The issue of IFC’s gender is perhaps a matter of the eye of the beholder. When creation of IFC was finally decided upon in 1955, The Economist ran an article with the headline, “To IBRD—A Son (IFC).” Subsequently, in an internal World Bank publication, Bank Notes, legal staffer Shirley Boskey raised the question of why IFC should be considered a son rather than a daughter. After all, she wrote, IFC had already displayed certain traits popularly supposed to be feminine: “It had kept people waiting since at least 1951, when it had first been publicly proposed in a report to the president of the United States. It would be engaged principally in spending money: its capital of $75 million to $100 million, as well as retained earnings. And it had already changed its mind in at least one respect: originally intended to concentrate on equity investments, it was now to refrain from holding capital stock in the enterprises it helped to finance.”
Time magazine was more circumspect, noting only that IFC was a “baby” of the Bank and was conceived to be more flexible than its parent. Nearly 50 years later, however, the question of the Corporation’s gender was still in the air. Assaad Jabre, then-Vice President of Operations, told clients in the 2005 annual luncheon keynote speech that IFC’s maturity was more important than its gender: “While IFC may continue to display occasionally some of these features [noted by Ms. Boskey] – that we now know are gender neutral – I would suggest that IFC has become not only a full-grown resident and citizen of the development community and a proud member of the World Bank Group, it has become a leader.”
If you have an idea for a “postcard from the past,” please email Celeste Diaz Ferraro at cdiazferraro@ifc.org.
