World Bank and IMF every year hold joint meetings to bring together central bankers, ministers of finance and development, private sector executives as well as civil society and academicians to discuss global issues of concern in order to increase global awareness and attention about them and eventually to solve them.
This year World Bank President Jim Kim said in his plenary speech that the meetings have the objective of discussing critical challenges that affect the lives of billions around the world. He said that we need to accelerate inclusive and sustainable growth by building resilience to the shocks and threats and by investing more in people. This issue of investing more in people, I hope, will involve more women and in overall it will make us all gender balanced.
Executive Director of IMF, Christine Lagarde, said in her plenary speech “Let’s empower women by providing support for greater participation in the labor market. This would increase growth, reduce inequality and support diversity.”
Tackling Childcare was one of the key meeting topics of the Fall 2017 Meetings of the World Bank Group. The discussion was the outcome of the work from the Gender and Development team, under the leadership of Caren Grown, with a well-prepared background book together with a well-designed panel by IFC. The meeting was opened by welcome speech of Carmen Niethammer, Program Manager, Women in Work, IFC. Opening address was made by Nena Stoiljkovic, Vice President of Blended Finance and Partnerships, IFC. Panelists included Ram Kumar Gupta, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment, India; Farhan A. Ifram, CEO, Mas Kreeda Al Safi; Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director, UN Women and Stephen Kramer, President, Bright Horizons Family Solutions. Moderator was Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor, Financial Times. Ms. Tett demonstrated excellent moderation. Mr. Gupta gave the government perspective from India, Mr. Ifram gave the private sector perspective and success they achieved by addressing childcare, Mr. Kramer gave the country solution they provide. Ms. Mlambo- Ngcuka touched upon very critical aspects of childcare even including nutrition aspect.
Among numerous good results of the panel, I have selected a few issues to be shared here. Childcare systems has a real positive outcome for the respective country economies – when carefully and wholeheartedly implemented, the effective childcare schemes yields itself to be an economic tool for ending poverty, increasing women’s employment and overall increase in the prosperity of each country.
First and foremost important outcome is the fact that if children have access to quality childcare, there will be a basic value build up in every country starting from a very young age. Children will have an opportunity to learn values like value of human life and respect to others, including not hitting them – the list goes on from respect to ques to basic traffic rules or hygiene, to the extreme cases not beating other people or killing them. The children will learn how to solve their problems by communicating, starting a habit at a very young age. This learning becomes more and more important especially in the poverty prevailing areas of the world, where violence against women is considered “a right” for men. I strongly believe that respect for others is an early childhood learning that effective childcare can teach, so at least this will contribute to the solving of the problem of violence against women. If we remember that for some of the children there may not be a further chance to attend to any other form of education, importance of childcare becomes even more evident.
Second outcome of the discussions, as was already put forward by Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women during the panel discussions, the children accessing childcare especially in poverty areas will have a chance of accessing proper nutrition, which they lack at home, in most of the cases. Health is an pre-requisite for learning, and good nutrition is a basic foundation for enough energy for the brain for working, thinking or creating ideas. Lack of proper childhood nutrition bring around health concerns, either never attended, or even when attended, results in very costly solutions, or, unfortunately no solutions.
Third outcome of a good childcare system is the result that has been proven numerous times with research – that children learn better and at higher pace from their peers. Therefore, stock of knowledge and learning in the part of the world where affordable and quality childcare exists, will bring about much higher values and knowledge for the future societies.
Fourth and still another important outcome for the economy is when children have proper childcare facilities, the mothers will find more opportunity to be a part of the employment force or entrepreneurship. Income for the household will increase with affordable childcare, and hence savings and investment capacity of the country shall increase.
Lastly, the pop-up childcare facilities will be creating new employment and mostly for women. This long time valid question of “shall these gender discussions and new policies be replacing men with women in the workforce?” is answered. The answer is “not likely, men will not be replaced” For every country, childcare facilities are an investment for the future and they will add up to the country benefits to ending poverty, better healthcare for future generations, better stock of knowledge and better value built up as well as creating new women entrepreneurs and women employment. With these results, every economy needs to capture the benefits of this potential.
When G20 countries signed the Brisbane declaration in 2014 in Australia, which gave way to the formation of W20 – Women 20, they agreed to decrease the gap between the employment of men and women in their respective countries by 25% until the year 2025. Increasing and instituting a good and affordable childcare is an excellent contributing factor for achieving this result for each and every country.
When the W20 was being established in early 2015, a friend of mine from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked “What will the establishment of W20 mean for the governments?” What will you say different than prevailing policies, everything is said and discussed already?” he said. I told him “If you want a preview before the declaration is drafted, I can give you the example of childcare. Those countries that employ childcare are doing better on women’s employment. In addition, it can even be suggested that this policy can achieve a fair birth rate in the respective countries.” He said that “a chat with a friend of his at the Japanese Embassy revealed that they have said “yes” to the formation of the W20 as an outreach group of G20, hoping that if the premise like increase the childcare facilities will have proven results on the prosperity of the economy in respective countries.”
Later during the year 2015, Christine Lagarde, at her opening address at the W20 Launch in September in Ankara, said that Japan has addressed the childcare system and expects positive results for their economic prosperity.
I am very proud to be a part of the development of country solutions and later to this efficient meeting at World Bank Group this year towards prosperity of the countries of the world by addressing infrastructural issues like childcare.