How Germany's new feminist development policy will affect funding

Germany’s development ministry unveiled a new feminist development policy this month that could trigger a realignment of the ministry’s funding portfolio. The new strategy includes a commitment that 93% of all new project funding go toward initiatives that have at least a secondary focus on gender by 2025. In 2021, that total was only 64%. At least 8% of all new project funding must be used for projects that have a primary goal of achieving gender equality. The new policy echoes Sweden’s now-abandoned feminist foreign policy in its focus on helping women and girls realize their rights, utilize resources, and improve representation. And it delivers on a promise that German Development Minister Svenja Schulze made soon after taking office in December 2021. “For the first time, coming from the development ministry, there is a clear acknowledgment that we do live in a world of patriarchal power structures that need to be overcome,” Stephan Exo-Kreischer, ONE’s Germany director, told Devex. “There is a status quo that needs to be overcome.” Schulze launched the policy alongside Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock, who simultaneously introduced a feminist foreign policy. But civil society groups in Berlin are waiting to see if other top German officials are on board with the new development policy and whether it will translate into increased funding for the ministry. Schulze laid out what she sees as the stakes of the new policy at its launch earlier this month: “When women have equal rights and equal responsibility, there will be less poverty, less hunger, and more stability in the world. It is therefore worth strengthening the rights, resources, and representation of women and girls.” Among its priorities, the policy highlights the need to dismantle discriminatory laws or norms, to assist women and girls in gaining access to financial services, health care, and education, and to help elevate them into positions of power. The new policy of the development ministry, known as BMZ, will have knock-on effects for its key implementing partners, including Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, or GIZ, and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau Group, Germany’s development bank responsible for financial cooperation with global south countries. Though the implementing partners set their own policies, “If you have that benchmark, partners like GIZ, civil societies that are being funded, it will of course transform how they work because they will need to comply with that,” Exo-Kreischer said. The ministry also promised to bring its strategy to bear in its role in international bodies, like the World Bank, and also to look inward. Among its more concrete commitments, BMZ leadership pledged to move toward permanent gender parity within the ministry, including at the management level. “It is quite an ambitious strategy,” Martin Bruder, head of the civil society and human rights department at DEval, which evaluates German development policy, told Devex. “It seems to me that if it’s implemented comprehensively, it will have profound effects on how German development cooperation operates.” While the focus of the policy is on women and girls, the ministry highlighted the need to increase support for other marginalized communities, including Indigenous, LGBTQI+, and disabled people. “What’s important from our perspective is to have this intersectional component be an integral part of development cooperation,” said Angela Heucher, a senior evaluator and team leader at DEval. “Not only focus on women and girls per se, but how does gender intersect with other factors.” There are some questions about how broad the policy’s new impact will be, particularly because neither the ministry of finance nor the chancellery has adopted a feminist lens. “The development ministry is not the strongest ministry at the cabinet table,” Exo-Kreischer said. “It won’t change the fundamental power structures that need to be changed by itself.” An early signal of support from other ministries could come when budget numbers are released later this year. A draft budget will likely emerge from the ministry of finance in July for debate in the Bundestag — Germany’s parliament. Lawmakers typically adopt a final budget by the end of the year. “If that is the strategy that the entire government buys into, we need to see that reflected in the budget of the development ministry,” Exo-Kreischer said. The BMZ actually lost €190 million ($205 million) from its core budget in 2023 from the previous year, dropping to €12.2 billion. There are also concerns about how the policy will actually function. Officials from the center-right Christian Democrats, who are not part of the ruling coalition, called the policy overly technical without clear goals and actions. Bruder questioned how a complaint mechanism would work and whether it would be operated by each implementing partner or if there would be an overarching system for registering possible violations of the policy. And there are questions about how receptive countries that don’t share Germany’s feminist strategy might be to the new approach. BMZ officials did not respond to a request for comment, but the ministry’s strategy promises that more details are forthcoming in a Gender Action Plan they plan that will be published later this year. The plan will lay out the ministry’s thematic priorities and a system for measuring the impact of its support. “We see the declarations and the intent is there in the strategy,” Heucher said. “Implementation is the larger next question.”