Gender equality

Promoting opportunities for all

Results to 30 June 2012

In the Comprehensive Aid Policy Framework (CAPF) Australia has made a number of commitments related to improving gender equality and empowering women, including two 'women-specific' targets. By 2015-16, Australian aid will:

• ensure more than one million additional births will be attended by a skilled birth attendant
• support 40,000 women survivors of violence to receive services such as counselling.

Sex-disaggregated data is to be reported for a further eleven CAPF headline results, to measure our progress against promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment across all sectors.

To deliver real results and improve the lives of women and men, their families, and their communities, Australia organises its work on gender equality and women’s empowerment under four pillars:

1. Advancing equal access to gender responsive health and education services.
2. Increasing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership, and peace-building.
3. Empowering women economically and improving their livelihood security.
4. Ending violence against women and girls at home, in their communities, and in disaster and conflict situations.

Read more about promoting opportunities for all

Pillar 1: Gender responsive health and education services

Results 2011–2012

• Bangladesh: Australian aid to Bangladesh in 2011 helped over 376,000 school children complete their pre-primary and primary school education (64 per cent girls). Australia also helped an additional 312,000 children (63 per cent girls) enrol in school.
• Papua New Guinea: Australia supported the deployment of eight clinical midwifery facilitators at all four midwifery schools in 2011 which directly contributed to the graduation of 49 midwifery students, compared to 2010 where there was no intake.

Commitments 2012 –2013

• Education Partnership with Indonesia $500m (2011–2016): Support the construction of up to 2,000 junior secondary schools.
• Family Planning Services: Australia recently announced that we will double funding for family planning services to more than $50 million per year by 2016, up from $26 million in 2010.

Pillar 2: Women in decision making, leadership and peacebuilding

Results 2011–2012

• Vanuatu: From 2007 to 2011, Australia helped increase the proportion of female officers in the Vanuatu Police Force from six per cent to nine per cent. This is comparable to increases in Australia.
• Papua New Guinea: Australia supported women’s participation in the election process in Papua New Guinea. This helped the Papua New Guinea Electoral Commission to recruit women as polling officials and target women during voter campaigns.

Commitments 2012 –2013

• Pacific Women Shaping Development $320m (2012–13 to 2022–23): Australia will assist the Pacific through this initiative which will focus on women’s leadership, economic empowerment and ending violence against women. These are areas where the Pacific is currently performing worst in the world (or close to it) and progress is slow.

Pillar 3:Women’s economic empowerment and livelihood security

Results 2011–2012

• Solomon Islands: Support for road maintenance has generated 80,000 days of employment for women in Solomon Islands and almost 10 000 days of employment for women in Vanuatu.
• Timor Leste: Australia supports the Inclusive Finance for Under-Served Economy (INFUSE) program with UNCDF in efforts to improve women’s access to financial services. Since 2008 around 5,500 additional clients (almost all women) have joined INFUSE-supported microfinance institutions.
• Iraq: In 2011, AusAID supported 2,228 female headed families to access loans to create, rebuild or expand their small business and agriculture activities.
• Nepal: In 2011, Australian support for the Nepal Micro Enterprise Development Program (MEDEP) provided 447 additional individuals with access to financial services of which 304, or 68 per cent, were women.

Commitments 2012 –2013

• Pacific Women Shaping Development $320m (2012–13 to 2022–23): Australia will assist the Pacific through this initiative which will focus on women’s leadership, economic empowerment and ending violence against women. These are areas where the Pacific is currently performing worst in the world (or close to it) and progress is slow.

Pillar 4: Ending violence against women

Results 2011–2012

• Vanuatu: In 2011, the Vanuatu Women’s Centre’s (VWC) community awareness activities reached 5,002 women and 4,292 men from 136 communities in four provinces. VWC and its branches facilitated 238 protection orders for women at high risk of violence.
• Papua New Guinea: Funded the Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee to strengthen its male advocates network through targeted training to reduce family and sexual violence in rural and urban areas.

Commitments 2012 –2013

• Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre $6m (2008–09 to 2014–15); ($900,000 2012–13): Practical support and counselling for women who have been subject to violence. The Centre also builds relationships with police, courts, doctors and welfare agencies to better respond to violence against women.
• Partners for Prevention $1m (2010-11 to 2014–15) 2012–13; $250,000: A joint UN program between UNDP, UN Women, UNFPA and UN Volunteers which promotes evidence-based approaches to programming and policy advocacy tackling violence against women. Partners for Prevention provide technical assistance to UN agencies, government and civil society partners upon request.

Sectoral expenditure on activities with principal or significant gender equality objectives 2011-12

*52 per cent is the total of AusAID's program expenditure spent on activities with principle or significant objectives that support gender equality or women's empowerment.

Gender-related expenditures: total and as percentage of ODA

View a larger version

The graph above shows Australia's historical funding for gender-related expenditure.

The exact values are as follows:

• 2009-10: $1.57b
• 2010-11: 1.86b
• 2011-12: 2.163b

Regional expenditure on activities with principal or significant gender equality objectives 2011–12

View a larger version

Around one third of AusAID's gender-related expenditure supported global programs; with considerable levels of expenditure in East Asia and the Pacific region (including Papua New Guinea)

The exact values are as follows (%):

*52 per cent is the total of AusAID's program expenditure spent on activities with principle or significant objectives that support gender equality or women's empowerment.

Research overview

Good research can lead to positive change for the world’s poorest by enhancing the design and implementation of development policies and programs. That’s why AusAID is committed to an innovative research portfolio and funds research, including through:

• competitive funding mechanisms such as the Australian Development Research Awards
• research partnerships with different Australian, international and developing country research institutions
• commissioning research to address a specific question or clearly defined research gap, and
• one-off research grants, when an existing program of research is relevant to the Australian aid program.

