Introduction

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (adopted in 1979, entering into force as a treaty in 1981) includes economic and social rights, as well as civil, political, and cultural rights. It does not make any specific reference to economic policies, but the “appropriate measures” to which it does refer clearly encompass economic policies as well as legislative changes. Economic and social rights are spelled out in more detail in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which has more to say about the use of resources to realize these rights. Economic policy has the potential to support or to undermine the fulfillment of women’s economic and social rights, as recognized by the CEDAW Committee and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR). Securing those rights requires economic policy to comply with human rights obligations and norms and standards. This chapter spells out in detail what this would entail and considers women’s opportunities.

CEDAW and Economic and Social Rights

CEDAW requires states to pursue women’s equality in all spheres. Article 1 states that:

For the purposes of the present Convention, the term ‘discrimination against women’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.

Article 3 requires that:

States Parties shall take in all fields, in particular in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, all appropriate measures, including legislation, to ensure the full development and advancement of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men.

Some articles of CEDAW elaborate in more detail obligations for nondiscrimination and equality with respect to specific economic and social rights. For instance, Article 10 is about education; Article 11 is about employment; Article 12 is about health care; Article 13 requires that “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in other areas of economic and social life.”

CEDAW has a particular concern with the need to redress women’s disadvantage. For example, Article 4(1) of CEDAW provides that “adoption by States Parties of temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination as defined in the present Convention.” This signals that CEDAW is about substantive and not purely formal equality. This has been further clarified by the CEDAW Committee in General Recommendation No. 25 on temporary special measures that:

In the Committee’s view, a purely formal legal or programmatic approach is not sufficient to achieve women’s de facto equality with men, which the Committee interprets as substantive equality. In addition, the Convention requires that women be given an equal start and that they be empowered by an enabling environment to achieve equality of results. […] Pursuit of the goal of substantive equality also calls for an effective strategy aimed at overcoming underrepresentation of women and a redistribution of resources and power between men and women. (UNCEDAW 2004, para 8)

This makes clear that states’ CEDAW obligations not only relate to the measures that they adopt but also to the results of those measures. Appropriate economic policy is a key factor in securing a redistribution of resources between women and men and in transforming women’s opportunities to achieve equality of results. The Convention itself does not mention economic policy, but the CEDAW Committee has indicated on a number of occasions that states have obligations to use economic policy measures, such as policy on public expenditure, to fulfill women’s equality rights. For example, the committee has explained in General Recommendation No. 24 that Article 12 of the Convention places an obligation on States Parties to take appropriate legislative, judicial, administrative, budgetary, economic, and other measures to the maximum extent of their available resources to ensure that women realize their rights to health care (UNCEDAW 1999, para 17).

This point has been reinforced in Concluding Observations on periodic reports submitted by countries. For instance, in 2013, the Concluding Observations on Angola paint a bleak picture of the state of maternal health in Angola and call upon the government to “Increase the funding allocated to health care, and the number of healthcare facilities and of trained health-care providers and medical personnel” (UNCEDAW 2013a, para 32b).

Some low-income countries are hampered in mobilizing resources because wealthy individuals and corporations use tax havens and jurisdictions that provide secrecy to avoid paying taxes. In 2016 the CEDAW Committee recognized this in a pathbreaking expression of concern about Switzerland. Following a joint submission and accompanying factsheet on the extraterritorial effects of Swiss-facilitated tax abuse – prepared by the Center for Economic and Social Rights with Alliance Sud, Global Justice Clinic of NYU Law School, Public Eye, and Tax Justice Network – the CEDAW Committee expressed concern in Concluding Observations on Switzerland at the potentially negative impact of Switzerland’s financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on the ability of other states, particularly those already short of revenue, to mobilize resources for the fulfillment of women’s rights (CESR n.d.). The CEDAW Committee recommended that Switzerland carry out independent, participatory, and periodic impact assessments of the extraterritorial effects of its corporate tax and financial secrecy policies on women’s rights and substantive equality, in a public and impartial manner.

