Publication: A Review of Gender Issues in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica
Loading...
Published
2002-12-11
ISSN
Date
2013-08-22
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This report examines the effect of gender on socio-economic outcomes in three Caribbean countries: the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. Organized in three separate country notes, it covers: demographics, health and reproductive health, violence, education, labor and agriculture. The report is part of a large effort aimed at establishing a strategic social agenda in the region. Many of the key economic issues that Caribbean countries confront today have an important gender dimension, these includes crime and violence, reproductive and sexual health issues, low education levels, unstable family structure, poverty and inequality. Gender roles and relations influence these socio-economic issues. For example, violent crime is concentrated among young men, who are both victims and offenders; domestic violence is extensive in the Caribbean sub region and for the most and for the most part involves men as the aggressors and women as the victims. Aggressive men behavior has been linked to the inability of men, mostly low income men, to meet social expectations of achieving and providing for the family, as well as to socialization patterns that teach boys to be tough and girls to be submissive. Over the long term, gender work in the three countries should continue to address socialization processes and norms that cause men and women to assume negative roles in the socio-economic stability of each country.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2002. A Review of Gender Issues in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15311 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Brazil Gender Review : Issues and Recommendations(Washington, DC, 2002-01-23)The report, which documents findings of a review on gender issues in Brazil, during 1999, and updated in 2001, is responsive to the recognition of gender as an important issue in increasing socioeconomic well-being, and reducing poverty. The review examines gender in terms of demographic trends, health indicators, the effects and causes of violence, education indicators, labor market trends, and social protection. It identifies gender issues across sectors, with a view to improving the Bank's efficiency, and effectiveness, in reducing gender inequities that affect both women, and men, though discussion on male gender issues is limited. Major findings indicate that mortality rates linked to external factors (i.e., traffic accidents, homicide, suicide), differ greatly by gender; pre-natal care for pregnant women continues to be inadequate; violence continues to be high; teaching methods tend to reinforce gender segregation; and, early childhood, and education programs remain poor. Recommendations include the need for changing societal gender roles, by acting on gender issues through community, and local level organizations, but targeting men as well as women, since male issues, such as violence and under performance in school, among others, may be attributed to men's narrowly defined gender roles, while effective women's programs, often require men's implicit, or explicit cooperation, and involvement.Publication Moldova : Gender Disparities in Endowments and Access to Economic Opportunities(Washington, DC, 2014-03-30)This assessment provides a broad picture of gender disparities in Moldova in agency, education, health, and access to economic opportunities. The gender gap in education is small, yet it is greatest at higher levels of education. Moldova's health indicators are significantly underperforming compared to other Europe and Central Asia (ECA) countries, and male mortality is of greatest concern. Violence against women is one of the most frequent forms of human rights violations and is widely accepted by both women and men. Male and female labor force participation rates are low, and the gender gap is small. Moldova has one of the highest rates of human trafficking among neighboring countries and is primarily a source country. This paper is structured as follows: chapter one discusses factors which may shape the process of how men and women use their endowments and utilize economic opportunities. Chapter two covers human development disaggregated by gender, focusing on education and health. Chapter three examines the gender gap in employment and opportunities, and its implications for the labor market, particularly, entrepreneurship, and career advancement for women. Chapter four makes selected policy recommendations.Publication Thailand Social Monitor on Youth : Development and the Next Generation(Washington, DC, 2008-01)This Thailand Social Monitor provides an overview of the challenges facing Thai youth today, identifying the factors that make them vulnerable and outlining possible policy directions in moving forward. This Social Monitor studies three key transitions faced by Thai youth, using the youth development model proposed by the World Development Report 2007. This model helps provide an understanding of the interactions among the various factors that affect youth development and how they influence in three important life transitions, namely: growing up healthy, learning for work and life and moving from school to work. In this model, the role of public policy is to help youth succeed in the transition to adulthood by broadening their opportunities, expanding their capacity and providing them with second chances to overcome negative outcomes. These areas are the three youth policy lenses through which policy priorities are assessed throughout this report. This report stresses that building the next generation of Thailand human capital requires a concerted effort. The four main ministries responsible for promoting the country's youth development agenda-Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Health and Ministry of Justice-must work towards ensuring that every stakeholder-including other governmental departments, NGOs and the private sector-come together to bring about an enabling environment for youth of all walks to thrive and realize their full potential. Moreover, policymaking must also be in tune with reality. It needs to listen, understand and incorporate the voices and vision of youth, the central stakeholder in this process, in order to be grounded on the will and aspirations of the next generationPublication Sparing Lives : Better Reproductive Health for Poor Women in South Asia, Summary for Policymakers(New Delhi: Macmillan India, Ltd., 2008)In this context, the overall purpose of this review is to bring attention to the opportunities that five countries in the region - Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka - have to strengthen and expand interventions to improve the reproductive health of poor women. The specific objectives are: i) to provide an accurate picture of the current status of women's reproductive health, describe the use of reproductive health services and barriers to use, and identify the improvements required to increase their effectiveness and improve health outcomes; ii) to elucidate individual and household characteristics that affect reproductive health status and use of services so that the most important of these can be used to identify women and households with the greatest need for care to achieve better health; iii) to describe a simple and effective approach - decentralized action planning - that can be used widely in all five countries to improve reproductive health service delivery and outcomes, and point to a body of best practices in reproductive health that provides models and lessons for improvements in South Asia; and iv) to strengthen the case for investing in poor women's reproductive health by demonstrating the links between poverty, inequality, reproductive health care and expenditure.Publication Argentine Youth : An Untapped Potential(World Bank, 2009-03-01)Argentina's youth, 6.7 million between the ages of 15 and 24, are an important, but to a certain extent untapped, resource for development. Over 2 million (31 percent) have already engaged in risky behaviors, and another 1 million (15 percent) are exposed to risk factors that are correlated with eventual risky behaviors. This totals 46 percent of youth at some form of risk. Today's youth cohort is the country's largest ever and it's largest for the foreseeable future. If policymakers do not invest in youth now, especially in youth at risk, they will miss a unique opportunity to equip the next generation with the abilities to become the drivers of growth, breaking the intergenerational spiral of poverty and inequality and moving Argentina back into the group of high-income countries. If youth are educated and skilled, they can be a tremendous asset for development. If not, they can burden society and public finances. Overall, Argentina is blessed with high enrollment rates in school, low levels of crime and violence, and moderate to low drug use by youth. However, youth employment, smoking and binge drinking (including its effect on traffic accidents), teen pregnancies, and HIV pose challenges for youth policy. While most youth in Argentina are educated, skilled, and healthy, a large group is potentially at risk of engaging in myopic behaviors, including school absenteeism and leaving, substance use and abuse, delinquency, crime, and risky sexual behavior. The consequences of these risky behaviors, unemployment, adolescent pregnancy, sexually-transmitted diseases, addiction, incarceration, violence, and social exclusion, make it difficult for youth to successfully transition to adulthood, imposing large costs on individuals and society. Applying the framework of the world development report 2007, this report examines the five life-changing transitions that all youth confront: leaving school and continuing to learn, starting to work, developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, forming a family, and exercising citizenship.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.