addresses gender gaps in access to human capital endowments. However, the achievement of gender outcomes will depend on careful consideration of the local, normative context in which these programs are implemented.

The International Finance Corporation advisory led the way in demonstrating how to tackle GBV in the workplace directly through guidance, building coalitions, and training and by financing safe houses for victims.

The World Bank has increasingly addressed the risks of GBV through a do-no-harm approach in individual projects, but this approach falls short of achieving a more strategic engagement at the portfolio level and in partnership with others.

Systemic gender inequality precludes women’s economic, political, and social empowerment and is a key barrier to sustainable and inclusive growth in Papua New Guinea. Gender refers to the social, behavioral, and cultural attributes, expectations, and norms associated with being male or female (box 5.1). As emphasized in the SCD (World Bank 2018a), women’s limited access to economic opportunities, endowments (such as education and health), and voice and agency threaten the country’s long-term growth prospects. Fewer than one-quarter of women participate in the labor force (IFC 2017). Legal impediments and entrenched social norms restrict women’s access to employment opportunities, many of which are at a distance from the home or within professions considered the preserve of men. Significant personal safety challenges constrain women’s economic opportunities further and result in productivity losses. Significant barriers to women’s voice and agency are evident in the discrimination against women in customary law, the power imbalances women face in their families and clans, and the dearth of female representation in leadership positions. Although two women were recently elected to parliament, in the previous parliamentary period, Papua New Guinea was one of only three countries globally without female representation in parliament. Without addressing the structural impediments to gender equality (legal, cultural, and personal security), women will be unable to take advantage of growth opportunities.

Gender equality and GBV are deeply intertwined in Papua New Guinea, with extremely high levels of GBV perpetuating barriers to economic and social participation. The country has one of the highest rates of GBV globally. It is estimated that two-thirds of all women have experienced GBV, 50 percent of women have experienced sexual assault, and half of all reported victims of rape are younger than 15 years of age (Kalebe 2020; LRC 1992; World Bank 2018a). Many women remain violently subordinated in family and wider social contexts, and GBV tends to be culturally accepted, with nearly 70 percent of women believing that a husband is justified in beating his wife (NSO and ICF International 2019). The abysmal growth of employment for both men and women reinforces these trends. Power imbalances affect the overall economic health, governance, and resilience of the country by limiting women’s economic, political, and civic participation. GBV results in productivity losses because of its impact on women’s economic and social participation, including through increased absenteeism in the workplace (an estimated 10–12 days of work are lost annually for each employee affected by GBV; IFC 2017) and decreased ability to accumulate human capital. In addition, high levels of sexual violence against men and children undermine development outcomes further. Overall, limited collection of data on GBV impedes accurate assessments of these trends and thus appropriate policy responses. Although several law and policy reforms in the past decade have made some progress in supporting women, significant work remains to address entrenched sociocultural norms.

Source: World Bank 2015.

The Bank Group’s focus on gender inequality and GBV deepened over time by making the economic case for gender equality and by increasingly recognizing GBV risks to the portfolio. The Bank Group treaded lightly on gender issues early in its engagement. The CAS for FY08–11 framed gender equality narrowly regarding social inclusion and limited its focus to women in mining. GBV was referenced only in relation to HIV/AIDS. GBV—a sensitive topic—was seen to be more in the purview of UN agencies (the Bank Group also lacked expertise). A change in Country Management Unit leadership, increased IFC gender expertise, and a country-level analysis conducted for the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (World Bank 2011) and a Country Gender Assessment contributed to deepening the approach. The CPS for FY13–16 introduced a shift in the World Bank’s approach: it made an economic case for gender equality, an approach the CPS referred to as “smart economics.” This approach was pragmatic and played to the Bank Group’s advantage by focusing on the economic reasons for gender integration at the social, communal, and household levels. Its rollout is associated with the findings from The Fruit of Her Labor: Promoting Gender-Equitable Agribusiness in Papua New Guinea—a 2014 joint World Bank–IFC study that showed how to improve agriculture sector productivity by increasing the quality of women’s labor inputs and focusing on labor distribution in the household (World Bank and IFC 2014). IFC helped launch the Pacific Women in Business Program to enhance women’s economic empowerment in business. The program also directly supported GBV case management. By 2019, the World Bank developed a country gender action plan to inform the new strategy, conducted a GBV assessment, and adopted a project screen to assess and mitigate GBV risks.

The World Bank relevantly rolled out its smart economics approach to achieve gender integration through a culturally appropriate family and community-based engagement model. Engaging women in domains related to economic benefits is highly challenging as a result of resistance from local government, Project Management Unit staff, and men in communities because men view these domains as traditionally masculine. Given that men hold much of the power in Papua New Guinea society, it is critical to gain their buy-in in the process of change through advocacy targeting men and women in the household and community. As such, the World Bank rolled out its smart economics approach through a family-based engagement model that engages and sensitizes the whole family and community to the household benefits of improving women’s labor opportunities. CARE, an international nongovernmental organization, and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research developed this model indigenously and tested it successfully. Several interviews with multiple stakeholders in government and the wider donor and nongovernmental organization community confirmed the relevance of this approach and engagement modality. According to interviews, the smart economics approach and efforts to gain buy-in at the communal and family levels are more effective than the normative approaches used by UN agencies, as determined through continued client uptake.