The CEDAW Committee has also expressed concern in a number of Concluding Observations about the impact of cuts to public expenditure on women’s economic and social rights. For example, the CEDAW Committee found in 2013 that cuts to public services and social security are having a negative impact on women (particularly older women and women with disabilities) in the UK. The committee urged the UK government “to mitigate the impact of austerity measures on women and the services provided to women, especially women with disabilities and older women. It should also ensure that spending reviews continuously focus on measuring and balancing the impact of austerity measures on women’s rights” (UNCEDAW 2013a, para 21).

Equality and nondiscrimination rights in international human rights treaties require immediate realization. Thus, where social and economic provision is occurring unevenly in a country and women are disproportionately disadvantaged in relation to such provision, CEDAW requires the state to immediately address this disadvantage (Fredman and Goldblatt 2014). This applies, inter alia, to the right to equal participation in the political and public life of a country which is covered by CEDAW Article 7. This right is specified not only with respect to the right to vote, and in holding public office, but also to participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof. This clearly applies to economic policy, but this remains a very male-dominated area of policy (Elson 2006, 132–133; Schuberth and Young 2011, 138–144).

Women’s Economic and Social Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

As well as CEDAW, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1976) is also important for realization of women’s economic and social rights.

ICESCR Article 3 states that States Parties undertake “to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all the economic, social and cultural rights set forth in the present Covenant.” In a General Comment in 2005, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR) made it clear that:

The essence of article 3 of ICESCR is that the rights set forth in the Covenant are to be enjoyed by men and women on a basis of equality, a concept that carries substantive meaning. […] Guarantees of non-discrimination and equality in international human rights treaties mandate both de facto and de jure equality. De jure (or formal) equality and de facto (or substantive) equality are different but interconnected concepts. Formal equality assumes that equality is achieved if a law or policy treats men and women in a neutral manner. Substantive equality is concerned, in addition, with the effects of laws, policies and practices and with ensuring that they do not maintain, but rather alleviate, the inherent disadvantage that particular groups experience. (UNCESCR 2005, paras 6 and 7)

The rights specified in ICESCR include the right to work, including the opportunity to gain a living by work which is freely chosen (Art 6); the right to just and favorable conditions of work, including fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value, remuneration that provides a decent living, safe and healthy working conditions, equal opportunity in promotion, and rest, leisure, and periodic paid holidays (Art 7); the right to form and join trade unions (Art 8); the right to social security (Art 9); the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing, and housing (Art 11); the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (Art 12); the right to education (Art 13); and the right to take part in cultural life, enjoying the benefits of scientific progress, and the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity (Art 15).

ICESCR has more specific reference to resources than does CEDAW; Article 2(1) of the ICESCR states the obligation of states to realize the rights in the treaty thus:

Each State party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights recognised in the present Covenant.

General Comment No. 3 (issued in 1990) further clarified the concept of “ progressive realization.” This concept does recognize that the resources at the disposition of a government are not unlimited and that fulfilling economic and social rights will take time. At the same time, the concept of “progressive realization” is not intended to take away all “meaningful content” of a state’s obligation to realize economic, social, and cultural rights: “It thus imposes an obligation to move as expeditiously and effectively as possible towards that goal” (UNCESCR 1990, para 9).

Furthermore, in 2007 the committee stated that:

The ‘availability of resources,’ although an important qualifier to the obligation to take steps, does not alter the immediacy of the obligation, nor can resource constraints alone justify inaction. Where the available resources are demonstrably inadequate, the obligation remains for a State party to ensure the widest possible enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights under the prevailing circumstances. The Committee has already emphasized that, even in times of severe resource constraints, States parties must protect the most disadvantaged and marginalized members or groups of society by adopting relatively low-cost targeted programmes. (UNCESCR 2007, para 4)

The committee has indicated in General Comment No. 3 that there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures on the part of a state are not permitted. An example of a potentially retrogressive measure would be cuts to expenditures on public services that are critical for realization of economic and social rights or cuts to taxes that are critical for funding such services. If such retrogressive measures are deliberate, then the state has to show that they have been “introduced after consideration of all alternatives and are fully justifiable by reference to totality of rights provided for in the Covenant and in context of the full use of the maximum of available resources” (UNCESCR 1990, para 9). For example, cutting government spending on health and education, while not cutting expenditure on arms, is likely to violate the principle of nonretrogression.

