Investing in women and girls: progress in gender equality to reap health and social returns
RENEWED COMMITMENT
Recently, there have been renewed commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment in both the bilateral and multilateral donor communities. Since the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women, examples of this renewed commitment have included the United Nations "delivering as one" focus on gender equality and women's empowerment, and the World Bank Group's action plan for 2007-2010 on gender equality as smart economics.
At the Monterrey International Conference on Financing for Development in 2002 and at subsequent global meetings, donors have made commitments to increase global aid for this area by 2010. Several references to the importance of gender equality to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals have been stated in these forums.
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 referred to gender equality. The Declaration commits donors and partner countries to develop capacities for gender analysis and impact assessment that could be applied to policy development and implementation at national, sector and project levels. Health is one of the key sectors in the declaration, and studies by WHO and others are underway to help inform a high-level forum on aid effectiveness planned for September 2008 in Accra, Ghana.
- UN Economic & Social Council: resolution on gender mainstreaming
- UN system-wide policy on gender equality and the empowerment of women: focusing on results and impact (October 2006)
- World Bank Group gender action plan, 2007-2010
- International Conference on Financing for Development, Monterrey, Mexico, 2002
- Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, 2005
- Aid effectiveness and health, 2007 [pdf 2.24 Mb]
- Economic and social survey of Asia and the Pacific, 2007
- Make every mother and child count, World Health Report 2005