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The reform of China's collectively owned forest land, began in 2008, is arguably the largest land-reform undertaking in modern times in terms of area and people affected. Under the reform, forest lands have been contracted to rural households, allowing them more independence in exercising their rights and interests in the forest lands, giving them more opportunities to improve family incomes, and creating incentives for them to cultivate, conserve, and manage forests. These lands are home to some 610 million people, many of them poor. With urbanization, vast numbers of Chinese men have migrated to cities to work, leaving women as the predominant labor force in rural areas. Indeed, some 70 percent of China’s agriculture labor force is now female. The immense scope of this change calls for a systematic examination of how China's rural women gain access to and exploit forest land and associated resources and services. The reform was designed to unfold in two broad stages. In the first, collectively owned forest lands suitable for contracting were allocated on equal terms to each household in affected villages. The ongoing second stage represents a deepening of the reform. It deals with subsidies and ecological compensation, financial services (including use of forest tenure as collateral and transfers of forest land), forest insurance, technical services and training, farmers’ associations and cooperatives, and market services. However, the monitoring had not covered the gender dimension of the reform, meaning that the gender data required to accurately reflect the full effects of the reform have been lacking. Building on the annual monitoring conducted by the FEDRC, the study reported here added gender-related investigation and analysis to obtain gender data about the current reform situation, its problems, and their causes. It also included structured interviews with rural women and group meetings with local government agencies, women’s federations, and village committees.The ultimate objective of the study is to achieve better gender-responsiveness in China’s collective forest tenure reform. Specifically, this includes: (i) equality in access to and control of forest lands, as well as access to associated resources and services; (ii) women’s participation and equality in decision-making concerning the conservation and utilization of forest resources; and (iii) impacts of the first two aspects on the status and well-being of women. The World Bank has had over 30 years of successful cooperation with China in the forestry sector. Women’s access to the services and resources that are the focus of the second stage of the reform will be a critical element of the World Bank’s continuing reform dialogue with its Chinese partners.

By many measures, 2015 marks a watershed year in the international communitys efforts to advance gender equality. In September, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Member States committed to a renewed and more ambitious framework for development. This agenda, with a deadline of 2030, emphasizes inclusion not just as an end in and of itself but as critical to development effectiveness. At the center of this agenda is the achievement of gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls (SDG 5). In addition to governments, the private sector is increasingly committed to reducing gaps between men and women not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it makes business sense. Gender equality is also central to the World Bank Group’s own goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. No society can develop sustainably without transforming the distribution of opportunities, resources and choices for males and females so that they have equal power to shape their own lives and contribute to their families, communities, and countries. Promoting gender equality is smart development policy.

Infrastructure projects, and more specifically, roads construction, and maintenance are one of the core operations of the World Bank. However, despite the increase of gender mainstreaming efforts in transport projects little is known about the effects of these interventions on women’s agency defined as the ability to make effective choices and transform these choices into desired outcomes’. This study aims to bridge this knowledge gap. The study looks at the effects of women’s participation in roads construction and maintenance and rural economy promotion activities on women’s agency, which has recently become a focus of study at the World Bank. Through individual interviews and focus groups the study assesses the effects of women-targeted interventions in three rural transport projects in Argentina, Nicaragua, and Peru. By focusing on agency, the study sheds light on effects of gender mainstreaming interventions that have more lasting effects on gender equality given the catalytic value of agency on other gender outcomes such as economic opportunities and endowments. The report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Second section describes the gender dimensions and agency-enhancing approaches in transport projects and the gender approaches in project implementation in the selected case studies. The third section provides a summary of the methodology of the study. The fourth section describes the key findings of the qualitative research. The fifth section presents the lessons learned to inform future rural transport interventions. The sixth section provides concluding remarks.