General Comment No. 3 also confirms that States Parties have a “core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights.” This means that a State Party in which any “significant number” of persons is “deprived of essential foodstuffs, of essential primary health care, etc. is prima facie failing to meet obligations” under the Covenant (UNCESCR 1990, para 10). The provision of minimum essential levels is an immediate obligation. This means that it is the duty of the state to prioritize the rights of the poorest and most vulnerable people.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has indicated in General Comment No. 16 that the right of individuals to participate must be an “integral component” of any policy or practice (UNCESCR 2005, para 37). Furthermore, in a statement on poverty and the ICESCR, the committee has stated that: “the international human rights normative framework includes the right of those affected by key decisions to participate in the relevant decision-making processes” (UNCESCR 2001, para 12). The committee has also emphasized that: “rights and obligation demand accountability […] whatever the mechanisms of accountability, they must be accessible, transparent and effective” (UNCESCR 2001, para 14).

Key Human Rights Principles and Obligations

From the above discussion of CEDAW and ICESCR, we can extract six key human rights principles that should be applied to the formulation of economic policy (Balakrishnan and Elson 2008):

  • Nondiscrimination and equality

  • Progressive realization

  • Use of maximum available resources

  • Avoidance of retrogression

  • Satisfaction of minimum essential levels of each of the rights

  • Participation, transparency, and accountability

If economic policy complied with these principles, it would operate to redress women’s socioeconomic disadvantage in relation to men without reducing men’s enjoyment of economic and social rights. Leveling down would be avoided and substantive equality would be achieved.

Even in the context of economic crisis, governments must pay regard to these principles. The Chair of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued clarification on this matter in relation to austerity measures in a letter to governments in May 2012, stating that:

Any proposed policy change or adjustment has to meet the following requirements: first the policy is a temporary measure covering only the period of crisis; second the policy is necessary and proportionate, in the sense that the adoption of any other policy, or a failure to act, would be more detrimental to economic, social and cultural rights; third the policy is not discriminatory and comprises all possible measures, including tax measures, to support social transfers to mitigate inequalities that can grow in times of crisis and to ensure that the rights of the disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups are not disproportionately affected; fourth the policy identifies the minimum core content of rights […] and ensures the protection of this core content at all times. (Pillay 2012)

Further guidance on obligations is provided by the Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OHCHR 2005, Annex 5) which differentiate three dimensions of obligations:

The obligation to respect requires states to refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. Thus the right to housing is violated if the State engages in arbitrary forced evictions.

The obligation to protect requires States to prevent violations of such rights by third parties. Thus the failure to ensure that private employers comply with basic labour standards may amount to a violation of the right to work or the right to just and favourable conditions of work.

The obligation to fulfil requires States to take appropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures towards the full realization of such rights. Thus, the failure of States to provide essential primary health care to those in need may amount to a violation.

Each of these obligations contains elements of obligations of conduct and obligations of result. The Maastricht Guidelines explain these obligations that:

The obligation of conduct requires action reasonably calculated to realize the enjoyment of a particular right. […] The obligation of result requires States to achieve specific targets to satisfy a detailed substantive standard.

States not only have economic and social rights obligations with respect to the people living in their jurisdiction but also extraterritorial obligations to people living in other countries who are affected by the actions of that state, as clarified in the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Maastricht University and International Commission of Jurists 2011).

Human rights obligations do not directly prescribe a particular mix of private and public action (as noted in paragraph 8 of General Comment No. 3 on the nature of States Parties’ obligations). But it is clear that they do require states to adopt that mix of public action, and incentives for and regulation of private action, that will best address both immediate obligations to ensure minimum essential levels and nondiscrimination and equality and obligations for progressive realization, using maximum available resources, of all economic and social rights.

