Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Despite some legal and social advances in the past two decades, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people continue to face widespread discrimination and violence in many countries. This discrimination and violence lead to exclusion, and this exclusion has adverse impacts on both the lives of LGBTI people as well as on the communities and economies in which they live.

Increasing evidence indicates that LGBTI people suffer lower education outcomes due to discrimination, bullying and violence; higher unemployment rates; and a lack of access to adequate housing and health services and financial services. As a result, LGBTI people are likely overrepresented in the bottom 40% of the population. In Serbia, for example, a World Bank study finds that LGBTI people experience lower socioeconomic outcomes due to discrimination, with the at-risk-of-poverty rate increasing from 16% to 20% for those who experience discrimination.

In many countries, it is especially difficult to tackle LGBTI exclusion, discrimination, and violence. First and foremost, there is a deeply entrenched stigma against LGBTI people. Lack of an enabling legal framework, which often is a result of such stigma, is another important reason. At this time, 67 countries continue to criminalize homosexuality.

A major barrier to addressing this stigma and SOGI-based exclusion is the lack of data on the lives of LGBTI people. Robust, quantitative data on differential development experiences and outcomes of LGBTI people—especially those in developing countries—is extremely thin. This data gap poses a challenge to the World Bank and other development institutions. Most importantly, this data gap puts in jeopardy the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and countries’ commitment to the principle of “leaving no one behind” in the effort to end poverty and inequality.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the particular challenges sexual and gender minorities face in crisis situations, and can serve as a guide to future SOGI-inclusive crisis responses. The unparalleled disruption of public life due to COVID-19 in countries around the world had devastating impacts on the delivery of services and the ability of already marginalized LGBTI people to access necessary services.  According to a joint World Bank and Equal Rights Association for Western Balkans and Turkey (ERA) report, while COVID-19 could affect anyone, it disproportionately impacted vulnerable groups—including LGBTI people. The pandemic exacerbated pre-existing inequalities, making it more difficult for those from vulnerable groups to access essential services, especially health. The challenges this presented were both immediate and longer term, as the impacts on the economy as well as on service delivery are likely to be felt long after the pandemic ends.

These challenges include:

1. Access to health services: We know from the available data that LGBTI people often face significant barriers in accessing health services.  In the context of COVID-19, these barriers were greatly exacerbated and prevented many LGBTI people from getting the healthcare services they needed.

2. Impacts of Social Distancing and Isolation Policies: Many LGBTI people rely on community organizations to receive essential services (i.e., psycho-social support, HIV testing, etc.), access to which was often significantly impacted during the COVID-19 response. Especially older LGBTI people often lack family networks and rely heavily on these community services, putting them at greater risk while these services are suspended during a pandemic or other crisis.

3. Potential increase of existing disparities: Existing inequalities in education, employment, and health for LGBTI people deepened as a result of the COVID-19 response.

4. Government negatively targeting LGBTI people: Some governments used the response to COVID-19 to roll back rights of vulnerable populations, including specifically targeting LGBTI people.

The World Bank approaches SOGI inclusion through our commitments on gender equality and social inclusion. The links between gender equality and development were well established in the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development, while the importance of social inclusion in development was articulated in the 2013 report Inclusion Matters.

In addition, the World Bank published studies examining the unique way in which sexual orientation, gender identity, and development are intertwined, such as The economic cost of stigma and the exclusion of LGBT people: a case study of India, Economic Inclusion of LGBTI Groups in Thailand, Life on the Margins: Survey Results of the Experiences of LGBTI People in Southeastern Europe, and Comparative Analysis of the Socioeconomic Dimensions of LGBTI Exclusion in Serbia.

Building on its work in HIV/AIDS since the 1990s, the World Bank has in more recent years taken a more comprehensive approach to SOGI inclusion throughout the organization’s management and operations.

SOGI issues have now been included in a number of strategic documents such as Systematic Country Diagnostics and Country Partnership Frameworks. There are increasing opportunities to promote SOGI inclusion through access to justice, access to education, access to a whole range of health services, access to the labor and financial markets, and through violence prevention (both bullying in schools and other forms of violence). 

In January 2015, the Bank established a SOGI Task Force to place a stronger emphasis on the SOGI inclusion agenda as well as to spearhead a coherent effort for SOGI inclusion. The multi-sectorial task force has members from different parts of the World Bank, which opens opportunities for influencing existing and forthcoming operational and analytical work.

