IMF conditionality, social programmes and the impact of women's welfare: an empirical analysis of historical policy responses to financial crises in Latin America and their gendered effects

Successive debt crises that have affected Latin America since the late 1970s had unique and substantial consequences on women in the areas of, education, health, as well as political and economic participation that exacerbated gender inequalities. During this period, demand increased for social programmes that had the potential to mitigate decreases in women’s welfare. National policy responses to the crises were, however, largely driven by International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditional lending agreements. Though conditionality was primarily motivated by conditionality fiscal austerity, liberalization, deregulation, and privatization, conditions pertaining to redistribution and social policy also existed. This dissertation has two main aims: the first is to determine what effects conditions in different issue areas had on the prevalence of social programmes in Latin America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and the second is to understand how changes to social programmes have affected women’s welfare in relation to the welfare of men. Building off Kentikelenis et al.’s categorisation of different conditionality issue areas,1 the first analysis makes use of instrumental variable two-stage last-squared (IV 2SLS) estimation to understand the relationship between specific conditions and social programmes. Next, fixed-effects (FE) estimation was leveraged in order to examine the impact of various social programmes on women’s welfare. The findings conclude that while conditionality had mixed effects on social programmes, it diminished those which were determined to positively impact women’s welfare in relation to that of men.