More information on how AusAID funds research

As part of AusAID’s research program, we fund research into gender-related aspects of development, such as women’s economic empowerment, women’s leadership, women’s peace and security and violence against women.

mWomen Research Striving and Surviving: Exploring the lives of women at the base of the pyramid

Young women using a mobile phone in New Delhi, India. Photo: AusAID.

Research shows that women are 21 per cent less likely than men to own a mobile phone in low-to-middle income countries, representing 300 million fewer women than men.

A wide range of social and economic benefits can be delivered by extending mobile phone ownership to women. Mobile phones can provide women living in remote and rural areas with access to bank accounts and formal credit. In Pakistan, text messages have been used to deliver basic literacy and numeracy classes to students, as well as to deliver critical information on health and nutrition to young women. In India, text messaging has been used to provide agricultural workers with up-to-date information on commodity prices at each market, enabling them to determine where and when to go to get the best prices for their produce.

The GSMA mWomen program is a global public-private partnership between the worldwide mobile phone industry and the international development community, using the power of the private sector to accelerate mobile services for the unconnected and to provide services to women living in the developing world via the mobile platform.

A key aim of the mWomen Program is to devise ways to expand mobile access to poor women in order to increase their ability to benefit from digital innovations that could be used for new financial products, or access to health and education services.

The mWomen program is conducting research considering how mobile phones can be used to meet women’s wants and needs around health care, education, financial inclusion and income-generation. Striving and Surviving: Exploring the lives of women at the base of the pyramid [external link] surveys the wants, needs, aspirations and mobile uses of women living at the base of the pyramid (BoP), which are those living on under US$2 a day.

• Find out more about the GSMA mWomen program [external link]

Integrating gender and reproductive health issues in the Indonesian national school curricula: Challenges for Moslem societies

School girls in Indonesia. Photo: Josh Estey / AusAID.

Despite strong policies on gender equality and mainstreaming in Indonesia, development does not yield equal benefits for women and men. The incidence of violence against women and sexual harassment remain high and gender gaps in education and wages persist.

The formal education system provides an opportunity to promote gender equality and reproductive health issues.

This research, funded through an Australian Development Research Award, explores how to encourage local authorities to adopt national values about respect and equal rights for women in Moslem school curricula in Indonesian.

The first phase of the research evaluated primary and secondary school curricula and school books to explore depictions of gender and whether information on reproductive health was included. Phase two of the research involved a survey of school students to ascertain their level of understanding of gender issues and reproductive health as well as in-depth interviews with policy makers, program implementers, school teachers, parents and NGO activists on these issues.

The research has produced two conference papers and a number of policy briefs to facilitate discussion with the Indonesian Government about ways to ensure school curricula are gender sensitive.

• Find out more about the policy brief and conference paper [external link]

Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study: A study on violence against women and children

Sending a message – Solomon Islands women preparing for the annual International Women's Day march in Honiara. Photo: Josh Estey / AusAID.

This report of the Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study analyses data and reports on findings of the first nationally representative study on violence against women and children.

This national survey was carried out by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in partnership with the Government of Solomon Islands, with funding from AusAID and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Using this evidence base, the Government of Solomon Islands has adopted a National Policy on Eliminating Violence Against Women and action plan to address violence against women.

The results of the study are also informing legal reform of the Penal Code, which is being undertaken by the Solomon Islands Law Reform Commission.

• Solomon Islands Family Health and Safety Study: A study on violence against women and children [external link]
• Find out more about research funded by AusAID’s Solomon Islands country program

Statistics

Health and Education

• Two thirds of the 774 million adult illiterates worldwide are women— the same proportion for the past 20 years and across most regions.¹
• Globally, there is still a large gender gap in youth literacy rates, although the gap has been shrinking over time.²
• In 2009, around 35 million girls were still out of school worldwide compared to 31 million boys. ³
• Gender gaps in education and employment inhibit economic growth. Countries that do not reach gender equality in primary and secondary education forego between 0.1 to 0.3 percentage points of per capita growth rate.⁴

Decision making, leadership and peace-building

• By end-November 2011, women held 19.8 per cent of seats in single or lower houses of parliament worldwide.⁵
• Only seven out of 150 elected Heads of State in the world are women and only 11 of 192 Heads of Government. ⁶
• In just 28 countries do women comprise a critical mass— over 30 per cent—in parliament. ⁷

Economic empowerment and livelihood security

• Women farmers produce more than half the world’s food—and between 60—80 per-cent in developing countries—but have far less access to land and resources than men farmers. ⁸

Violence Against Women

• Around the world, as many as one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way – most often by someone she knows, including her husband or another male family member. ⁹
• The International Labour Organization has estimated that more than 43 per cent of people trafficked across borders are used for forced commercial sexual exploitation, of whom 98 per cent are women and girls. ¹⁰

1. UN The World’s Women 2010, Trends and Statistics
2. World Bank— Girls Education, August 2011
3. World Bank— Girls Education, August 2011
4. Abu-Ghaida, D, Klasen, S, ‘The Costs of Missing the Millennium Development Goals on Gender Equality’, Elsevier, Vol 32 (7), 2004
5. Inter-Parliamentary Union (2011) Women in Parliaments
6. UN—The World’s Women 2010, Trends and Statistics
7. UN—The World’s Women 2010, Trends and Statistics
8. Worldwatch Institute (2011), Female Farmers Overcome Barriers to Feed Africa Sustainable Development Department, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
9. Gender Equality – Ending Widespread Violence Against Women (No Date) United Nations Population Fund
10. UN The World’s Women 2010, Trends and Statistics