Gender equality and empowering women and girls

Gender equality and empowering women and girls 

The Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy, launched by Australia’s Foreign Minister in February 2016, outlines how gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the core of Australia’s foreign policy, economic diplomacy and aid work. 

The Strategy directs investments in three priority areas where there are persistent challenges to gender equality and where progress has been slow: enhancing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership and peace-building; promoting women’s economic empowerment; and ending violence against women and girls. The Strategy outlines Australia’s twin-track approach. Track one defines gender equality and women’s empowerment as a discrete strategic priority investment area for the aid program, leading to measures specifically designed to tackle gender inequalities where they are particularly challenging or where progress has been slow. Track two integrates gender equality effectively in all aid investments, regardless of the sector or focus.

In 2015-16, Australia continued to work closely with UN Women whose reach supported Australia’s ability to engage in policy dialogue and provide development assistance in the Indo-Pacific region and globally. For example, Australia supported the joint UN global program Essential Services Package for Women and Girls Subject to Violence, phase two of the joint UN regional program Partners for Prevention, and the UN Women regional program Leveraging Technical Tools which supported the development and use of studies in the region that outlined the costs to economies of violence against women, and responses to this violence. In November 2015, the Foreign Minister announced an additional $6 million of funding over three years to the Global Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, which is administered by UN Women. 

Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls is an international advocate for gender equality and works to ensure it is a central focus of Australia’s diplomatic and development efforts. Dr Sharman Stone was appointed as Australia’s third Ambassador for Women and Girls in late 2016. In her term, the previous Ambassador Natasha Stott Despoja visited 31 different countries to participate in bilateral, regional and multilateral events. This included 12 visits to Pacific Island countries, reflecting the priority given to her engagement with Australia’s Pacific partners. In May 2016, she led Australia’s engagement at gender-related events at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, to ensure a strong focus on women in humanitarian settings. 

In the 2015-16 budget, the Australian Government established a $50 million Gender Equality Fund (GEF) to strengthen gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in the Indo-Pacific region. The Fund supports innovative new investments both inside and outside DFAT, as well as global investments. It plays an important role in reshaping Australia’s development program to drive stronger gender equality performance and results.  

Supported by the GEF, and as part of Australia’s increased focus on women’s economic empowerment through private sector engagement, Australia commenced the Investing in Women Initiative ($46 million, 2015-19). This is a new four-year program that aims to improve women’s economic participation, build markets for women, and through innovative approaches to aid, influence the private and public sector environment to promote women’s economic empowerment.

In 2015-16, the GEF also supported efforts at improving the global production and use of gender statistics, in the recognition of the need to invest substantially in monitoring of progress on the ambitious gender equality objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Australia’s support for UN Women’s flagship program on better gender statistics, ‘Making every woman and girl count’, will enable partner governments, international agencies and other actors to support the enabling environment for, production of and accessibility of gender statistics to better inform policy and investment. DFAT also recognises that to measure the relationship between gender and poverty, poverty must be measured at an individual level, rather than only at household level. Australia’s support will help to refine and disseminate the Individual Deprivation Measure, a new poverty measurement tool developed in Australia that collects data from individuals across 15 key economic and social dimensions, and can be disaggregated by sex, age, disability, and other characteristics. 

Figure 37: Aid expenditure with a gender-targeted objective, 2015-16

Figure 38 shows investments that identified gender equality as an objective at commencement continued to have higher performance ratings on gender equality as well as on effectiveness, efficiency and monitoring and evaluation quality criteria, compared to investments that do not have gender equality as an objective. This clear link between early consideration of gender equality and effective promotion of gender equality during implementation underscores the importance of gender analysis and gender expertise during investment design.

Figure 38: Gender equality: investment performance, 2015-16

Further analysis of gender performance information can be found in the discussion of strategic target 4 of the aid program performance framework in Chapter 1.