Passive representation and the application of policy norms within International Organizations. The Gender and Development Norm at the World Bank.

Research on the decision-making of International Organizations (IOs) has increasingly focused on the development of policy norms and scripts within IOs. Much less is known about the degree to which these policy norms are applied by the bureaucrats shaping the day-to-day work of IOs. We aim to fill this gap by focusing on the application of the Gender and Development norm within the World Bank. Our argument highlights the role of bureaucratic representation in affecting the application of policy norms. Differential experiences lead to variant socialisation and knowledge between World Bank staff members. We posit that differences in the passive representation of women in the World Bank’s staff translate into variations in the application of gender perspectives in the Organizations work. We test the argument by utilising novel data on the gender of more than 10,000 World Bank staff. The empirical part of the paper examines whether patterns of gender representation in World Bank staff translate into different gender foci in the two central elements of the World Bank’s work: research and lending. The findings contribute to debates on the internal workings of IOs by highlighting the ways in which differences in representation within IO staff affect concrete organisational outcomes.