International Development CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Gender and Development Network (GADN)

1. The Gender & Development Network (GADN) is a UK-based network that brings together expert NGOs, consultants, academics and individuals committed to working on gender, development and women’s rights issues. Our vision is of a world where social justice and gender equality prevail and where all women and girls are able to realise their rights free from discrimination. Our goal is to ensure that international development policy and practice promotes gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights.

2. GADN has produced a briefing on gender equality and the post-2015 framework, which we have submitted as part of our response to this inquiry. In this briefing, and in our response below, we argue that it is critical to maintain a strong and explicit focus on gender equality in any new post-2015 development framework. Achieving this will require a two-pronged approach of mainstreaming gender in targets and indicators across the board, and a standalone goal or domain for gender equality.

3. We are also working as part of the BOND Beyond 2015 UK group, which is a cross-sector forum composed of UK-based civil society organisations. BOND Beyond 2015 UK is the national hub of the global Beyond 2015 campaign. Beyond 2015 is supporting civil society engagement with the post-2015 development agenda and coordinating action to ensure the process towards a new global framework for development is participatory, inclusive and responsive to voices of those directly affected by poverty and injustice. The BOND Beyond 2015 UK group supports the expertise and input of its member organisations and fellow BOND groups to the post-2015 development agenda.

Lessons learned from the adoption of the International Development Targets and the Millennium Development Goals: in particular how effective has the MDG process been to date

4. There have been hard won gains made on gender equality over the past 15 years. Gender gaps in girls’ enrolment in primary education have closed in almost all countries.1 Women are living longer and having fewer children.2 There have also been increases in women’s participation in the labour market in almost every region of the world.3 These developments are partly attributable to the existence of MDG3, the dedicated goal on gender equality, which has contributed to increasing political will and resources for tackling gender inequality. It has proved a powerful advocacy tool that has contributed to increased attention to women and girls by influential donors. For example, the World Bank chose gender equality as the focus of its 2012 World Development Report. It has also forced countries to report on gender equality and enabled women’s rights organisations to hold their governments to account. Most critically, it has galvanised new investment, leading to the creation of gender equality-specific funds or budget lines in many donor agencies. For example, the Dutch MDG3 Fund, which saw EUR 70 million distributed from 2008–11, represented a historic commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

5. Out of 104 representatives from CSOs in 36 developing countries, 64% thought that the MDGs had contributed to greater gender equality.4 A World Bank report found that MDG3 had “spurred” national and international efforts to improve measurement of gender equality and women’s empowerment and identify what was needed to accelerate progress.5 A survey in 2006 of 27 OECD DAC members’ development co-operation ministries, departments and agencies also found considerable agency progress in gender equality in development cooperation since the end of 1999 and suggests that the MDGs have helped focus attention on gender equality, particularly in agencies that formerly did not make this a priority.6 Countries have also used MDG3 as a focus for policy and institutional change. For example, Cambodia has tailored and expanded the MDGs to reflect the specific national context, including indicators and targets relating to gender equality and women’s empowerment combined with gender mainstreaming action plans.7 It is likely that much of this effort will be wasted if there is no specific gender goal and targets in the new framework, as without this motivation, it is likely that donor and government commitment to gender equality will be downgraded.

6. However, despite these developments, progress has been slow and uneven.8 Gender disparities remain pervasive and entrenched, and continue to be a major driver of poverty.9 The MDGs have done little to tackle the structural barriers that drive and reproduce poverty, such as discrimination and lack of power. As a result, while there have been some improvements in meeting women’s basic needs, there has been little change in the low status of women in societies—despite the fact that it is this lack of power that is such a major driver of women’s poverty. Despite being one of the most high profile goals, supported by additional parallel UN and other international campaigns and processes, MDG5 on maternal health remains the most off-track of all of the goals. This is in part due to the failure to tackle the root causes of the problem—gender inequality, violence against women, and women’s low status in society—which inhibit women from exercising autonomy over their bodies, negotiating the use of contraception with partners, and accessing essential healthcare education, information and services.

7. There is wide recognition that the MDG process has been too narrow and realising gender equality and women’s empowerment will require action on a broader range of gender equality issues than those included under MDG3.10 In 2005, the Millennium Project created a series of taskforces to review the goals and targets, and progress towards them. The Millennium Project Task Force on Gender and Education recommended that, to achieve the goal, seven strategic priorities are necessary: post-primary education (including secondary school, but also other kinds of non-formal education); sexual and reproductive rights and health; investment in infrastructure; property and inheritance rights; employment; seats in national parliaments and local governments; and ending violence against women.11 Two areas that are consistently cited as priorities by a range of actors are guaranteeing women’s inheritance and property rights and ending violence against women.12 The latter has been referred to as the “missing MDG” by the UN Secretary General and a missing target by UN Women.13

The coverage of future goals: should they be for developing countries only or should progress be monitored in all countries?

8. Priority should be given to the poorest and most vulnerable people in any country, independent of the development “status” the country has been attributed. It should be recognised that women are disproportionately represented among the poorest and most marginalised in the world, particularly women who belong to socially excluded groups.

The process: are the right voices being heard? What are the opportunities for and constraints to global consensus?