However, more evidence is needed about what works to achieve gender-related outcomes in different contexts. The family-based engagement model, tested in a project in the agriculture sector, reportedly helped achieve increased agency for women but mainly in matrilineal versus patrilineal areas, and results were hard to validate. PPAP reportedly improved gender interaction within households, although mainly in matrilineal (cocoa-growing) areas (53 percent of participating households versus 33 percent in nonparticipating households), with an almost negligible improvement (4 percent of households) in patrilineal (coffee-growing) areas (World Bank 2022b). However, these data and the sustainability of these outcomes were difficult to validate after project close. In Bougainville, using a CDD approach in a postconflict environment reportedly helped bring women into public decision-making. By empowering women’s groups to help develop and manage community-prioritized infrastructure and services, the Inclusive Development in Post-Conflict Bougainville Project helped elevate how women saw themselves and how the men in authority with whom they collaborated regarded them. The approach was innovative because even though other CDD programs globally had established rules for participation, many of these programs tended to pigeonhole gender, resulting in siloed women’s projects that reinforced inequity. Achieved largely in a matrilineal area (although also in a postconflict context), it is unclear whether this approach can be replicated effectively in other contexts.

Some other sector efforts to employ women safely faced implementation challenges because of a lack of household discussions about labor allocations. Although the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Project II was restructured to enhance women’s economic opportunities and provided an increase in job opportunities for women, the women the project interviewed indicated that while the approach increased their access to paid work significantly, it failed to ensure that they could retain their own income and did not include provisions for childcare. The World Bank’s Urban Youth Employment Project (UYEP) also increased skills development and job opportunities for women, but an impact evaluation revealed that over one-third of participating females experienced negative impacts, and most concerning was an increase in domestic violence. Subsequently, UYEP II is strengthening its approach to GBV by including GBV awareness and prevention as part of the training curriculum and strengthening the referral process for GBV cases. Gender specialists were engaged in the design of these projects, but a lack of gender specialists in the country to support implementation led to a disconnect between project design documents and implementation results. Other sectors, such as tourism (although the project was canceled), would have missed opportunities to empower women because it lacked a gender focus in their design.

Gender-related results have not been reported at the strategy level. Two of the three pillars in the CPS for FY13–16 included a commitment to achieve gender-equitable access (physical and financial infrastructure) and gender-equitable improvements in lives and livelihoods. Although three projects (transport, agriculture, and youth employment) had gender-disaggregated indicators, the indicators fell short of providing the information needed to assess the Bank Group’s contribution to these pillar aims. For example, a roads project reported on the number of days that women worked but not on the benefits they received from the labor (for example, retention and use of income or market access). A youth employment project, or UYEP, reported on the share of women graduating from training but not on job placement or associated benefits (or on GBV-related risks of obtaining employment; see chapter 6). IFC also had gender-disaggregated targets for access to finance, but IFC assessments could not verify them.

The World Bank’s shift toward building a human development program should increase benefits flowing to women and girls in the portfolio. Gender inequalities in health and education create barriers to women’s participation in economic activity and social and political life (World Bank 2022a). The World Bank seeks to address this gap by building a human development program. The Child Nutrition and Social Protection Project aims to direct cash transfers to households with children or pregnant or lactating women to promote women’s financial inclusion and nutrition. The Improving Access to and Value from Health Services project aims to improve the coverage and quality of essential health services for women to help close the gender gap in health endowments. If implemented effectively, these programs can improve women’s access to finance and health services and help drive inclusive growth. Nevertheless, the local, normative context in which these programs are implemented matters greatly and will have implications for gender relations and family dynamics that need careful consideration, particularly in the application of cash transfers.

Gender-Based Violence

IFC led the way in demonstrating how to tackle GBV in the workplace directly. IFC addressed gender inequity and GBV in the workplace directly by helping establish a business community platform focused on women’s empowerment and addressing GBV. The Business Coalition for Women, supported by IFC advisory (and funded by the Australian government), helped 45 member companies to increase women’s leadership opportunities, put GBV policies in place, and provide support for family and sexual violence services. Interviews that IEG conducted in 2022 confirmed that IFC showed early results in the form of increased productivity and cost savings in certain firms that adopted and followed the GBV policies (IFC 2017). IFC also helped establish Bel Isi, a public-private partnership created to provide safe houses and case management services to employees from subscribing companies and to the public. Interviews with women’s groups attested to Bel Isi’s efficacy. This advisory services project has been foundational for IFC’s work on gender (IFC is replicating the model elsewhere), and it is shaping IFC’s approach to performance standards on GBV. Furthermore, DFAT is scaling it up. In addition to gender advisory services, IFC is exploring opportunities for upstream investment in creating a technical and vocational education and training center for women employed in the construction and extractive sectors.

The World Bank increasingly addressed the risks of GBV through a do-no-harm approach in individual projects, but this approach falls short of achieving a more strategic engagement at the portfolio level and in partnership with others. The World Bank has increasingly identified and mitigated GBV risks at the project level through its safeguards. The approach, per the Environmental and Social Framework guidance, focuses on sexual exploitation and abuse and harassment for project-affected communities. However, the approach does not address wider GBV issues concerning coercive control within the household and community, restrictions to economic and financial independence, and the lack of GBV support services (Demian 2017). The do-no-harm approach is situated at the project level, which enables the World Bank to identify and mitigate GBV risks within project areas, but the approach is not capable of identifying opportunities and tackling trade-offs across the portfolio and with relevant partners. For example, although efforts to promote a family-based approach to gender integration in the agricultural sector are expected to reduce the potential for harm, other efforts that promote job creation for women have documented some level of harm, as in the transport and urban employment projects. Opportunities also exist to make successful GBV engagements in the private sector more visible to engage in policy dialogue on these issues better and to collaborate with other development partners at a strategy level.