This update considers new findings since the initial Stocktaking report, substantiating the contribution of the private sector, and of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in particular, for new jobs and investment. These findings further illustrate the key role access to finance plays in SMEs abilities and willingness to add jobs including the special circumstances of fast-growing SMEs, or gazelles. The new findings further detail availability and gaps in SME financing, including for specific subsectors such as women-owned firms and agri-enterprises. New trends include progress made in recent years to improve financial markets infrastructure, and expanded lending in countries such as China, which have made progress in this area. The findings also include key private sector innovations pioneered by the SME Finance Challenge winners and other private sector institutions, focusing on key sector opportunities (such as agribusiness and energy), product innovation (such as expanded local currency options), and risk management alternatives. The new findings and trends highlight the potential of collaborative platforms that have emerged from the G-20/GPFI (Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion) process to combine resources to improve SME access to finance, and some of the major outstanding issues and obstacles these platforms might address. The conclusion provides recommendations for priority issues and work areas for G-20/GPFI attention.

In 2011, women and girls represented 50.6 percent of the total Montenegrin population (620,029 persons). Different aspects of gender inequality vary by region and ethnicity. The present World Bank country partnership strategy in Montenegro is based on two pillars that include supporting Montenegro s accession to the European Union (EU) through boosting institutions and competitiveness. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of gender inequality in Montenegro. Using a number of data sources, gender differences in various outcomes are analyzed with the intention of highlighting gender inequalities in human wellbeing. Results are used to prioritize possible avenues for future research to better understand such inequalities and or suggest areas that require more focus from policymakers. This report operates under the premise that gender equality is both an issue of human rights and of critical economic consequence. In line with the world development report (WDR) 2012, the nomenclature of gender gaps in endowments, access to economic opportunities, and agency will be used to elaborate upon these arguments and their relevance to Montenegro. The findings of this diagnostic suggest that there are gender gaps in Montenegro, particularly in: (i) agency, although available data in this area is limited; (ii) access to economic opportunities; and (iii) human capital among some population subgroups. The structure of the report is as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two addresses gender disparities in endowments, including education, health, and assets. Section three presents disparities in economic opportunities in the forms of labor force participation, unemployment, employment and wages, and entrepreneurship. Section four focuses on agency and its implications for gender equality. Section five discusses relationships across issues and suggests areas for further research.

This investment climate analysis reviews the experiences of over 3000 surveyed business owners in 26 states of Nigeria about the aspects of the business climate that affect their businesses. It complements a similar study in 2007 that covered 11 other Nigerian states. The survey asks business owners about both their perceptions and the actual costs of selected constraints. The analysis benchmarks Nigeria against comparator countries, and provides detailed data for each state. Nigerian firms have low productivity, as measured by their output in relation to their labor and capital inputs. Firms in Kenya are about 40 percent more efficient, firms in Russia almost twice as productive, and firms in South Africa almost four times as productive. Nigerian firms that export are about 90 percent more productive than non-exporters. Although labor in Nigeria is inexpensive, it is not inexpensive enough to compensate for this low productivity. The poor performance of Nigerian firms reflects many factors. This study focuses on constraints in the business climate and the serious costs they impose on Nigerian firms. Taken together, the total indirect costs of poor quality infrastructure, crime and security, and corruption amount to over 10 percent of sales for Nigerian firms. This is twice as high as in South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia. Microenterprises firms with fewer than five workers face similar constraints as larger firm's unreliable power, limited access to finance, corruption, and transportation bottlenecks. But the consequences for their businesses are far more severe. For instance, most microenterprises cannot afford generators, so power outages are more likely to shut down their operation. Lacking collateral, almost no microenterprises have access to formal external financing.

