The (In)visible Woman at the International Monetary Fund: Engendering National Economic Rule-making

For decades, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was silent about gender inequality. In 2013, the IMF finally adopted a discourse linking macroeconomic stability and gender inequality. Engendering means the integration of gender equality into the IMF’s activities, thus, generating change. By deploying different institutional mechanisms (e.g. the Article IV reports and conditionality in exchange for financial support), the IMF is contributing to engendering economic rulemaking process at the national level. Discourses matter. Economic laws at national level are shaped by the IMF’s ideas: the meaning-making process of rules at the global level is an integral part of the economic rulemaking process at the national level. Particularly, legal ideas are key to explain the structure of the IMF’s discourse and its potential to promote gender equality. The IMF is an important case study to understand the mechanisms of engendering international organizations with important repercussions for other international institutions.