The Co-option of Rights

Individuals has been foregrounded within the neoliberal paradigm. The World Bank produces this paradigm through structural adjustment programs to increase economic growth in the Third World. The World Bank showed that inequality is bad for economic growth, that good governance is good for growth and that gender inequality is bad for growth. The notion of co-responsibility features in the Bank’s policies, and that means creating social safety nets for the poor as the most vulnerable so that they can access resources. But while the state has a responsibility to provide resources to those people, they have a responsibility to act also. The issue of gender is central to the issue of poverty. This chapter is part of Module 5: Contested Rights and the Co-option of the Rights Discourse. 

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