Building women’s capacity so that they enjoy higher returns for their labour efforts Participation Strengthening participation and power in decision-making Reducing the burden of women’s unpaid care work Improving women’s access to, and control over, economic resources and opportunities Strengthening women’s legal status and rights to property and employment Instituting or improving social protection mechanisms to protect from economic shocks Initiatives that delivered community-level services, in the agriculture, and business and banking sectors, often presented clearer opportunities to integrate gender-responsive programming (e.g. the Cambodia agricultural and Bangladesh financial initiatives). The entry points for promoting women’s economic empowerment at the community level in the business and banking sector initiatives offer more tried and tested approaches than in areas such as trade or energy. These initiatives set targets for women’s participation in grantees’ activities and actively sought to fund projects that supported women’s economic engagement, and/or carried out research to identify relevant barriers and entry points. Initiatives that deliver more indirect economic benefit to women (e.g. electrification) can have implications for women’s and men’s economic activity than more direct investments. It is important to consider what opportunities exist to pursue gender equality (either targeted or mainstreamed) and to provide economic benefits to women as well as men, as good-practice examples from the Australian aid program have done. The evaluation team identified several examples of good efforts to address gender equality and enhance women’s economic empowerment in the energy (Laos and Tonga), trade (Laos) and transport (Solomon Islands) sectors. This was promising to see, because there are fewer international models in these macro-level sectors. While initiative managers found these areas particularly challenging, research indicates that policy and programming in these sectors can have far-reaching economic impacts for women and men. Shortcomings in the inclusion of gender-sensitive indicators in M&E systems and evaluations, and in implementing M&E systems, limit opportunities to understand whether and how gender strategies are reaching and benefiting women and men. There were numerous examples of initiatives across the sectors that did well at articulating objectives or activities that were relevant to promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, but that did not succeed in carrying through a strong gender focus within M&E systems. Moreover, only one impact evaluation conducted among the initiatives used baseline and endline data to
Building women’s capacity so that they enjoy higher returns for their labour efforts Participation Strengthening participation and power in decision-making Reducing the burden of women’s unpaid care work Improving women’s access to, and control over, economic resources and opportunities Strengthening women’s legal status and rights to property and employment Instituting or improving social protection mechanisms to protect from economic shocks Initiatives that delivered community-level services, in the agriculture, and business and banking sectors, often presented clearer opportunities to integrate gender-responsive programming (e.g. the Cambodia agricultural and Bangladesh financial initiatives). The entry points for promoting women’s economic empowerment at the community level in the business and banking sector initiatives offer more tried and tested approaches than in areas such as trade or energy. These initiatives set targets for women’s participation in grantees’ activities and actively sought to fund projects that supported women’s economic engagement, and/or carried out research to identify relevant barriers and entry points. Initiatives that deliver more indirect economic benefit to women (e.g. electrification) can have implications for women’s and men’s economic activity than more direct investments. It is important to consider what opportunities exist to pursue gender equality (either targeted or mainstreamed) and to provide economic benefits to women as well as men, as good-practice examples from the Australian aid program have done. The evaluation team identified several examples of good efforts to address gender equality and enhance women’s economic empowerment in the energy (Laos and Tonga), trade (Laos) and transport (Solomon Islands) sectors. This was promising to see, because there are fewer international models in these macro-level sectors. While initiative managers found these areas particularly challenging, research indicates that policy and programming in these sectors can have far-reaching economic impacts for women and men. Shortcomings in the inclusion of gender-sensitive indicators in M&E systems and evaluations, and in implementing M&E systems, limit opportunities to understand whether and how gender strategies are reaching and benefiting women and men. There were numerous examples of initiatives across the sectors that did well at articulating objectives or activities that were relevant to promoting gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, but that did not succeed in carrying through a strong gender focus within M&E systems. Moreover, only one impact evaluation conducted among the initiatives used baseline and endline data to