9. One major shortcoming of the MDGs is that they were not formulated in a participatory way. The BOND Beyond 2015 global civil society campaign has articulated the importance of consultation and GADN supports this.14 Consultation needs to happen at every level (regional, national and local), and extra effort is needed to ensure the poorest and most marginalised communities are able to input substantively.

10. Women are often excluded from consultations because they do not have the capacity to input in the ways required, because they are unable to participate due to childcare responsibilities, because they are not permitted to participate by family members or because it is assumed that they share men’s opinions. Particular attention is therefore needed to ensure that women’s voices are heard, including through the participation of women’s rights organisations that represent and work most closely with poor and marginalised women and girls.15

Targets: was the MDG “target-based” approach a success? Should it be retained? How should progress be measured?

11. The MDG “target-based” approach was successful and should be retained, taking into account and addressing its limitations (see later). The “target-based” approach motivated action. This is evidenced, for example, in the area of women’s empowerment, by the progress made in girls’ primary education, for which there is a target in the MDGs framework, and the lack of progress made for women’s share of representative seats in public decision-marking, for which there is no target only commitments to track.16

12. Targets are a necessary part of “mainstreaming” gender to address the particular barriers that women and girls face under each goal area. For example, a target was included under MDG1 to “achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people”. This recognised the specific gendered barriers that women face in accessing decent work, such as their substantial unpaid work burdens in the home, constraints on female mobility in the public domain as a result of gender norms, gender discrimination in the workplace, and the disadvantages women face in education and training. Indicators also need to be gender-sensitive. For example, primary school enrolment as an indicator obscures the fact that girls are more likely than boys to have poor attendance at school once enrolled.17

13. Including gender sensitive targets and indicators, along with disaggregated data, under all goals is also important to ensure that failure to address women’s poverty is not hidden behind averages. It could be the case that a substantial number of people have benefitted from a particular intervention, but that the majority of them are men or boys.

14. Whatever issues are prioritised, it is important that targets promote women’s strategic interests (leading to a long term transformation in their control over their own lives), rather than only meeting women’s immediate practical needs.18 Transformative targets could include women having more control over when and whether to have children, greater voice and influence in political decision-making, or greater ownership and control of economic assets such as income, land and property. For example, research across very different contexts has found that women’s ability to exercise control over their lives is linked to being able to generate regular and independent sources of income.19 Supporting women to earn the income to purchase what they need will have more strategic value than, for example, the distribution of food aid or cash transfers.

15. However, there are limitations to the “target-based” approach of the MDGs framework, which should be addressed in the new framework. The narrow focus on some development issues and even narrower indicators has led to the omission of some important aspects of development. Even where important and potentially transformative goals were included, for example on gender equality and women’s empowerment, the narrowness of the targets and indicators (MDG3 contained just one target, on girls’ education) resulted in very limited progress towards the overall goal area.

16. Furthermore, in the drive to meet general MDG targets and indicators, the very poorest people are being left behind.20 The focus on average progress measured at the national and global level, disguises the inequalities that lie behind these averages. For example, in some countries, MDG targets will be achieved because richer, urban populations have gained access to public services with little improvement for those from poor, rural groups. Those that are poorest tend to live in rural areas or urban slums, belong to ethnic/racial/religious minorities or are low caste or disabled—in each case, women and girls in these groups face compounded discrimination on the basis of their gender. It is these women who continue to face particularly severe levels of poverty and exclusion, and are least likely to have seen gains as a result of the MDGs.21 A new gender equality goal will need to move away from measuring average progress at country level towards a focus on the most marginalised groups. One way of doing this is through the inclusion of incentives, where progress among the poorest groups is weighted higher than richer groups and is measured and reported separately.22

The content of future goals: what would be a good set of global goals? What continuity should there be with the MDGs, and how should the unfulfilled MDGs be taken forward?

17. One of the positive features of the MDG framework is that, in addition to mainstreaming gender equality into other goals, there is a standalone goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

18. Retaining a standalone goal or domain on gender equality in the post-2015 framework will be critical in order to tackle the underlying causes of gender inequality, not just the symptoms. Only a standalone goal allows space for targets and indicators that would most reflect the changes needed in order to achieve gender equality. A standalone goal on gender equality is essential, both because of the importance of women’s empowerment in its own right with women disproportionately represented among the poorest and most marginalised in the world, and because of the impact that gender inequality has on achieving other development goals (see the GADN Briefing23 attached).

19. A standalone goal or domain on gender equality should prioritise the poorest and most marginalised women and girls, reflect the priorities of these women themselves, meet their long term strategic interests (ie the longer-term changes needed to transform women’s status in society) by tackling the roots of gender inequality, and reflect commitments already made under existing international agreements. Only with a separate goal can targets around some of the priority issues for women, such as gender based violence, be incorporated into a post MDG framework.

20. In addition to a standalone goal or domain on gender equality, gender equality should be mainstreamed throughout the framework. Numerous studies have shown that only when this “twin-track” approach is used does gender equality receive the attention it requires.24 Effective gender mainstreaming will require specific targets under each goal that reflect the gender barriers women and girls face, gender sensitive indicators, incentives within targets and indicators to reach the poorest and most marginalised people in society—explicitly including women from socially excluded groups, and indicators that are disaggregated by sex.

October 2012