WUNRN
Gender Equality in
Development Cooperation
Gender equality is an important end in itself. That is why it is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. It is also fundamental to reducing poverty and achieving other development goals.
Links with poverty
Gender inequality and poverty are closely related. It is not just that women have lower incomes and are less wealthy; poverty in the narrow financial sense is compounded by women's lack of political power and unequal access to:
- basic human rights
- employment
- information
- social services
- infrastructure
- natural resources.
EU policy framework
for promoting gender equality
The crucial significance of gender equality in development policies is recognised in various policy documents among others in:
- the 2005 european
consensus on development (where Gender Equality is identified
asa cross-cutting issue)
- the 2007 Commission Communication
on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development Cooperation
and the related Council
conclusions. The 2007 paper on equality and empowerment is
the first step towards a coordinated European approach to
promoting gender equality and empowering women through development
cooperation. It identifies five areas for action and provides guidelines
on how to work gender equality into other development policies more
effectively. In particular, it describes how gender equality can be
furthered through new forms of aid such as budget support and
sector-based aid, which are starting to replace traditional
methods of supporting individual projects. The paper promotes:
- equal rights
(political, civil, economic, social and cultural)
- equal access to, and
control of, resources
- equal opportunities to
exercise political and economic influence.
See also:
- Annex to the communication
- Press release ( EN
- FR
- DE)
- EuropeAid
website
- DG
Employment website
The EU pursues a twin-track approach:
- it takes measures specifically designed
to tackle gender inequalities
- more widely, it aims to incorporate gender issues into all
aspects of development policy ("mainstreaming").
Policy implementation
The Thematic Programme “Investing in People” contains a separate financial envelope for the period 2007-2013 for funding EC actions in the area of promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. The available funding of € 57 M is almost three times higher than in the previous three years (when € 3 M were directly spent on gender specific actions on annual average). Funding is allocated through calls for proposals, and by direct agreements with selected partners. Priorities include:
- implementing international commitments
at country level
- supporting women's NGOs
- helping governments produce better statistics
broken down by gender.
Efforts have been made to ensure that gender issues are properly
incorporated into strategy papers and EU staff have detailed guidelines on
addressing gender equality in country and regional programming.
Partnerships and International fora
There is a wide spread international cooperation on various UN initiatives:
- ongoing work to implement the Convention
on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women
- follow-up to the Beijing Platform
of Action through the Commission on the
status of women, and major reviews (most recently Beijing +10 in 2005)
- the Millennium
Development Goals.
The collaboration with the EU Member States’ gender experts and also with the DAC/OECD gender network provides fora for exchange of information, best practice and policy on gender mainstreaming to further increase aid effectiveness.
The EU works with women's organisations and NGOs that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment at international, national and regional level - in particular One World Action, Aprodev, WIDE and BRIDGE.
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