The key issues

Women now account for nearly 70% of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty. They are disadvantaged by both their limited property rights, low engagement in formalised economic activity, and social barriers to mobility. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are vital not just on human rights grounds. Gender inequality lowers the productivity of labour and intensifies the unequal distribution of resources.

Because women tend to have poorer command over a range of productive resources, such as education, land, information and financial resources, their ability to generate income is weakened. In the labour market, women tend to receive unequal pay, and are often segregated into low skill areas - reducing their ability to meet their livelihood needs. Women’s productive roles in the informal sector and agricultural economy are often under-valued, resulting in inappropriate development support interventions.

Women face social, economic and institutional barriers to political representation, participation in decision-making, and in holding government to account. This lack of representation means that their different needs and interests are often overlooked in policy making, or planning at the community level; and that their human rights are often undermined, for example in access to justice, or basic health services.

Services such as basic transport, energy, secure shelter and water and sanitation are often poorly related to women’s needs, reducing the effectiveness and efficiency of public investment in these areas; and significantly adding to the individual costs to women of carrying out their economic and social roles. Similarly, men and boys are often unable to access reproductive health care.

The growth of world trade has brought both costs and benefits to women and men. Gender analysis can provide a better understanding of why some social groups are able to benefit more than others from increasing trade flows. Gender analysis can reveal which export sectors should be promoted for pro-poor and women focused trade, which industries poor women will be employed in, and how to build up the skills base to enable women to respond to new market opportunities as they develop. It can highlight how the private sector can promote women’s empowerment by challenging gender stereotypes through employment opportunities, marketing and the media.

Armed conflict impacts on women, men, boys and girls in different ways. Women and children constitute some 80% of the world’s millions of refugees and other displaced persons - and are forced to take on new roles as a result. Men and boys tend to be the main perpetrators and also the direct victims of armed violence, and this in turn affects their role and status in post-conflict situations.

An estimated 175 million people (2.9% of the world’s population) were living outside their country of birth in the year 2000, of which approximately half were women. Gender analysis can uncover the different opportunities and constraints that men, women and children face as they move through formal and informal migration channels - in order to build understanding and capitalise on opportunities, and to protect women and children in particular against exploitation.

Gender analysis helps to uncover the different roles and needs of women and men in different contexts. This can form the basis for understanding how institutions can support efforts to build up their assets and access to resources (e.g. through skills development, access to capital, land or extension services). It can uncover how aid can support the development of markets that work for poor women as effectively as they do for poor men; which policies and investments can address gender disparities in access to information; and work to strengthen incentives for gender equality in the labour market.

Recent Case Studies

Participatory gender and rights audit of DanChurchAid

In the autumn of 2009, SDDirect's Alice Kerr-Wilson and Francis Watkins, with rights specialist, Clare Ferguson and communications specialist, Gayatri Persad, conducted a Participatory Gender and Rights Audit of DanChurchAid to examine the extent to which gender and rights had been considered and integrated into the organisation's internal systems and processes. ... read more

Support for DFID Africa Gender Equality Action Plan

SDDirect's Lucy Earle worked with independent consultant, Pat Holden, to provide support for the UK Department for International Development's (DFID) Africa Division to develop its Gender Equality Action Plan. A communications document outlining their commitments was published in September 2009 and is available for download from our site.... read more

Social exclusion and gender inequality in Nigeria

This assessment looked at the extent to which social exclusion and gender inequality affect development programmes in Nigeria.... read more

Gender training for DFID Western Balkans

SDDirect designed and carried out a tailor-made training session on gender for DFID staff in the Western Balkans team. The session, targeted at both generalist programme staff and technical advisers, was specifically designed to meet the specific needs of the team. Time was taken to determine existing levels of awareness and knowledge among staff in order to pitch the training at the appropriate level. ... read more

Strengthening the Poverty Impact of the Paris Declaration

From May 2007, SDDirect worked with Oxford Policy Management (lead) and workingtogether ltd in an assignment identifying evidence of linkages between Paris Declaration dimensions of country ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability and the cross cutting social themes of human rights, gender and social exclusion.... read more