Person:
Klugman, Jeni
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Economics,
Law,
Gender-based violence
Degrees
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Jeni Klugman is a senior adviser at the World Bank Group and fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard University. She was Director of Gender and Development at the World Bank Group until July 2014. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Australian National University as well as postgraduate degrees in both Law and Development Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
Publication Search Results
1 - 8 of 8
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Publication
Voice and Agency : Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity
(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2014)The 2012 World Development Report recognized that expanding women's agency - their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to improving their lives as well as the world. This report represents a major advance in global knowledge on this critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys distilled in this report cast important light on the nature of constraints women and girls continue to face globally. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include life-skills training, sexual and reproductive health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has identified as an epidemic of violence against women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys. The report also underlines the vital role information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women's voices, expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. The World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity demand no less than the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world. -
Publication
Ethiopia : Explaining Food Price Inflation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12)This study sheds some light on the challenges facing policy makers in Ethiopia, but much remains to be better understood. Over the past three years, food price inflation in Ethiopia has been persistently high, and overall inflation has been in double. While the spike in 2002 can be broadly explained by the drought-induced output shock that year, over the period as a whole, food price - and in particular grain price - trends present a puzzle in several respects. This is a serious concern for policy-makers, not least because the poor spend most of their income on food, and are adversely affected by rising prices. Even in rural areas, it is estimated that about half the population are net buyers of food. The issue of food price inflation has attracted rising concern in the national media and among policy makers, academics and of course the public at large, as well as among development partners. The structure of this note is as: authors review the key features of Ethiopian grain markets, before laying out a basic methodological approach to analyze the drivers of inflation, followed by a review of the relative importance of different explanatory factors on the demand, supply and marketing sides. Authors then turn to explore the impacts of food price changes on households, drawing on the most recent household data available. The final section highlights emerging policy conclusions. -
Publication
Gender Based Violence and the Law
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-01)The phenomenon of gender-based violence is pervasive around the world, experienced by some one in three women in their lifetimes. The elimination of such violence has been increasingly recognized as a priority for the international community. This paper investigates the potential and shortcomings of legislative action – and how international and national laws can interact with norms in ways that can be conducive to the reduction of the risk of violence. We argue that there has been major progress in establishing the right of women to live free of violence in both international and national law, especially over the past decade or so, with civil society movements at the local and global levels playing a pivotal role. At the same time, there is some way to go to address the underlying norms and behaviors associated with violence. The investigation sheds some light on broader debates about the value of international human rights law. Some regard international agreements and conventions as toothless, others point to evidence that these have helped to mobilize women’s groups. One channel of effects could be the following. International laws and norms set out standards of behaviour that are regarded as appropriate by a critical mass of nation-states, and such norms affect domestic policy making along a variety of causal pathways, including standards for domestic legislation, creating standards for global civil society to both advocate and monitor, and mobilizing domestic civil society around these new shared expectations of individual and state behavior. The paper is structured as follows. The outline the significance of gender-based violence, globally and regional and country patterns. This is followed by an examination of the international legal framework. Our review highlights the important role of civil society, and especially women’s groups, both in terms of bringing about reform and monitoring implementation. The focus of this paper is on intimate partner violence directed at women – that is psychological and emotional, as well as physical and sexual violence, inflicted by a spouse, live-in partner or boyfriend.Intimate partner violence comprises the bulk of gender-based violence in all countries around the world. -
Publication
PRSPs and Budgets
