Gender equality-focused aid: Where is the money going?

Gender equality has made its way into the various discussions on the post-2015 development agenda, with some citing the lack of integration of gender throughout the Millennium Development Goals as a cause for rethinking how gender should play out in development once the MDGs end next year. Others meanwhile say that the everywhere-but-nowhere nature of gender in mainstream programming has strengthened support for gender as a stand-alone goal. But while targeting women is important to the gender equality agenda, gender equality is, as the term itself connotes, more than just about women. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s gender policy marker, for instance, counts activities that can “target women specifically, men specifically or both women and men.” While the gender policy marker cannot measure outcomes or impact, it has been crucial to the goal of enhancing data collection on activities related to gender equality. Writing about the gender marker in 2012, Patti O’Neill, coordinator for the OECD-Development Assistance Committee Network on Gender Equality, noted that donors’ reporting of gender-related data made those who had not been reporting respond to the “peer pressure to address any deficiencies in their collection and reporting of aid data.” The United States, as we will see below, is one example of this. The gender policy marker has also helped determine the gaps between a donor’s development policy and actual financial commitment. For instance, O’Neill noted how a peer review found that a certain DAC donor, which played an important political role in women’s economic empowerment, actually had a financial commitment less than the average of the amount committed by all DAC donors. The review also noted that it expected this donor to match its rhetoric with actual commitments. But perhaps the most important impact of tracking gender equality-focused aid has simply been the increase of aid directed to gender-related activities, according to O’Neill. From 2002 to 2012, $202.7 billion went to 255,360 activities with gender equality as either a primary or significant objective. There has been a steady increase of gender equality-focused aid from 2002 to 2009, which was also when both the amount directed to gender-related activities and the number of projects hit a peak. Gender-related aid levels dropped in 2010, before slowly inching back up to $26.6 billion in 2012. We took a closer look at the activity-level data for gender equality-focused aid in 2012 — the latest year for which figures on gender-focused aid are available — and found the following insights. ODA grants dominated Major bilateral donors’ projects were mostly funded by grants, with the European Union and Germany, largely through the European Development Fund and BMZ — the German ministry responsible for international development cooperation — contributing the lion’s share of aid. Among top bilateral donors, Germany had the most diversified composition of gender-related aid, with $3.7 billion for grants, $564.7 million for loans and $121.5 million for equity investments. Japan’s gender-focused aid was generally split between grants and loans, but loans — $1.9 billion from the Japan International Cooperation Agency — slightly exceeded grants, which were mostly from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2012, 14,127 activities — or 39 percent of all activities — were channeled through nongovernmental organizations. While the value of these projects reached $3.3 billion, the amount directed toward recipient governments — $6.2 billion for 1,862 activities — still exceeded funding for other channels. Top bilateral donors: Germany, EU and Japan Canada, Germany and the EU had the most number of gender equality-related projects. In terms of funding disbursed, however, Germany, the EU and Japan accounted for the bulk of gender-focused aid. The largest share of Australia’s gender equality-focused aid flowed through multisector projects, which comprised $373.9 million of its total aid for gender-related activities. This is consistent with Australia’s adoption of gender equality as a crosscutting priority in its development priorities — an effort that OECD has recognized. Last year, an OECD peer review commended Australia’s “solid integration of gender equality” in its projects and programs. Meanwhile, the majority of Canada’s gender-focused aid — $306.1 million — went to emergency response. Like Australia, Canada has gender equality as one of the overarching objectives of its development cooperation. Recently, it announced support for a project that would help men and women get equal access to “competent and impartial judicial and adjudicatory mechanisms” in eight Southeast Asian countries. But changes in the aid programs of both Australia and Canada — the fourth and fifth-largest bilateral donors to gender-focused aid in 2012 — could spell some significant changes to projects in several sectors. