Annex B: Strengthening our focus on gender
equality and women's empowerment: additional information
Corporate Processes
i) Departmental objectives
Gender equality is reflected in both the vision statement
and delivery strategy of our new PSA Delivery Agreement. Our corporate
performance framework includes an indicator under the first strategic
objective on promoting good governance, economic growth, trade
and basic services which states "increased access by women
and girls to economic opportunities, public services and decision-making".
Targets for achieving this indicator at Divisional level are now
being developed. Inclusion of such indicators and targets will
help improve monitoring of, and promote greater accountability
by staff and managers for, impact on gender issues. It will also
promote a more coherent and institutionalised focus on gender
equality as part of our ongoing work programme.
II) IMPROVED MONITORING, EVIDENCE AND DATA
We aim to ensure that wider work on measuring impact
and results takes proper account of gender equality dimensions
including through increased inclusion of sex-disaggregated information.
We recognise that better sex disaggregated data is not in itself
the solution to gender inequality. But such data helps to identify
trends and gaps—where, for example, a particular problem
or lack of access to a service disproportionately affects women.
Clearer understanding and evidence of such issues informs policy
making and strengthens the argument for ensuring that the rights
and needs of women and girls are properly addressed. We are working
with other donors on ways to improve statistics and developing
guidance for our Country Offices on strengthening of developing
country partners' capacity on statistical analysis. We are also
funding two five-year research programmes on the barriers to women's
empowerment and how to overcome them.
III) BUILDING STAFF CAPACITY AND COMMITMENT
Successfully embedding gender equality in DFID and
motivating our own staff requires that they have the right skills
and understanding of the issues. Work under the Action Plan therefore
includes development of training programmes and improved information
resources.
New Policy Development
Ensuring that gender equality dimensions are addressed
in emerging policy areas is also critical and is on-going. We
have begun some initial scoping of the gender aspects of climate
change to inform our future work in this area. We are also giving
greater emphasis in policy statements on such issues as maternal
health and HIV and AIDs, and on women's rights as a key factor
in enabling women to realise better access to services.
Working with other donors
We continue to work with the World Bank on implementation
of its own Gender Action Plan, and are advocating for the Bank
to hold an event on women's economic empowerment in the margins
of the Spring Meetings. The Secretary of State wrote to the World
Bank President in October to urge him to give more emphasis to
promoting gender equality and women's empowerment in developing
the Bank's future strategy.
We are collaborating with the IFC on a number of
country-level Gender and Growth Assessments, and on preparation
of the Doing Business report 2009 which will for the first time
have a focus on gender issues. We are also working with OECD
DAC partners to ensure that discussions at the High Level Forum
on Aid Effectiveness in Accra in September include recommendations,
based on DFID commissioned research, for strengthening work on
gender issues as an essential element of aid effectiveness
Country Programmes
As the Report highlights, gender inequality is fundamentally
a political issue which cannot be resolved purely by technical
means. It is an issue that requires concerted action at all levels
to address the underlying attitudes that drive gender discrimination.
We will therefore strengthen our dialogue on these issues with
developing countries at a political level, including in the context
of ministerial visits. In many cases, partners have themselves
made national, regional or international commitments to greater
gender equality and so our approach will be to encourage and support
them in meeting these. Our Country Governance Analyses, which
are a mandatory part of preparation of Country Assistance Strategies,
will also look at issues such as women's political participation.
A number of our country programmes and offices, including
all those for Latin America, have undertaken gender audits of
their work to inform future planning processes. Recent country
assistance plans have shown greater attention to and analysis
of gender equality issues.
Support to civil society, including women's organisations
Civil society organisations, including women's organisations,
have a vitally important role to play, particularly in tackling
some of the underlying social and cultural attitudes that give
rise to gender discrimination, in lobbying their governments for
reform and in holding them to account. One of the key objectives
of the Gender Equality Action Plan is therefore to support civil
society in promoting gender equality. We support a number of women's
organisations, alongside support to a broader range of civil society
organisations working on gender equality-related issues such as
women's political participation and implementation of legislation
to remove gender discrimination. We also have an active dialogue
with civil society partners on our overall approach to gender
equality.
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