The experience of development banks in incorporating gender into infrastructure projects reflects the growth in gender as a development priority. Projects across infrastructure sectors are increasingly adopting measures to ensure that benefits accrue evenly to women and men, and that projects include actions to promote women's economic empowerment.10
Empirically proven lessons-revealing what works and what does not-are hard to find. In some cases, evidence shows that a subsector (for example, rural electrification) or gender action (such as joint titling or business training) is proven to promote women's economic empowerment.11 It is helpful, however, for those interested in infrastructure PPPs to refer to the growing body of best-practice examples emerging from infrastructure projects, including those procured through methods other than PPPs. Several of these are discussed in this section. Best-practice approaches for incorporating gender into infrastructure project planning and development will need to rely on the specifics of the project and local context.
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10 For more, see: Making Infrastructure Work for Women and Men: A Review of World Bank Group Infrastructure Projects 2005-2009, World Bank, 2012, and Asian Development Bank: Support for Gender and Development (2005-2015), Asian Development Bank, 2017.
11 Buvinic, Mayra and O'Donnell, Megan, Revisiting What Works: Women, Economic Empowerment and Smart Design, Center for Global Development, 2016.