Viet Nam has undergone a major socio-economic transformation over the past quarter century, rising from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle income country. Today it continues to develop rapidly, becoming more integrated with the global economy and undergoing significant regulatory and structural changes. Viet Nam has also made remarkable progress on gender equality, but important gender differences still remain. On the positive side Viet Nam has had considerable progress in addressing gender disparities in education, employment and health. The gender gap in earnings is lower in Viet Nam than in many other East Asian countries. Indeed by a number of measures, women's outcomes have improved significantly. However, upon deeper examination of the data, a number of challenges still remain. The report is organized into five chapters. The current chapter has provided a background to the report and the process through which it has been prepared. The next three chapters will deal with the substantive issues, focusing primarily on gender but addressing ethnicity and other forms of social inequality where relevant. Chapter two will provide an analysis of the situation and trends in gender equality in relation to the multiple dimensions of poverty, some of which are included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Chapter three will provide an in-depth gender analysis of livelihoods and employment, bearing in mind the likely impact of the recent crisis as well as the challenges of transition to middle income status. Chapter four will pick up on the issue of women's political participation in leadership positions and in the wider society. The final chapter will synthesize the key findings of the report and prioritize key recommendations.

This global report examines the opportunity for special economic zones to promote women's economic empowerment and boost zone and enterprise competitiveness in developing countries. The research covers Bangladesh, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, El Salvador, Jordan, Kenya, and the Philippines. The study focuses on women's economic empowerment in the context of zones at three levels: (i) fair employment and working conditions for female employees; (ii) equal access to opportunities for professional advancement; and (iii) investment opportunities for female entrepreneurs. The study also examines gender-friendly policies and practices that support these three main goals, which include a wide range of options around laws, regulations, labor policies, gender-sensitive professional development programs, family support mechanisms, women's health programs, and supplier diversity and capacity-building initiatives. This study establishes the business case for investments in women's economic empowerment in SEZs, and identifies good-practice examples of recommended enablers to address this investment opportunity. Enablers are defined as efforts to counteract the negative impact of the obstacles women face in economic participation, and can include policies and programs at the government, zone, and enterprise level. The study provides background, evidence of challenges and success stories, comprehensive recommendations, and a suite of tools and tips to implement the recommendations successfully.

International aid flows are equivalent to almost half of Solomon Islands' economy, making it one of the most aid-dependent countries in the world. Around US$250 million of non-military aid enters the country, but only 15-20 percent of this amount is spent locally through local procurement or staff expenditure. Solomon Islands are currently highly reliant on logging for export receipts, Government revenues, and employment. But existing stocks of natural forest logs are expected to be entirely exhausted by 2014. The Solomon Islands Government approached the World Bank Group to identify alternative sources of revenue, foreign exchange receipts, and employment in the absence of logging. In responding to this request, the World Bank Group has undertaken extensive analytical work examining short and medium-term prospects for economic growth in Solomon Islands, under the sources of growth project. This report contributes to the sources of growth work, and is informed by its findings. A key conclusion arising from sources of growth analysis is that aid is likely to remain a key part of the Solomon Islands economy for the near future. The existence of an international security guarantee, backed by the presence of an international peacekeeping force, is paramount for security, and investment certainty. In the absence of clear or certain alternatives to logging, and in the context of rapid population growth, current levels of service delivery will continue to depend on high levels of aid expenditure.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia experienced a sharp decline in economic output, prolonged regional conflicts resulting in great numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, the deterioration of social protection systems, and devastating natural disasters. These circumstances resulted in a dramatic increase in poverty and a decline in the human development index. Poverty has greatly affected women and introduced numerous obstacles and challenges in the promotion of gender equality and advancement of women's rights. Furthermore, women face new challenges with regard to issues such as human trafficking, rights of IDPs, and peacekeeping initiatives. Regional cooperation is necessary to address these issues. This project set out to assess the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs) to meet the pressing needs for legal literacy, legal aid, and improved access to justice and legal services for poor women in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The primary objectives were as follows: identify laws and institutions that promote women's rights; identify and disseminate successful initiatives that promote women's legal rights and legal literacy and facilitate their access to legal services; and strengthen collaboration among groups working on gender issues in prioritizing women's legal rights. This report is organized around three key dimensions of gender equality: the status of women as far as human capital development is concerned, their status in terms of access to productive resources, and their status and protection under the law.