Balancing Budgets while Unbalancing Lives: IMF's Gendered Governance in South Asia

Source: Pexels. Credits: Khushwant Solanki.

For the women of Islamabad, Dhaka, and Colombo, colonialism never ended. It simply rebranded itself as austerity measures dictated by the IMF. By excluding the care economy from the global financial discipline, the costs of conditionalities are conveniently transferred from the public budget into the households, primarily on the bodies of the women running the household. The unpaid labour of household management and community service is estimated to be $10 trillion annually, which is approximately 13% of the global GDP; 75% of which is performed by women. Hence, when IMF conditionalities dictate domestic fiscal policies and require governments to reduce public spending on healthcare, education, public services, social protection programmes, and subsidies, women are pushed into the role of ‘shock absorbers’ as they acquire the additional responsibilities of the state as well. This is based on the assumption that a woman’s time is infinitely expandable hence, the glaring gaps left in the social fabric due to the retreating public services can be neatly stitched by the uncompensated time and effort of women within the households. Women act as the ultimate caregivers, even surpassing the responsibilities of the state in the era of neocolonialism. 

The governance structure of the IMF further reinforces the colonial dynamics in the global sphere of economic governance. Financial contributions determine voting power hence, the larger economies, mostly former colonisers, exercise greater influence on the domestic decision making of almost all of the Fund’s borrowers, mostly former colonies in the Global South, via conditionalities. As the concerns of the borrowers consistently remain structurally underrepresented in the IMF, the loan conditionalities have often resulted in a net outflow of resources from the Global South to the Global North, ensuring the development of the Global North at the expense of the Global South under the guise of globalisation and international cooperation. In order to make austerity and neocolonialism politically justified, the costs are quietly transferred to those with the faintest voices in the policy deliberations, the women of South Asia. 

Pakistan: Taxed by Biology.

Pakistan has signed 25 IMF agreements since becoming a member in 1950, while its female labour force participation is 24%, which is far below the regional average. These abysmal figures are a direct consequence of decades of underinvestment in public infrastructure, such as in healthcare, education, childcare, transportation, electricity, sanitation; the availability of which are vital for encouraging female labour force participation. This underinvestment is in a large part a result of the fiscal constraints shaped by the successive neocolonial IMF programmes. Women are too busy drawing water from wells and arranging firewood to participate in the formal labour market. 

Pakistan’s period tax further embeds this claim. Adding the 18% sales tax on domestically produced sanitary products, a 25% custom tax on imported sanitary products and their raw materials, as well as further local levies, the additional tax burden reaches approximately 40%.  This makes sanitary products unaffordable to most women in Pakistan, who are then forced to rely on cloths and rags, prompting them to miss school, further excluding them from participating in economic activities. However, despite the increased public pressure, the invisible hand of neocolonialism prevailed in adjusting the market prices of a sovereign state, as the IMF rejected Pakistan Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) request to remove the general sales tax on sanitary products and contraceptives with immediate effect, citing concerns with meeting the revenue targets of the fiscal year. The fact that the IMF has the authority over a sovereign country to prevent the country from removing its period tax, is the most glaring example of how neocolonial institutions prioritise balancing the budgets of the fiscal year over the unbalanced lives of the local women. Pakistani women continue to engage in the unrecognised care economy, as neocolonialism acts as the biggest barrier towards women receiving compensation for their labour and contributing to an improved society. 

Sri Lanka: Bailed Out by Women.

In April 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its $46 billion external debt and experienced its worst economic crisis post-independence. However, in order to ensure survival in the neocolonial era, Sri Lanka had to implement steep tax hikes and spending cuts to ensure a desperately needed IMF bailout. The default itself occurred in part due to IMF’s irresponsible lending and severe austerity measures in a struggling economy. The bailout had further conditionalities regarding the increase in VATs and electricity tariffs. When the government reduced the electricity tariffs by 20% in 2025, IMF demanded their reinstatement as a condition for the release of the upcoming loan, further highlighting the neocolonial tactics at play in South Asia. Despite the intensity of such crises, debt relief was sidelined in favour of additional conditionalities

Sri Lanka’s health force is primarily female, and under conditions of reduced public spending, the workforce bore the brunt of the austerity measures from job shortages to protests halting healthcare services. Fuel shortages hindered access to hospitals via public and private vehicles, severely impacting pregnant and elderly women. Shortages of medicine and equipment led to the increased burden of women as they had to perform life-saving procedures manually under unsuitable conditions. Further, the medical brain-drain within Sri Lanka after the economic crises has negatively impacted women both as patients and housewives by adding additional responsibilities as a single parent and care-giver in the house. Hence, even in the worst national economic crises, women disproportionately suffered more due to austerity measures and an irresponsible global financial trading model based on neocolonialism.

Bangladesh: The Women Not Counted.

Bangladesh’s education budget has fallen to 1.7% of the GDP[BG1] [HK2]  as of March 2026, and the health budget has faced a decline to just 0.74% of the GDP as of 2024. The June 2025 budget has also disproportionately slashed the gender budget to 4.2% of the GDP at a time when women are facing acute job losses both nationally and internationally. 85% of the jobs lost between July and December 2025 were held by women. This follows after the IMF approved a 42 month financial programme focused on macroeconomic stability, fiscal consolidation, and a financial sector reform to promote sustainability. When the prevalent neocolonial conditionality framework measures development and progress via fiscal statistics alone, women are forced to being the caregivers of the society by cutting the budgets in the department the IMF does not flag - gender, as the feminine costs are considered mere adjustments and externalities for the greater good.

As formal employment and migration opportunities narrow, women are displaced into the informal sector, often working without pay, something IMF conditionalities do not account for. The reality of dismal education and health budgets in the Global South, essential for women’s participation in society, starkly contrast IMF’s claims of inclusivity and sustainability.

Bhutan: Counting Care.

Bhutan has largely managed to avoid the IMF debt trap due to its reliance on the Gross National Happiness Framework instead of IMF statistics, and bilateral aid instead of conditionality-laden lending to fund socio-economic development through hydropower and agriculture. Bhutan is in no way a feminist paradise. Issues with gender based violence, the glass ceiling, and increased gender inequality persist; however, since the neocolonial system relies on specific statistics to judge development and eligibility for loans, Bhutan’s female labour force participation is at 56.7%, one of the highest in South Asia. The Gross National Happiness Framework provides institutional incentives to maintain public services in times when IMF conditionalities enforce a cut, primarily due to its consideration of communal wellbeing, time, and health as developmental metrics instead of just fiscal statistics, hence, the results are also visible in one of the development metrics considered by neocolonial institutes. 

The development of the Global North should not be dependent on the exploitation of South Asian women, justified via international institutes based on colonial relics. The representatives of the Global North in the IMF wielding the power to dictate the policies of the supposedly sovereign states of the Global South, and their subsequent populations, is blatant colonialism exemplified. Substituting state’s inadequacies onto women’s unrecognised labour is a leaf directly out of a coloniser’s playbook. The Bhutan alternative showcases a model outside the IMF trap, which further highlights how gendered governance in South Asia is a political choice institutionally enforced, which presents inequality as a sustained outcome while budgets remain balanced on paper.

Written by Hareem Hassan Khan

Edited by Aditya Gupta and Alia Abdelhamid