Gender Mainstreaming at the International Monetary Fund (original) (raw)

The IMF and Regulatory Challenges

The International Spectator, 2010

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) plays a substantial regulatory role in the international monetary and financial system. The IMF has been assigned a formal regulatory role in a limited number of areas such as obligations covering exchange rate policies. The Fund has a broader informal regulatory role derived from the voluntary consent of its members such as in surveillance over members' financial sector policies and international payments imbalances. The IMF's regulatory role is unlike that of its member governments within their own jurisdictions. The Fund's formal and informal regulation must be constantly nurtured and renewed via peer-review processes.

The International Monetary Fund and Gender

SAGE Encyclopedia of Politics and Gender

The International Monetary Fund (hereafter the IMF or the Fund) was established in 1944 alongside the World Bank, with the hopes of preventing future economic crises and so world conflicts. The IMF has transformed significantly since that time, but for most of its history, the Fund has not taken gender inequalities into account. This entry briefly describes the IMF's changes within the context of world economic crises, the end of Keynesian economics and the rise of neoliberalism, followed by more pluralistic and socially embedded understandings of the economy in the 2010s. The role of women's movements and feminist economists in challenging and critiquing IMF policies for their negative effects on women is discussed, including by feminists who call for new forms of international financial governance within a transformed global political economy.

Rethinking the Governance of the International Monetary Fund

IMF Working Papers, 2006

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper attempts to set out the principal issues that need to be resolved in formulating a proposal for quotas and voice reform in the IMF that could command broad support. Following John Rawls, we argue that "justice is the first virtue of social institutions," and we use his theory of justice to provide a method for understanding what should be the case, in the context of voice and voting shares, before international institutions, such as the IMF, are to be justifiable to their members. The implementation of this process suggests, among other things, that a major revision of the quota formulas is long overdue, and leaving this unaddressed raises serious questions regarding the IMF's governance which could develop into a core mission risk and jeopardize the relevance of the institution. JEL Classification Numbers: F02, F33, F53

Reforms in International Monetary Fund (IMF): Challenges and the Road Ahead

Management and Economics Research Journal

A prosperous and stable world economy is in the self-interest of every nation. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is a worldwide institution that facilitates prosperity and stability, was founded in 1944 to restructure the world economy ruined by the Second World War and to design the postwar international monetary system. Since its inception, IMF has been playing an important role in the promotion of world trade and solving Balance of Payments (BOP) difficulties of its member countries, especially the developing ones. Despite its significant contribution, the IMF has been severely criticized by academics, politicians, and public interest groups on the grounds that it is dominated by the developed nations, and hence better serves the interest of the wealthy nations as opposed to the world’s poor majority. Even after several reforms introduced over a period of 70 years to improve and strengthen the representation of the developing countries, there are four critical issues t...

The IMF and its critics: reform of global financial architecture

Journal of Development Economics, 2005

postwar international monetary system, its regime of universal fixed exchange rates has disappeared and been replaced by an array of hard pegs, soft pegs and floating rates. But the two agencies that were an integral part of that system, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, still exist, albeit with different goals. The IMF continues to promote b.. .consultation and cooperation on international monetary problemsQ as mandated in its Articles of Agreement; however, this mission is very different in a world with capital flows, which had been widely regulated under the Bretton Woods system. David Vines and Christopher L. Gilbert have assembled an impressive collection of papers on the IMF and its current role in the financial system. This volume is the fifth in a series of books produced through the Global Economic Institutions Research Programme of the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The contributors are generally wellknown and ably present current thinking about the Fund's activities.