In November 2016 the World Bank appointed its first-ever SOGI Global Advisor. The Advisor provides intellectual leadership and technical guidance to World Bank teams, and enhances the Bank’s coordination with civil society organizations, UN Agencies, as well as other partners and stakeholders.

The World Bank has identified three key areas for improving the inclusion of SOGI in its overall work:

1. Training: Sensitize staff and clients about SOGI issues and build their capacity to apply a SOGI lens in their work.

2. Data and Knowledge Generation: Focus on quantitative and qualitative data generation emphasizing the development outcomes for LGBTI people.

3. Operations: Pilot initiatives and projects to improve the access of LGBTI people to markets, services, and spaces; and supporting project design to minimize the possibility of SOGI-based discrimination in project implementation, in accordance with the provisions of the Environmental and Social Framework  (ESF).  Under the ESF, the World Bank is committed to identifying and minimizing the possibility of discrimination against LGBTI people through project design and implementation. To that end, the Bank has developed resources and tools to support operations staff and clients in ensuring effective implementation of the ESF.

The World Bank is continuously working to strengthen its approach to SOGI inclusion. Examples of the Bank’s analytical and operational work include:

Analytics

• Following the Women Business and the Law approach, the Equality of Opportunity for Sexual and Gender Minorities (EQOSOGI) report was launched in 2021. It identifies laws that impact sexual and gender minorities’ access to markets, services, and spaces in a country and examines how those laws either enable or inhibit the inclusion of sexual and gender minorities. The first iteration of the report looks at 16 countries across 6 indicator sets: (i) criminalization and SOGI, (ii) access to inclusive education, (iii) access to the labor market, (iv) access to public services and social protection, (v) civil and political inclusion, and (vi) protection from hate crimes.

• Life on the Margins: Survey Results of the Experiences of LGBTI People in Southeastern Europe (2018) provides a sobering view of the challenges experienced by sexual and gender minorities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia.

• A Set of Proposed Indicators for the LGBTI Inclusion Index is a joint World Bank-UNDP publication that provides the background for a set of proposed indicators to measure the inclusion of LGBTI people.

• Using experimental methods, the study Discrimination Against Sexual Minorities in Education and Housing in Serbia (2018), for the first time quantifies the extent of discrimination based on SOGI in access to education and the private housing market.

• A Comparative Analysis of the Socioeconomic Dimensions of LGBTI Exclusion in Serbia provides new insights on differences in the socio-economic outcomes of LGBTI people and a demographically similar subset of the general population in Serbia. The report finds that the median household income of LGBTI people is lower than that of the general population, and that discrimination puts LGBTI people at a greater risk of poverty.

• Economic Inclusion of LGBTI Groups in Thailand (2018) is the first endeavor to gather and analyze quantitative data on economic and financial outcomes for a large, statistically significant sample of LGBTI people in Thailand. The study was led by the World Bank in partnership with Thammasat University, Love Frankie, and the Nordic Trust Fund.  

• The Economic Cost of Stigma and the Exclusion of LGBT people in India (2014) examines the pathways of impact of stigma and exclusion including violence, discrimination, job loss, family rejection and pressure to marry, and harassment in school. Each one of these manifestations of exclusion may have negative implications for health, education outcomes, and productivity.

Operations

• SOGI issues are included in several Systematic Country Diagnostics and Country Partnership Frameworks, including in Thailand, Cambodia, South Africa, Uruguay, and the Western Balkans countries.

• The SOGI Global Advisor has organized consultations with SOGI civil society organizations in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

Operational examples

• Through the “Strengthening of State Universities in Chile” the World Bank is supporting the government in reducing barriers for LGBTI students to attain a higher education degree. The project will also promote career counseling programs with a focus on vulnerable and under-represented segments of the population (for example, sexual minorities).

• In Pakistan, the Karachi Mobility Project held focus group discussion with transgender women as part of the project’s Social Impact Assessment. The discussion aimed to understand the barriers and challenges that transgender people face in accessing public transport and use the findings to make the project design more inclusive.

• In the Philippines, a Country Gender Assessment was informed by LGBT focus group discussions. Lessons learned included the importance of understanding local gender identities and norms, as well as the need to conduct additional data collection and research on SOGI issues.

• In Argentina, the “Youth Employment Program” supported the government of Argentina in strengthening the capacities of the Municipal Employment Offices and other agencies to implement “gender smart” approaches in the provision of employment services and other interventions to youth. A pilot component specifically looked at reducing barriers for transgender people in accessing these services.