Clarification on what this means with respect to specific economic polices is being developed by UN special rapporteurs on specific rights, academic researchers (e.g., Balakrishnan et al. 2016); NGOs (e.g., Center for Economic, Cultural and Social Rights), and UN agencies (e.g., UN Women 2015). The obligations cover the whole range of economic policies: fiscal and monetary policy, international trade and investment policy, and regulatory policy (Balakrishnan and Elson 2011). Here, because space is limited, we focus on fiscal and monetary policy and their link to maximum available resources.

Maximum Available Resources and Securing Women’s Economic and Social Rights

It is widely accepted that not only public expenditure but also tax revenue and development assistance need to be considered in determining whether a government is making use of maximum available resources to realize economic and social rights. It is also necessary to take into account government borrowing and monetary policy and financial regulation (which can constrict or expand the available resources, as explained further below) (Balakrishnan et al. 2011; Elson et al. 2013).

This can be summarized as the five-point MAR Star (Balakrishnan et al. 2011; Elson et al. 2013): the extent to which a government is making use of “maximum available resources” (MAR) for the progressive realization of economic and social rights depends on:

  • How it spends money

  • How it raises revenue

  • The development assistance it receives

  • The extent to which it borrows – and how it invests the loans

  • The type of monetary policy and financial regulation it operates

Below the implications of the components of the MAR Star for women’s economic and social rights are discussed, drawing on Elson (2017a) and Balakrishnan et al. (2016).

Public Expenditure and Women’s Economic and Social Rights

Discussion often begins with funding for programs specifically targeted to women (such as training or credit specifically for women). Such programs do not violate the principle of nondiscrimination, even if they exclude men, provided that the programs are “temporary special measures” aimed at overcoming past discrimination and achieving substantive equality. As indicated above, CEDAW specifically allows such measures – Article 4.1. However, allocations for such programs are only ever a very small proportion of total government expenditure, so it is important to examine the rest of government expenditure from a gender equality point of view.

One way to do this (though by no means the only way) is to examine the distribution of expenditure between women and men (or girls and boys) in relation to particular rights. For example, a study of the distribution of educational expenditure in Timor-Leste in 2007 found that the share of boys was higher than of girls (Austen et al. 2013). The disparity was particularly pronounced in the case of rural girls at secondary education level. This reflects disparities in enrolment in school, not explicit discrimination against girls. The inequality in the distribution of expenditure is because families are not sending girls to school at the same rate as boys. Nevertheless, it signifies that the government is not fully meeting its obligation with respect to equality in the right to education. Article 10 of CEDAW requires that “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure them equal rights with men in the field of education.” The state has a responsibility here because there are measures it is required to take under CEDAW to persuade and enable families to send girls to school at the same rate as boys. These measures can include providing scholarships for girls, providing separate school toilet facilities for girls and boys, and providing more women teachers. This could be funded by redistributing existing education funding, redistributing to the education sector from other sectors, and raising more revenue (for instance, in the case of Timor-Leste, from the recently discovered fossil fuel resources) and allocating it to implement the measures.

It is also important to examine whether a government is allocating adequate funding to ensure that women have access to minimum essential levels of economic and social rights. Access to water is an important example. The right to water was identified by UNCESCR as a right implied by ICESCR and was formally recognized as the human right to water during the 64th session of the UN General Assembly in a resolution adopted in July 2010. The Human Rights Council reaffirmed this decision with a resolution adopted by consensus on 30 September 2010.

However, many poor rural households in developing countries still lack access to clean piped water, and the women and girls in these households have to spend a lot of time collecting and purifying water for domestic use (Fontana and Elson 2014). Moreover, a disproportionate level of funding is still directed to extending services in urban areas. In addition, total international aid commitment to water and sanitation is only around 5% of all reported international aid (Fontana and Elson 2014).

