We’ve been churning out a bunch of materials on the global economic crisis summarizing our conclusions to date on its developmental impact (though who knows if this is the end, or just a pause, in the financial chaos).
The Global Economic Crisis and Developing Countries brings together our findings from research in 12 countries involving some 2,500 people. It’s the final version of the draft paper I posted here back in January, so if you sent in comments you can check to see if we took any notice of them. And here’s my standard powerpoint presentation of the main points.
Gender and The Economic Crisis, the latest issue of the Gender and Development journal, builds on what I think was the most innovative aspect of our work on the crisis, pulling together some top academics and practitioners to review the gender impacts by country (Philippines, Thailand, Peru, Ethiopia, South Africa) and sector (migrant workers, farm labourers, domestic workers, street traders, home carers) plus some great overview pieces. (And for an interesting precedent closer to home, in the UK the Fawcett Society is taking the British government to court over the gender bias of its spending cuts – see here – h/t Sue Smith.)
The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on the Budgets of Low-Income Countries crunches the numbers from the budgets of 56 low income countries and finds a massive $65bn fiscal hole produced by the crisis, and governments starting to cut social spending in response – are you listening, leaders heading for next months MDG summit? (see yesterday’s blog for details).
Finally, if you want to watch me summarizing our findings and waving my arms around a lot (actually, I was trying to control myself so I only waved one arm), see below. These plus all the dozens of other papers on the crisis can be found on Oxfam’s crisis webpage.