The Community of Practice (CoP) for Finance Ministers on Gender Equality first met at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in April 2014. This group, which World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim co-chairs with the Executive Director of UN Women, was created to meet demand from a number of finance ministers for a southern-led dialogue on how to make finance ministry tools more effective in supporting women’s and girls’ opportunities. The Community is the first of its kind and has attracted considerable interest among multilateral and other institutions.
The Community of Practice's key objectives are to:
- Promote financing for gender results,
- Make national budgets more effective in supporting women’s and girls’ opportunities,
- Promote learning and cross-fertilization by sharing innovative finance ministry-led approaches, and
- Support political momentum for gender equality goals in post-2015 agenda and associated financial commitments.
Finance ministries from the following 23 countries have participated in the Community:
| Antigua and Barbuda | Mauritania | Romania |
| Egypt, Arab Republic of | Mexico | Rwanda |
| Bangladesh | Moldova | Serbia |
| Burkina Faso | Morocco | Sierra Leone |
| Cabo Verde | Nepal | Sweden |
| Ecuador | Nigeria | Timor-Leste |
| Indonesia | Paraguay | Togo |
| Jamaica | Peru |
The CoP welcomes additional finance ministries that have shown commitment and willingness to use their resources to promote gender equality. The CoP will be affiliated with a broader group of actors who are interested in promoting and supporting these ministers in their work, including the World Bank Group, UN Women and UK-DfID.
Most Recent Meeting (April 2016)
The fourth meeting of the CoP convened at the World Bank Group on Thursday, April 14, 2016, at the time of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington, DC. This half-day session targeted finance ministry officials at the technical-level to discuss concrete policy options that have proven effective in closing economic opportunity gaps between men and women. Representatives from 14 countries participated, including six returning members (Bangladesh, Morocco, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden and Timor-Leste), and eight first-time members (Antigua and Barbuda, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Serbia, and Togo). Donor partners from the Netherlands and Norway joined the meeting as observers.
Current and former finance ministers delivered opening remarks and participated in the discussion, including Santiago Peña Palacios, Minister of Finance for Paraguay, Amr El-Garhy, Minister of Finance for Egypt, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Former Minister of Finance for Nigeria, Mohammed Boussaid, Minister of Economy and Finance for Morocco, and Muhammad Abdul Mannan, State Minister for Finance and Planning for Bangladesh.
Members engaged in a dynamic discussion of how to leverage finance ministry tools, most notably the budget, to achieve real-world results. This dialogue was grounded in evidence presented by the WBG Gender Innovation Labs, and in individual countries’ experiences.
The third meeting of the CoP was held at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund IMF Annual Meetings in Lima, Peru on October 11, 2015. CoP Co-chair Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President, opened and chaired the meeting, which saw three new finance ministers join the group: from Paraguay, Peru and Sweden. Finance ministers from Bangladesh, Mauritania and Rwanda took part, with Egypt, Morocco and Romania represented at non-minister level. The CoP chair welcomed Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director, as a guest to the meeting, along with the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Purna Sen, UN Women Policy Director, sitting in for UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (CoP co-Chair). Members discussed financing for gender equality results, building on momentum generated at the 2015 Addis Ababa conference on Financing for Development and by the adoption of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A country case study on land reform in Mauritania, commissioned by the CoP and prepared by the WBG gender team in collaboration with the Government of Mauritania, was delivered.
The second meeting of the CoP convened at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings in Washington, DC on October 12, 2014. Key objectives of this meeting were to: (i) institutionalize the group by adopting a charter; (ii) discuss the WBG’s role in supporting ministers’ efforts; and (iii) share lessons learned from finance ministers with advanced initiatives. The meeting recognized finance ministers from Bangladesh, Jamaica, Mauritania, Nigeria, Romania, and Timor-Leste. It was opened and co-chaired by World Bank Group President Kim and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
Inaugural Meeting (April 2014)
The inaugural meeting of the CoP took place at the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington, DC, on April 13, 2014, around the theme "Financing for Gender Results." The first meeting recognized Finance Ministers from Jamaica, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Romania, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste. It was opened and co-chaired by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.