A further issue is affordable access to clean water, identified as critical by United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation (De Albuquerque 2012). Connection charges are often a significant barrier for those living in poverty. The special rapporteur notes that governments can apply subsidies or rebates to assist low-income populations who cannot afford to pay the full price for water services. One possibility is to make the subsidy universally available, as in South Africa, where the government makes a fixed basic amount of water available to all households regardless of status, while those who use more pay a rising tariff.

The evidence suggests that the expenditure being committed to provide clean water is too small and too badly distributed in many countries for the government to fulfill its human rights obligation to ensure all women enjoy a basic level of access to clean water. This could be remedied by a combination of measures, such as redistributing existing water expenditure to low-income rural areas, redistributing expenditure from other uses that are less important for achieving essential levels of economic and social rights, mobilizing more tax revenue in equitable ways and allocating this to investment in water, donors providing more aid for water, and borrowing to invest in clean water, which has multiple payoff in terms of improvements in health, better schooling outcomes for girls, and more time for women to engage in income-earning activities (Fontana and Elson 2014).

Financial crisis has often been followed by cuts to types of public expenditure that are important for realization of women’s rights (Elson 2013). There is certainly a cause for concern that the deep cuts to expenditure on social security benefits and public services adopted in the UK since 2010 are retrogressive with respect to women’s rights (Elson 2012). The measures are not temporary, and they reduce the incomes and access to public services of households comprising single women more than of household comprising single men and couples (Pearson and Elson 2015). Social security benefits for poor women have been particularly subject to cuts, as have services for migrant women and for black, Asian, and ethnic minority women (Lonergan 2015; Sandhu and Stephenson 2015).

The government that introduced these cuts argued that they were essential in order to reduce the budget deficit and government borrowing, but it made little use of tax increases to reduce the deficit via an increase in government revenue. In the UK fiscal consolidation since 2010 has comprised 82% expenditure cuts and 18% tax revenue increases (Institute for Fiscal Studies 2015, 10). Moreover, the main tax measure was an increase in value-added tax (VAT), which takes away more, in proportion to their income, from low-income than from high-income people. Income tax and corporation tax have been reduced.

Taxation and Women’s Economic and Social Rights

The tax system is vitally important for the realization of women’s economic and social rights. It must raise sufficient revenue and be designed and implemented in compliance with human rights principles; in particular, the tax system should comply with the principle of nondiscrimination and equality.

One useful indicator is the ratio of tax revenue to GDP. The average tax to GDP ratio in OECD countries rose from 30.1% in 1970 to 35.5% in 2000. In developing countries, the average tax ratio did not change very much, rising from 16.2% in the 1970s to 17.0% in 2000 (Bird 2010). It is easier to mobilize tax revenue in high-income countries, where the informal economy is a much smaller share than in low-income countries, but it is possible to improve tax effort in all countries. For example, in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, the amount of revenue collected has been enhanced through institutional reforms in the way that taxes are administered and collected, independent of changes in tax policy (OECD and ADB 2010).

However, the efforts of many governments to raise more revenue are frustrated by tax avoidance and evasion, facilitated by the government that set up tax havens and allow secret bank accounts to be set up. The amounts of revenue that are lost are substantial. For instance, estimates of the annual tax revenue lost to developing countries from transnational corporations amount to between USD 98 and 106 billion somewhat more than the USD 83.5 billion total overseas development assistance provided in 2009 by OECD countries (Balakrishnan et al. 2016, 62). As noted earlier, the CEDAW Committee has taken up this issue with respect to Switzerland. It would be good to see the committee take this up in Concluding Observations on the periodic reports of all countries that have created tax havens.

The share of tax revenue raised by different types of taxes varies with the level of national income (Barnett and Grown 2004, 12–13). In low-income countries, about two-thirds of tax revenue is raised through indirect taxes, including trade taxes (such as tariffs on imports), excise taxes (such as taxes on alcohol and cigarettes), and broad-based taxes on goods and services, such as general sales tax and VAT. In high-income countries, indirect taxes account for only about one-third of tax revenue. The other two-thirds is raised through direct taxes on incomes of individuals (or households) and businesses. In low-income countries, income tax accounts on average for just over a quarter of tax revenue, while in high-income countries, it accounts on average for over a third of tax revenue.

