The World Bank on Empowerment in Liberian Project Evaluations: A Desk Review on Women’s Economic Empowerment in Liberia

Sammanfattning: The World Bank is a key actor within development, continuously funding projects on women’s empowerment in countries world-wide; Liberia being one of them. Women and girls have been particularly affected by previous conflicts in Liberia, strongly impinging on their participation in the labor market still today (UN Women 2014). Research shows that one of the foremost issues for women today is the fact that they do not participate in the labor market equally to men (Vintges 2017, p.14), and Sida describes this as key behind the progress of both women’s empowerment and the goal of eradicating poverty (Sida 2016). When women partake in the labor force, it leads to economic growth and whole communities thrive (UN Women 2014). This study can be connected to goal number 5 of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development; “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” (Global Goals 2017, p.3). The methodology of the study is a desk review based on a gender-analysis framework, analyzing three different projects of the World Bank on women’s economic empowerment in Liberia from a feminist perspective. Results show that the feminist perspective needs to be taken into account to a broader extent and that project evaluations of the World Bank commonly portray women as victims in need of rescuing rather than as agents with the power to change their own lives. For any change to appear and be established, the starting point must be viewing women and men as equals.