USAID shares plans for $2.6B gender funding in forecast call

An official from the U.S. Agency for International Development outlined more details on how the agency will increase its focus on funding for gender equality in the June 7 business forecast call. USAID’s budget request for the fiscal year 2023 included $2.6 billion to uplift the role of women and girls in traditional USAID programming — the largest ever request, and more than double the budget for gender programs this year. Jamille Bigio, senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the Office of the Administrator, said gender equality and women’s empowerment were fundamental to achieving development outcomes. “It’s both the right thing and the smart thing to do,” she said. “Countless studies and widespread evidence show that investing in women and girls — and supporting women’s leadership — yields dividends in everything from economic growth to peace and stability.” She said USAID would increase “gender primary” attributions, which are focused explicitly on improving equality and empowerment. But much of the work will be through more “gender secondary” attributions, in which programs that are not gender-focused will include activities to address specific barriers for women and girls. More will be done to include gender equality elements in all programming, she said. This will include carrying out analyses to understand how approaches to gender affect women and girls’ access to services and ability to participate. USAID will also ask all partners to collect data on gender in their programs and to recruit individuals with gender expertise. “Partners are strongly encouraged to conduct context-specific analyses to better understand how gendered power dynamics affect the goals and outcome of their activities and to submit a gender plan of action to inform the work plan and performance monitoring plan,” she said. The forecast call also heard that USAID would launch a new policy framework for consultation later this month. The framework influences a number of aspects of USAID’s work, including budget allocations, country and regional strategic plans, and project design. Brit Steiner, acting director for policy in the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning, said that USAID will no longer be using the term “journey to self-reliance,” which featured prominently in the previous policy framework, but many of the central principles will continue, in areas such as strengthening locally led development, streamlining procurement, and expanding collaborations with new partners.