Gender Equality

Description

Gender Equality funding promotes the political, economic, social, and cultural status and advancement of women and girls. Programs seek to strengthen women’s participation as political leaders, as well as their capacity as citizens to constructively engage their government in key democratic processes and contribute to community-based conflict mitigation efforts.

What Does This Buy?

Funds are provided to partners through grants, cooperative agreements, and other mechanisms to implement programming that promotes women’s leadership and economic empowerment, prevents and responds to gender-based violence, and pursues specific objectives related to women, security, and women’s inclusion in peacebuilding
processes. Funding will also support USAID operating units in integrating gender equality into their strategies, project design, and monitoring and evaluation activities.

Justification for the Request

• Development and humanitarian challenges disproportionately affect women and girls. For example,many women do not eat if there is not enough food for their children and/or husbands.
• In 2015, the McKinsey Global Institute found that if women participated in the economy equally with men it would add up to $28 trillion or 26% to the annual global GDP in 2025.
• Investing in women and girls can unlock human potential on a transformational scale. Women’s leadership is strongly linked to positive developments in education, infrastructure, and health standards at the local and global levels.
• 62 million girls are not in school, and 1 in 3 women will experience gender-based violence in her lifetime. Less than 20% of all national parliamentarians are female.
• In 2017, the global average gap between men and women was 32% across four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political participation.
• Globally, more than 650 million women alive today were married as children, and an estimated 12 million girls under 18 are married each year.
• The estimated global economic impact of gender-based violence is $8 trillion.

U.S. Interest

Peace agreements are 35% more likely to last at least 15 years if women are involved in their creation.

Bold Vision

All U.S. assistance should be mainstreamed. USAID and MCC both have policies that mandate gender mainstreaming, the State Department has priorities of focus for gender equality, and the Women Peace and Security Act mandates that the United States shall “promote the meaningful participation of women in all aspects of overseas conflict prevention, management, and resolution.”

Additional funds would advance gender equality. The world economic forum estimates that it will take 100 years to reach gender equality. Gender equality would increase global GDP by $28 trillion and allow the United States to create trade partnerships of the future with a more diverse collection of nations. Reaching gender equality would improve development outcomes from peace and security to agriculture. To use foreign assistance funding most effectively, help countries transition off of aid, and create a safer, more prosperous world, the U.S. needs to accelerate when the world reaches gender equality. This means ensuring that all programs appropriately address the different needs, views, and challenges between genders and working to ensure that women are included in all phases of assistance.

Impact of Cuts

• Cuts could further shrink girls’ access to quality education and enrollment in secondary education. Fewer adolescent girls and their social networks would learn about the consequences of HIV transmission, child marriage, and early pregnancy.
• Cuts would further frustrate efforts to prevent and respond to gender-based violence and diminish lifesaving assistance to women and girls in conflict and emergencies.