The text of CEDAW does not contain any explicit reference to taxation. However, it implies the principles of nondiscrimination, and substantive equality should be brought to bear upon taxation, as with any government measure. It implies that women must be treated as equal to men in tax laws, as individual, autonomous citizens, rather than as dependents of men. Moreover, the incentives/disincentives for particular kinds of behavior created by tax laws should promote substantive, and not merely formal, equality between women and men, including egalitarian family relations (Elson 2006, 77).

The case of personal income tax (PIT) provides a good example. When joint taxation is the rule, tax liability is assessed on the combined income of both partners, and they file a joint tax return. In these cases, the partner with the lower income (mostly women) might effectively pay more tax, than they would if they were taxed as separate individuals. This happens if aggregating the income of the two partners takes the joint income into a higher tax bracket than the bracket in which the lower earner would fall if filing as an individual. This would create a disincentive to women’s participation in the labor market. Himmelweit (2002, 16) argues that separate taxation of each person in a couple (individual filing) “can be seen as a step towards gender equality in employment. […] Separate taxation also improves women’s bargaining power within their households; as women usually earn less than their husbands, wives will generally gain from being taxed at an individual, rather than a joint, rate.”

Another problem is the structure of the exemptions and deductions that are a feature of most forms of PIT. Grown and Valodia (2010) provide an internationally comparative review of gender aspects of tax systems, covering Argentina, India, Mexico, Ghana, Morocco, South Africa, Uganda, and the UK. The research uncovered implicit biases against women in the PIT systems in all the countries, mainly the result of the nature and structure of exemptions and deductions and the manner in which these relate to the distribution of employment and income. In many of the countries, for example, contributions to private pension funds attract generous tax exemptions or deductions, which benefit men more than women, because men’s higher incomes, and higher likelihood of formal sector employment, mean that they are more likely to contribute to private pension funds.

Poor women, especially in developing countries, are likely to be outside the direct scope of personal income tax, since there is generally a minimum income below which there is no liability to pay income tax. However, all women are affected by broad-based indirect taxes like VAT, sales tax, and excise duties. These taxes are levied on amount consumed, irrespective of income, and are thus regressive in the sense that poorer people pay a larger share of their income in these taxes than do rich people. Insofar as women have lower incomes than men, they would tend to pay a higher share of their income than men on VAT and general sales taxes. This would not be true of many excise taxes because they are on goods like alcohol, tobacco, and petrol (gasoline) that tend to be consumed by men more than by women. The unequal gender impact of VAT on household incomes may be offset if tax revenue funds public services and social security for low-income women, as is the case in some countries, such as in Scandinavia.

Overseas Development Assistance and Women’s Economic and Social Rights

Article 2.1 of the ICESCR refers to the duty of states to provide “international assistance and cooperation, especially economic and technical.” Though overseas development assistance (ODA) can be an important source of revenue for governments, there are some potential problems as well. ODA takes the form of loans, as well as grants; interest has to be paid on loans, and the loan has eventually to be repaid. These payments of debt service and amortization of loans mean that not all of the ODA that flows into a country every year is a net addition to the resources available to the government. Even the net inflows can overstate the amount of new resources being made available, since debt relief is counted as part of the new ODA. However, debt forgiveness simply writes off debt; it does not make any new resources available.

In addition, the net value of ODA will be reduced if ODA is tied to purchases of imports from donor countries that cost more than goods and services available locally or on the international market. The proportion of bilateral aid that is formally untied has been rising; however, research has found that in most investment projects, the main contract and technical assistance is still procured from donor countries, so some of the ODA that has flowed into a recipient country almost immediately flows back out again to the donor (Clay et al. 2009). If governments are very dependent on ODA as a proportion of their budget, they are vulnerable to the variability in aid flows, making hard to plan expenditures. In addition, much ODA is distributed more in accordance with the political interests of donor countries than the needs of recipient countries.

