DFID’s approach to promoting women’s economic empowerment

International Parliamentary Conference on Gender and Politics

Thursday 8th November 2012

Lindi Hlanze, Economic Adviser, DFID

Slide 2

Why is women’s economic empowerment important?

• It matters for women and girls – contributing to their broader empowerment, agency and voice, and to better welfare outcomes for them, their households and their wider communities.

• It also matters for economic growth – for example, through its impacts on firm performance, agricultural productivity and generation of tax revenues.

• There are multiple barriers to women accessing resources and opportunities - underinvestment in women’s health and education, discriminatory cultural and social norms and formal or customary laws and regulations, unequal access to resources, knowledge, information, networks and markets, informality and workplace discrimination and exploitation.

DFID context

DFID’s Business Plan 2011-15: “Recognise the role of women in development and promote gender equality”•One of 6 Ministerial priorities•Critical to delivering the Millennium Development Goals

DFID’s working definition of economic empowerment:

Economic empowerment is a process that increases people’s access to and control over economic resources and opportunities

Slide 3

DFID’s Strategic Vision For Girls And Women

Slide 4

Economic Assets direct to Girls and

Women

VisionStop poverty before

it starts. Transform societies.

MissionInvest now in girls and women to multiply our

impact. The earlier the better.

Delay First Pregnancy and Support Safe

Childbirth

Enabling Environment

Get Girls through

Secondary School

Prevent Violence

Against Girls and Women

+ increase the value given to girls and women by societyenable women’s participation in politics + sustain political commitment to services and opportunities for girls and women

Build effective legal frameworks to protect girls' and women’s rights

Slide 5

Get economic assets directly to girls and women

Economic empowerment is about more than just assets!

Women’s rights and access to human, social and natural capital are critical and complementary.

Access to and control of: 2015 Targets:

Financial assets (cash, savings, credit, insurance, remittances etc)

Improved access to finance for 18 million women

Physical assets (land, property, livestock, productive technologies etc)

Secure access to land for 4.5 million

Policy area Programme examples

Jobs and livelihoods

Nepal Market Development Programme - aims to increase incomes of 150,000 female farmers by up to £80 per year over 5 yearsBusiness Innovation Fund - supported Care and Danone’s creation of a rural sales force comprising 2,800 destitute women in Bangladesh (‘Aparajitas’), to increase by 12,000 by 2014

Training and skills

Punjab Economic Opportunities Programme (PEOP) - provides market-based skills to 125,000 poor people of which 40% will be women (aims to enhance dairy quality and yields and improve market linkages)

Property rights Rwanda National Land Tenure Regularisation Roll-Out - support to demarcate, adjudicate and issue title deeds for approximately 6.3m people, 50% of which will be women

Financial inclusion

Global Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Finance Initiative - will provide finance to over 200,000 SMEs across 15 DFID priority countries, with at least 25% of loans reaching women-headed SMEs.

Social protection

Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) - support for 1.1 million female household representatives to receive cash transfers to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, increase access to primary education and contribute to women's economic empowerment

Enabling infrastructure

Vietnam’s Third Rural Transportation programme - creates employment for ethnic minority women in rural road maintenance and trained 1,533 female rural transportation managers

Investment climate (legal and regulatory context)

Afghan Climate Investment Facility (AICF) - supporting reforms that will include benefits for women including reducing unnecessary red tape, increasing access to credit, improving land use, strengthening property rights and commercial dispute resolution, strengthening labour market, customs and taxation systems, reducing corruption, and facilitating public private partnerships in infrastructure and agriculture

Slide 6

Research and evidence• Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) – Centre for

Economic Policy Research (CEPR)/DFID research– Maximise opportunities for gender-related proposals and gender-disaggregated data particularly under

“Dynamics of MSMEs: information & entrepreneurship” theme

• Growth and labour markets in developing countries – IZA (Institute for the Study of Labor)/DFID research

– Gender theme to explore trends, determinants and consequences of female labour participation in LICs, and to identify interventions to support women to enter more productive sectors and increase their earnings potential

• Country specific examples– Gender in Nigeria report 2012: www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/Gender-Nigeria2012.pdf– Livelihoods, basic services and social protection in Democratic Republic of the Congo:

http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7717.pdf

Slide 8

Thank you!

Lindi HlanzeEconomic Adviser

(economic empowerment of women and girls)l-hlanze@dfid.gov.uk