Women's empowerment: The 'DNA' of post-2015 development and financing

A cursory glance through the Addis Ababa Action Agenda — the outcome document finalized at this month’s third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — gives advocates of women’s empowerment reason for cautious optimism. The Addis agenda “reaffirmed” that achieving gender equality is essential to sustainable development. It “reiterated” the need to mainstream gender in all financial, economic, environmental and social policies. The document called for the elimination of gender-based violence and discrimination, and noted support for the Women’s Empowerment Principles — a seven-point guideline for businesses to empower women, developed jointly by U.N. Women and the U.N. Global Compact. But a closer look shows some gender-sensitive considerations that had been included in earlier drafts of the Addis agenda, such as the one on unpaid care and the reference to the International Conference on Population and Development program for action and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, have disappeared from the final document. How then will U.N. Women ensure that financing is made available for these issues in the post-2015 era? “Even if the FFD outcome document is not explicit about some of these issues any longer, we need to take this back to the drawing board and look at how to best leverage the related Goal 5 on gender equality in the SDG outcome document, where SRHR and unpaid care has been included,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told Devex in an exclusive interview in Addis. The executive director of U.N. Women further stressed the need to “substantially increase investment in women.” “Every problem of underdevelopment has to do with women,” she said. “If we focused solely on issues that impact on women, a number of the problems that bring us together would be solved. Therefore, women’s issues should be in the ‘DNA’ of the post-2015 deliberations.” Below are more highlights from that conversation: As executive director of U.N. Women you must be pleased to see that women’s economic empowerment has a very prominent place in the Addis agenda. Do you see this mainly as a success of a strong women’s lobby or does it reflect an earnest political will to make financing for development more gender-responsive? The outcome document provides a good starting point for women’s economic empowerment but concerted efforts will be needed to translate it into action. We need to take a look at the six key principles of the financing for development structure, to see how it may impact women’s lives if steered into the right direction. Starting with infrastructure, it should be gender-responsive. That means, for example, that the selection and sequencing of infrastructure projects has to be informed by how many women’s lives would be changed as a result of this investment. Women and girls need a certain type of infrastructure, such as those that address the backload of sanitation in schools. It also means looking at how women can be actively involved in project design and implementation, for example by establishing a pipeline of women engineers. The second principle is the focus on least-developed countries. Here, women are often facing multiple, intersecting disadvantages of being among the most vulnerable groups within the most vulnerable societies. In fragile or post-conflict LDCs in particular, we need to look at how to weave in essential women, peace and security principles into the work in these contexts. Third, the issue of technology transfer. We need to ensure that it is both sustainable development-friendly and used to promote women’s empowerment. On taxation and domestic resource mobilization, improved schemes could help leverage women’s economic potential both as a consumer and producer. For example, tax incentives could be given to companies so that they can invest in women. Governments could also grant women entrepreneurs and mothers specific tax exemptions. The gender impact of FFD’s fifth principle, mainstreaming gender equality in development, is self-explanatory. And finally, with regard to climate financing, we need to recognize that women are often disproportionately affected when nature is challenged and foresee how to address their needs in particular: Women are the first in line where there is a disaster. They are the first line of defense, and the last line of defense — they are the ones to run away with babies, to climb the trees, to reconstruct the villages, just like what is happening in Nepal right now, for example. All of these principles could benefit women if civil society and women’s organizations are monitoring and vigilant about the way they are implemented. What is your view on new financing mechanisms, such as the Global Financing Facility just launched in Addis Ababa, which aims to incentivize countries to take up loans for investing in women’s and children’s health? A loan is a loan and governments will eventually need to find ways to pay it back. From U.N. Women’s point of view, anything that might potentially lead to introducing user fees for what should be seen as a basic right is concerning. This is a public health issue — it is best driven in that space of public health and should be accessible for free. Reproductive health is a basic need for every woman — it is like access to water. Women should not feel obliged to prioritize between their basic needs. But could new financing mechanisms, such as SME loans or microcredit funds, benefit women entrepreneurs, who are often seen as the “better borrowers”? Women are not only seen as better borrowers, but they are the better borrowers — there is abundant evidence that women tend to repay their loans well ahead of time and are more mindful about how they are managing their budgets. However, we need to help women avoid setting up businesses in overly risky areas that may set them up for failure. Providing women with market analysis before starting their business is one way of reducing this risk. The way the private sector company Alibaba works, allowing women to make their products more visible on the market at a very low cost, is one good example. To give you another example, U.N. Women and Coca-Cola are engaged in a partnership where the company provides women with a Coca-Cola fridge as starting capital. Once they start selling, they are encouraged to use the income to diversify their range of products in order to meet customer demands, for example by selling milk, bread and so on. The idea is that Coca-Cola beverages progressively become only a small part of the range of products these women are offering. The company has an obvious, vested interest in visibility and selling its products, so there is a win-win for both sides. [The vendors] also receive U.N. Women training on the spot — coaching on bookkeeping and sales management, for example — so they do not need to leave their business to attend training [sessions]. So what is the key to really make PPPs work for women? Women need to become part of a company’s business strategy rather than only part of their corporate social responsibility. CSR is good, but companies tend to invest more time in making sure that women succeed when there is a win-win for them. We would like to help and encourage companies to think outside the box in order to find such win-win scenarios. And how can both the public and the private sector be incentivized to invest in women’s SRHR? Governments need to raise awareness and disclose existing data and evidence about the costs of women’s absence from the labor market. Many countries have already understood that the costs of providing women with family planning supplies and paid child care are much lower than the ones resulting from keeping women at home. Studies have shown gender-diverse companies perform much better and retain clients better. Moreover, women are de facto penalized for recreating the next generation, the care penalty. A woman who takes time away from work is considered to be an underperformer — while a person who never takes maternity or other leave is automatically assumed to be the best performer in the company. Don’t change the women, change the system. And finally, your key message to the global development community from here in Addis? It is important to substantially increase investment in women. Women are not a minority challenge for development, women are the mainstream in development. Women are not a side event in development, they are the plenary. The fact that we still treat women’s issues as side and not center-stage issues means that we are missing the point. Bringing women to the center, also in terms of funding, in order to support women’s organizations at all levels, is essential in this context. U.N. Women is one of the smallest organizations of the U.N. — we are the microenterprise of the multilateral system, although we are supposed to take care of half of the world’s population and its most pressing issues. Every problem of underdevelopment has to do with women. If we focused solely on issues that impact on women, a number of the problems that bring us together would be solved. Therefore, women’s issues should be in the ‘DNA’ of the post-2015 deliberations. Want to see more coverage of the SDGs? Check out Sustaining Development in partnership with Chevron, FXB, Global Health Fellows Program II, Philips, Pfizer, UNIDO, U.N. Volunteers and the U.S. Council for International Business. You’ll find more Devex news coverage of the SDGs like this article, plus opinion pieces, video interviews, and content provided by our partners that shares their viewpoints.