Of course, the impact of ODA on women’s economic and social rights depends on how the additional resources are used. To steer the use of resources in what they believe is the right direction, some bilateral donors have increasingly promoted a rights-based approach to development, including the governments of the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and Germany (Piron 2005). However, there are drawbacks to a rights-based approach to development, if it becomes another set of conditions that rich countries impose on poorer countries, without any reciprocal understanding of the obligations of rich countries. Some of the donor governments that press aid recipients to adopt a rights-based approach to development are themselves engaged in activities (such as the promotion of arms sales, the provision of tax havens, and the failure to adequately regulate banks) that may undermine the capability of recipient governments to fulfill their obligations. The best way to use ODA to build the capacity of recipient governments to fulfill their human rights obligations is to assist with the development of processes by which citizens and their elected representatives can participate in budget decision-making and implementation, track the use of funds and their impact, and hold governments to account.

Government Borrowing and Women’s Economic and Social Rights

Borrowing makes more resources available to a government in the short run, but it creates a future charge on government budgets, as interest has to be paid on the loan and eventually it has to be repaid. In deciding whether borrowing contributes to or hinders the realization of women’s rights, it is critical to consider whether the government is using the debt to finance the creation of assets that will both help in the realization of women’s rights and generate future streams of revenue with which the debt can be serviced and repaid. Well-chosen, gender-equitable public investments in education, health, nutrition, care services, water and sanitation, clean energy, safe public transport, and good-quality housing can help to realize women’s rights and can generate future revenues via raising women’s productivity. It can also promote an increase in private investment, by women themselves, and by businesses attracted by a healthy, well-educated female work force. Enhanced productivity and investment support faster growth and higher incomes which, in turn, increase tax revenues and allow governments to pay back the initial loan.

However, some governments have failed to invest loans in that way and have left behind a large accumulation of debt that reduces the resources available to subsequent governments for the realization of human rights. The human rights system recognized this with the appointment of an independent expert tasked with developing guidelines to ensure that debt repayments do not undermine economic and social rights obligations. The Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, endorsed by the Human Rights Council in 2012, include the concepts of onerous, odious, and illegitimate debt as tools with which to analyze the implications of accumulated debt (HRC 2012).

Onerous debt generally refers to a situation in which the obligations attached to the debt – for example, debt servicing payments – significantly exceed the benefits which have been derived from taking on the debt. Odious and illegitimate debt refers to situations in which debt was incurred by a government and used in ways that do not contribute to realization of human rights. For example, borrowed funds were invested in ways that served only to enrich an elite who secreted their gains in overseas tax havens or were used to finance war or repression. Public debt audit commissions have been created in some countries, such as Greece, where previous governments have accumulated very high levels of debt to assess the legitimacy of a country’s accumulated debt and consider if there is a case for repudiation (or forgiveness) of some of the debt.

Debt forgiveness, if granted, comes at a price: creditors demand policy changes as a condition of extending additional borrowing, typically cuts to public expenditure and increases in broad-based taxes such as VAT, in programs supervised by international financial institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank. The Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights state that:

International financial organizations and private corporations have an obligation to respect international human rights. This implies a duty to refrain from formulating, adopting, funding and implementing policies and programmes which directly or indirectly contravene the enjoyment of human rights.

However, so far, there is little evidence of the recognition of these obligations.

Monetary Policy and Women’s Economic and Social Rights

Expenditure, taxation, and borrowing are classified as fiscal policy and conducted by the Minister of Finance. Monetary policy, conducted by central banks, also matters, as it directly affects the resources available for the realization of women’s economic and social rights. It does this by influencing interest rates, exchange rates, and the amount of credit available in the economy, which in turn influences investment, output, and employment. Thus, it has implications for the whole range of women’s economic and social rights, most directly the right to work and the right to an adequate standard of living.

