Gender Equality and Development

Gender equality means women and men have equal opportunities to realise their individual potential, to contribute to their country's economic and social development and to benefit equally from their participation in society.

Gender inequality restricts a country's economic growth. Removing inequalities gives societies a better chance to develop. When women and men have relative equality, economies grow faster, children's health improves and there is less corruption. Gender equality is an important human right.

While gains have been made, gender inequalities in health and education are still striking given that:

Two-thirds of the 800 million people in the world who lack basic literacy skills are female
Women hold an average of three per cent of seats in national parliaments in Pacific island countries, and an average of 19 per cent of seats in East Asia and
half a million women die each year from complications during pregnancy - 99 per cent of them in developing countries.

Investments in women's and girls' education and health yield some of the highest returns of all development investments, including reduced rates of maternal mortality, better educated and healthier children and increased household incomes.

Achieving gender equality extends beyond improving female health and education. It means access to economic resources, participation and leadership in decision making, respect for the human rights of women, and an increased capacity to tackle gender inequalities. These are the four interrelated factors that development investments need to address to advance gender equality. Strategies and targets need to engage women and girls more effectively, and the effectiveness of these strategies needs to be monitored.

Development results cannot be maximised without attending to the different needs, interests, priorities and roles of women, men, boys and girls, and the relations between them. Development programs cannot succeed without the participation and cooperation of all members of the community.

Gender and Australia's aid program

Gender equality is an overarching principle of Australia's aid program. The recent White Paper on the Australian Government's overseas aid program emphasises the importance of gender equality to growth, governance and stability. Gender equality is integral to all Australian Government aid policies, programs and initiatives.

Australia's commitment means that women's and girls' views, needs, interests and rights shape the development agenda as much as men's and boys'. Women and men will participate in and benefit equally from the aid program, and development will support progress towards equality between women and men, boys and girls.

Policy framework

The publication Gender Equality in Australia's Aid Program - Why and How, sets out what Australia aims to achieve through the aid program.

The goal of the policy is to reduce poverty by advancing gender equality and empowering women. Australia aims to:

Improve the economic status of women
Promote equal participation of women in decision making and leadership, including in fragile states and conflict situations
Improve equitable health and education outcomes for women, men, girls and boys
Ensure gender equality is advanced in regional cooperation efforts.

Progress towards gender equality depends upon strategic and well targeted interventions. The policy provides direction for setting priorities. An important priority is to ensure that all country and regional strategies and their performance frameworks integrate gender equality objectives and indicators and identify actions for tackling inequality.

In addition, each country program will develop integrated gender equality strategies at the initiative level in priority areas. Within selected country programs we will also scale-up specific initiatives to advance gender equality and empower women.

Australia and the international community have learned important lessons about the operating principles that must underpin efforts to promote gender equality through aid. Australia will work to:

Strengthen partner ownership and support country-driven priorities on advancing gender equality
Engage with both men and women to advance gender equality
Strengthen accountability mechanisms to increase effectiveness
Collect and analyse information to improve gender equality results.

Working with partner countries to strengthen their capacity to implement and monitor gender equality measures continues to be a fundamental requirement. Getting results requires partner government commitment to implement their priorities for gender equality. Australian assistance will align to the individual country's priorities and policy frameworks, and address their particular capacity constraints.

Monitoring and evaluation is critical to achieving gender equality results and for gathering evidence on the contribution that gender equality makes to poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Monitoring of gender equality results in country and regional programs through their annual performance updates will strengthen accountability, and help to identify areas where gender capacity building is needed.

Gender Equality Guidelines

The Gender Equality Guidelines are a collection of documents intended to help implement the gender equality policy and ensure that a gender perspective is incorporated into Australia's aid activities.

Aid stories and people

Examples of Australia's aid program in action:

Related websites

2008

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