The Big Q: What does Ivanka Trump do?

The Big A: This is what she is doing. She is working on behalf of The Trump Administration to to empower women around the world, and especially in developing countries, is an urgent priority that goes well beyond social justice.

Ample research has demonstrated and, in several cases, quantified the broader benefits for the economy, decision making, politics and society as a whole.

The Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP), announced by the White House last month, is one of the most promising steps to date toward furthering those goals. With a thoughtful design in place, success now depends on its implementation

The proposal spearheaded by Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s senior adviser, aims to reach 50-M women in developing countries by Y 2025. It is well positioned and builds on the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative backed by Group of 20 countries. W-GDP has three pillars: “improving women’s access to quality education and training”; enhancing the enabling environment through “continuing efforts to fund and support women’s entrepreneurship and access to capital, markets, technical assistance, and mentor-ship”; and identifying and reducing “policy, legal, and regulatory barriers to women’s participation in the global economy.”

The pillars are reinforced by a structure that provides additional financing and is underpinned by a “whole of government” approach through the participation of 10 US government agencies and departments. W-GDP also allows for public-private partnerships, with emphasis on US companies already active in developing countries.

The stakes are high

Women’s empowerment promotes higher and more inclusive growth by enlarging the labor force, enhancing productivity, expanding opportunity, reducing poverty and helping to contain inequality. And greater female participation in decision making offers additional benefits. By helping to create more inclusive and diverse approaches to leadership, the participation of women reduces the likelihood of mistakes caused by blind spots, inertia and both conscious and unconscious biases.

There are also political benefits to helping women.

An emerging body of research shows that, starting from what is commonly a low base, the larger the number of women at the higher echelon of government, the lower the probability of external armed conflict and civil wars. The involvement of women can also allow for faster resolution of tensions, including longstanding ones.

Then there are the benefits for society as a whole.

Research has demonstrated that the greater economic empowerment of girls and women plays an important role in reducing domestic violence, child marriage and teenage pregnancy. This promotes better educated and healthier societies. And more stable ones.

For all those reasons, empowering women in developing countries is in the national interest of the donors in advanced economies, including the US Progress would help reduce the incentive for economic migration, counter the extremism that fuels cross-border terrorism, and could even contain the type of misguided military adventurism by developing countries that sets back development and often results in large-scale refugee problems.

Progress requires an agile mix of top-down and bottom-up measures, some generic and others highly customized. And it requires being aware of the behavioral science constraints mentioned above, which can prove recurrent and binding when not managed and accounted for.

That’s why W-GDP’s overall design could help the program succeed where previous efforts have faltered.

There are 3 Key challenges to successful implementation:

1st, the need to develop greater operational specificity for each of the 3 pillars. The focus here should be to target and complete the missing parts of value chains, including by addressing market and institutional failures in individual developing countries. There is ample research that shows the potential effectiveness of well-designed measures in areas including micro-financing, transportation, care and time to market.

2nd, as noted in the W-GDP announcement, the program would need to ensure robust accountability on both sides that is, for the US agencies and partner companies that are involved on the donor side; and for the recipients. This should involve not only quantitative metrics, but also qualitative ones that reflect the sharing of best practices, the developments of networks, and learning from mistakes.

3rd is responsive expectation management. Early wins are critical to building momentum, along with furthering the narrative around the importance of shared responsibility and inter-connectiveness.

A sustainably implemented W-GDP can do more than achieve the immediate objectives set out by the White House.

As more countries and companies gain awareness and participate in similar initiatives, which is likely to happen, it can create a multiplier effect that is transformational in scope and significant in global magnitude.

The big test now: making the implementation as robust as the design, helping to realize the enormous promise of what can and should come next.

Making and Keeping America Great!

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