In most countries, central banks are quasi-independent institutions, free to make their own decisions on interest rates and exchange rates provided they meet objectives set by the government that appoints the governor of the central bank. Several central banks have a strict mandate under law to maintain the rate of inflation at a specified low rate, for example, the European Central Bank.

Many others have formally adopted a policy of “inflation-targeting.” If a low rate of inflation is the only (or main) objective, there are likely to be higher interest rates than would otherwise be the case, as central banks raise interest rates to depress demand, guided by neoclassical economic theory which considers inflation as primarily caused by excessive aggregate demand. The result is to keep unemployment higher than it otherwise would be.

However, inflation is not necessarily the result of a monetary policy which is too lax. In many countries, inflation is not a problem of excessive credit leading to too much demand but rather a problem of poor infrastructure, low productivity, and/or the monopoly power of some businesses which have sufficient market power to raise prices. Increasing prices in global markets for essential goods, such as food and energy, can also contribute to inflation through the cost of imports. Monetary policy could do more to mobilize resources in countries where there is high unemployment and underemployment if central banks had regard to job creation as well as to inflation. This is particularly important for women’s right to work, as there is evidence that when central banks try to control inflation by raising interest rates, it has more adverse impact in developing countries on jobs for women than for men (Braunstein and Heintz 2011).

Participation, Transparency, and Accountability in Economic Policy

Both fiscal and monetary policy tend to be conducted by small groups of mainly male experts and politicians. Powerful corporations and rich people lobby, usually behind closed doors, for policies that are advantageous to them (Norton and Elson 2002). In some countries there is some scope for NGOs, independent research institutes, and parliamentarians to try influence policy in ways that will help to secure women’s economic and social rights. For instance, the UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG) publishes assessments of each UK government budget and spending review and calls for policies that have a positive impact on women’s economic and social rights, circulating these assessments to ministers, parliamentarians, journalists, and other NGOs. These assessments helped to inform the shadow report to CEDAW made by a consortium of UK women’s organizations.

The WBG also presses for greater transparency, calling upon the UK government to itself publish assessments of the impact of economic policies on women. Greater transparency in finance for gender equality is at the heart of efforts led by UN Women to track and measure public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment, in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. Women’s organizations can press for greater transparency by lobbying their governments to comply with the requirements for reporting against SDG Indicator 5.c.1: “Proportion of countries to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment” (Elson 2017b). Governments are to be asked to report whether allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment are made public in a timely and accessible manner through official government publications (such as a gender budget statement) and channels including ministry websites, official bulletins, and public notices.

Accountability can be promoted through a variety of processes, including parliamentary questions and hearings, reports of UN human rights special rapporteurs and independent experts, inputs into NGO shadow reports to human rights treaty bodies, publicity in the media, and engagement with electoral processes. There is no one process that is guaranteed to be effective in holding governments to account on whether their economic policies are in compliance with women’s economic and social rights, so women’s organizations must be ready to seize opportunities when they arise. An example is the thematic report to the UN General Assembly, 73rd session in 2018, being prepared by the independent expert on foreign debt and human rights which will focus on the impact of economic reforms and austerity measures on women’s human rights. Women’s organizations have been invited to submit evidence. The report will be debated in the UN General Assembly, and women’s organizations will be able to publicize the findings as part of their efforts to hold governments to account for fulfilling women’s economic and social rights.

Conclusion

Women’s human rights include economic and social rights, and economic policies are key measures which can assist in realizing women’s economic and social rights or undermining them. Although the texts on international human rights treaties do not specifically mention economic policy, treaty bodies and international jurists have clarified that economic policy comes within the scope of human rights obligations. From these clarifications, six key human rights principles can be identified against which economic policy can be judged. In particular, appropriate fiscal and monetary policy can assist government in making use of maximum available resources to secure the progressive realization on human rights and the immediate obligation to address women’s unequal enjoyment of economic and social rights. It is clear that some kinds of economic policies are not in compliance with the human rights obligations of governments. Women’s organization must seize opportunities to hold governments to account for their failures and press for policies that are in compliance with human rights.