World development report 2012: radical redistribution or just tinkering within the template?

The World Development Report 2012, rather radically, responds to employment segregation by advocating affirmative action. This move could prove momentous – mainstreaming a hitherto peripheral feminist cause. Drawing on research about changing gender roles in Zambia's Copperbelt, this paper demonstrates the importance of creating role models through active labour market interventions. However, apart from the World Bank's commendably radical push for redistribution, its macroeconomic template remains remarkably intact – neither perturbed by the global economic crisis nor by much feminist economics.