A new policy brief of EPWS member organisation GARNET has been released and presented to policy makers in Vienna last week.
GARNET is a Network of Excellence on Global Governance, Regionalisation and Regulation, funded under the Sixth EU Framework Programme of Research and Technological Development.

The policy brief is called “The Global Financial Meltdown and the Impact of Financial Governance on Gender“.

The authors Brigitte Young, Professor of International Political Economy, University of Muenster, and Helene Schuberth, Senior Advisor of the National Bank of Austria, undertake a gendered analysis of financial governance, stressing the low or even non-existent female representation in top positions of financial institutions and the decision-making bodies of key regulatory institutions, central banks, and formal and informal financial networks (financial governance without women).

The paper proceeds to analyse three channels of how finance impacts on gender and outlines the current impact of the financial and economic crisis on gender relations as well as the impact of policy responses on gender.

Young and Schuberth point out the risk that the financial crisis will reinforce existing gender inequalitites. At the same time, they see the crisis as an opportunity to remedy the situation and put in place a financial architecture and an economic growth model wihich serves social values instead of privileging the financial sector.
Both gender inequalities and income inequalities result from a certain “group think” mentality which is exclusive and exclusionary and carries a set of outdated norms about women and men.

The paper acknowledges the input and discussions of the Network “Gender and the Financial Crisis” which was founded under the auspices of EPWS beginning of 2009.

For more information on GARNET, please click here and here

To download the policy brief (PDF), please click here

For more information on the Network on Gender and the Financial Crisis, please click here