Description
Projects within international organisations (IOs) are guided by policy monitoring frameworks incentivising the incorporation of policy concerns. However, these frameworks are often inconsistently applied, subject to external political pressures, and used to signal compliance and cooperation. This paper studies how the World Bank (the Bank) has classified gendered projects between 2000-2024 and reported them to the OECD’s DAC through the Creditor Reporting System’s Gender Equality Marker to observe how the Bank’s internal project classifications translate when reporting to another IO, and whether they reflect political pressures and between-IO dynamics.
Through text analysis methods, a fine-tuned ModernBERT transformer model is used to assess Bank project classification. In addition, a scoring system for evaluating gender considerations within IO project documents is introduced. Theoretically, the paper advances how external political pressures and between-IO dynamics influence gender as a policy concern and how it may be used as a political pawn within projects. This gives rise to the possibility of gender washing which can have tangible effects in member countries through gendered harm and lacklustre development efforts as institutional claims fail to meet action. With a focus on gender, the paper brings nuance to how tumultuous global political developments reshape institutional operations and objectives.