Gender Equality in Australia's Aid Program - Why and How

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 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.

Gender equality is an overarching principle of Australia's aid program. 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.

Source: http://www.ausaid.gov.au/keyaid/gender.cfm