(A Synthesis of Five Case Studies, 2005-01-18)This paper synthesizes the findings from a series of case studies on the interaction between the PRSP process and the budget. The five studies, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Tanzania and Vietnam aim to assess the extent to which public finance management and budget allocations reflect the principles and content of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper PRSP, hence providing insights into progress in PRS implementation. The cases also shed light on whether the PRSP process itself has fostered more accountable, efficient and pro-poor budget processes and allocations as of 2003.The PRSP process, with its focus on data and information for evidence-based policy-making, open and participatory policy-making processes, poverty results and country-led donor coordination, alignment and harmonization has the potential to significantly improve the pro-poor focus and general accountability of budgeting processes.The cases confront a number of methodological challenges. First, in some countries and sectors, lack of appropriate data constrained the extent to which the research questions could be fully answered. Second, the PRSP remains a relatively recent innovation in all the countries studied and we recognize that many of our findings are preliminary, and require additional confirmation over time. Third, any assessment of the value added of the PRSP approach needs to be cognizant of the initial conditions in country, both to avoid ascribing successes to the PRSP which pre-date its existence, and to temper expectations about what the approach can deliver in a relatively short space of time given the starting point of each country. To address this last challenge, the case studies explicitly acknowledge the pre-existing situation in-country and try to assess the value added of the PRSP process.The four countries studied have a number of common features.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all five countries share a high-level political commitment to addressing poverty, although the extent to which this commitment permeates throughout government agencies varies from country to country.The five countries, however, also display many distinctive features. Bolivia and Cambodia, for example, both suffer from high degrees of political fragmentation, which in Bolivia has manifested itself as civil unrest on a number of occasions in the last two years. Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Vietnam, on the other hand, benefit from more stable political systems and an inherited commitment to pro-poor policies from socialist governments. -
Publication
Key Development Challenges Around Internal Displacement: A Gender Perspective
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-01)At the end of 2020, there were over 48 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) displaced by conflict and another seven million displaced by natural disasters, more than double the number of refugees. The challenges facing IDPs are often less visible than those facing refugees, although accumulating evidence does point to systematic disadvantages, especially for women and girls. This paper charts the extent to which national and international policies and programs address gender in displacement settings. Our review finds that while there has been important progress, major shortcomings persist in addressing the gendered dimensions of internal displacement at the international and country levels. Commitments on paper have not consistently translated to change in practice. Gender gaps in livelihoods, social protection, durable solutions, gender-based violence, health, and education as major challenges requiring increased attention. -
Publication
Exploring Women’s Agency and Empowerment in Developing Countries: Where Do We Stand?
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-27)While central notions around agency are well established in academic literature, progress on the empirical front has faced major challenges around developing tractable measures and data availability. This has limited our understanding about patterns of agency and empowerment of women across countries. Measuring key dimensions of women's agency and empowerment is complex, but feasible and important. This paper systematically explores what can be learned from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data for fifty-eight countries, representing almost 80 percent of the female population of developing countries. It is the first such empirical investigation. The findings quantify some important correlations. Completing secondary education and beyond has consistently large positive associations, underlining the importance of going beyond primary schooling. There appear to be positive links with poverty reduction and economic growth, but clearly this alone is not enough. Context specificity and multidimensionality mean that the interpretation of results is not always straightforward. -
Publication
South Kordofan : A Growth Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-03-31)This report attempts to diagnose existing constraints and prospects for growth in people's incomes in South Kordofan. Given the breadth and depth of difficulties facing the state, the focus is on identifying the key areas of reform, or binding constraints, to growth. There is a combination of extremely low social returns, the prevalence of government and market failures, the weak investment climate and the limited access to finance to be the primary constraints. In turn it is suggested that policy reforms directed to improving governance, improving investment climate and pro-poor public investment are priorities. One immediate priority pertains to property rights issues which demands comprehensive land reform and clarification of customary land tenure and land dispute resolution mechanisms. Improving market connectivity, water resource management and farm productivity also emerge as keys to enhancing the investment climate in the rural sector. In urban areas, improved transportation networks and access to finance will increase private and social returns to investment. Efforts are also needed to improve the transparency, predictability and levels of intergovernmental transfers to promote pro-poor investment and developmental outcomes. It is suggested that local revenue efforts can improve as and when local service provision and governance are better established. There is recognition that some initial improvements are already underway, including the roads from Dilling to Kadugli and Kadugli to Kauda, and Kadugli to Dilling and Dilling to Dashol, and the railway. Progress is expected to be visible in 2008. -
Publication
Child Marriage: A Critical Barrier to Girls’ Schooling and Gender Equality in Education
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-23)Education is not only a human right, but also a powerful tool for women’s empowerment and a strategic development investment. There is a clear multiplier effect to educating girls; women who are educated are healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better healthcare and education to their children compared to women with little or no education. The benefits of education thus transmit across generations as well as to communities at large. Where girls have greater educational and economic opportunities, they are more likely to pursue those opportunities than to have children in their teenage years. Yet a host of structural, social, and financial barriers prevent girls’ enrollment and completion of both primary and secondary school.