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has gone beyond having gender equality as an aim that intersects various projects. Earlier this year, a bill that aims to prioritize gender equality in U.K. aid was signed into law — the first of its kind. The International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014 emphasizes the importance of having “regard to the desirability of providing development assistance that is likely to contribute to reducing poverty in a way which is likely to contribute to reducing inequality between persons of different gender.” The U.K. Department for International Development is still accepting bids for a food fortification program in Pakistan. The program will help reduce undernutrition by preventing micronutrient and iodine deficiencies, particularly among poor women and schoolchildren. Geographic focus on sub-Saharan Africa Except for Australia, whose gender equality-related activities were concentrated in Oceania, major bilateral donors focused on sub-Saharan Africa. France also had South America as the second-largest recipient of its gender-focused aid. The top recipients of gender-related aid, however, came from various regions. Afghanistan and India were the top two recipients, while Egypt, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Brazil also made it to the list. The System Enhancement for Health Action in Transition, an ongoing program supported by the European Union, the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund and the World Bank, was the largest project in Afghanistan. The project, which is scheduled to end in June 2018, aims to scale up basic health care services in both the urban and rural areas of 22 provinces in Afghanistan and train more midwives and nurses. The education of female health workers has been attributed as one of the causes of the fall in maternal and child deaths in the country. High focus on social infrastructure and services Social infrastructure and services — which include government and civil society activities — made up the bulk of gender equality-focused aid, receiving $4.7 billion in 2012. Education and health projects, which reached $4.3 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively, were also major components of this sector. Meanwhile, in the production sector, agriculture received the most gender-focused aid. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a significant gender gap between male and female farmers, gender-related agricultural activities amounted to $781.2 million, next to water and sanitation ($968.8 million) and general government and civil society ($968.4 million) projects. The driver of sub-Saharan African economies, agriculture will likely be one of the mainstays of gender-focused projects in the region. Last month, DfID’s research and evidence division announced a tender for delivering sustainable intensification of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, which has, among other objectives, an aim to “generate new evidence to help women and poor African smallholder farmers develop environmentally and financially sustainable enterprises and boost productivity.” Iraq, West Bank and Gaza top recipients of US aid The United States only introduced an improved data collection procedure for the gender marker in 2011. Before that, the gender marker was crudely assigned through a text search of relevant terms such as “girl” and “woman” in U.S. project descriptions. U.S. gender-focused aid figures from 2007 to 2009 — no numbers for 2010 are available — are therefore incomparable with data reported by other donors. Since refining its assignment of the gender marker and resuming reporting for gender-related aid flows in 2011, U.S. gender-focused aid levels have dropped. From 2007 to 2009, aid given to gender-related activities was reported to range from $3.5 billion to $4.6 billion. These numbers dropped to $169.4 million in 2011 and $430.2 million in 2012. In 2012, the United States had 386 gender-focused activities, all of them funded by grants. Regionally, the majority of these projects — 136 projects worth $121.5 million — were concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa. Conflict-affected Iraq and Palestinian territories, however, were the top two individual recipients of U.S. gender-focused aid. An education sector strengthening project worth $19 million was the largest activity in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, a $16.7 million local government and infrastructure program was the biggest project. Palestinian Sesame Street, one of the programs hit by U.S. Congress’ freezing of USAID funds to West Bank and Gaza in 2012, is also still listed in the activity-level database as a project with gender equality as a significant objective. But since funding for the program was cut, it is not counted in this analysis. U.S. gender-related activities were mostly focused on population policy and reproductive health, with $220.7 million going to 143 projects in this sector in 2012. Earlier this month, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced a bid for a Kenya-based marketing firm to lead an integrated media campaign for Show of Force, which USAID is working with in Kenya and India to “create behavior change toward gender issues” in these countries. Both Kenya and India — also among the largest individual recipients of U.S. gender-focused aid in 2012 — had maternal and child health projects accounting for the biggest share of their gender equality-related aid from the United States. Check out more practical business and development advice online, and subscribe to Money Matters to receive the latest contract award and shortlist announcements, and procurement and fundraising news.