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Professor Tarp has four decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research and teaching. His field experience covers more than two decades of in-country work in 35 countries across Africa and the developing world more...
Women suffer economic, social, and political discrimination. Much has been done over the last three decades to try and reverse such discrimination, and aid has played its part. Yet in many societies there is often a higher incidence of poverty among women than men, while women are also more likely to live in extreme poverty.
Over the last decade, aid donors have made strong commitments to improving the lives of women and girls. These commitments have translated into a four-fold increase in foreign aid towards gender equality and women’s empowerment, increasing from US$6.5 billion in 2002, to US$25.5 billion in 2011.
There are encouraging signs that foreign aid has helped reduce gender inequality, benefittingwomen and girls. In this animation we look at how aid works to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. The film is part of a series produced by UNU-WIDER with the programme 'ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid'. It can, for instance, be used when teaching students about aid and what it can help achieve.
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Blog
Aid and gender – making foreign aid count
International Women’s Day on 8th March 2016 is a time to celebrate. It is also a time for reflection. We must constantly remind ourselves that while...
Journal Article
Gender Inequality, Female Leadership and Aid AllocationPart of Journal Special Issue Aid for Gender Equality and Development
Journal Article
Gesture Politics or Real Commitment?We investigate whether donors give more aid to countries with larger gender gaps in education, health, or women’s rights, and whether they reward improvements in those indicators. We find some evidence that high gender gaps in education and health...
Research Brief
How can aid promote the empowerment of women?Aid projects that specifically target women tend be better at increasing gender equality than those that mainstream gender. The gender gap can be narrowed through public works that focus on providing decent employment for women as well as training...
Working Paper
Women’s EmpowermentRevisiting foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s, this paper draws on the findings of a multi-country research programme, ‘Pathways of Women’s Empowerment’, to explore pathways of positive change in women’s...
Research Brief
Is unpaid care work addressed well in World Bank projects?Only three out of 36 World Bank investments in Malawi, Mali, Niger and Rwanda appropriately address women’s unpaid care work. Despite the lack of World Bank investments specifically targeting unpaid care work, Bank investments do appear to be...
Working Paper
Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment Through Productive Employment and Social ProtectionThe paper attempts to examine the extent to which the ILO-supported projects have contributed to women’s economic empowerment and well-being i.e., from a gender perspective. The paper provides the ILO’s perspectives on gender dimensions of employment...
Position Paper
Aid and Gender EqualityThis position paper on Aid and Gender Equality was prepared by UNU-WIDER under the ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid. It aims to provide a coherent up-to-date overview and guide to a complex issue in the...
Working Paper
Can Climate Finance Achieve Gender Equity in Developing Countries?We develop the climate finance-gender equity framework in this paper and use the ‘contextual-procedural-distributive’ equity as a lens of analysis to examine how climate finance helps challenge, and reinforce, gender inequities in the mitigation...
Working Paper
Does Foreign Aid in Education Foster Gender Equality in Developing Countries?This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on gender equality in education outcomes in developing countries. Heterogeneity effects by type of aid received and by type of recipients are investigated using system GMM methods. The results indicate...
Blog
Storify - Aid for Gender Equality
The story of the event as told by Twitter. [<a href="//storify.com/UNUWIDER/aid-for-gender-equality-16-december-copenhagen-den" target="_blank">View...
Research Brief
The Unintended Consequences of the MCP on Foreign Aid for Family PlanningSub-Saharan Africa receives 48 per cent more family planning aid than other regions. Countries with high fertility rates and large populations tend to receive more family planning aid The USA’s Mexico City Policy (MCP) reduces total foreign aid to...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (January 2014)
28 January 2014 Tony Addison The first Angle of 2014 comes amidst the start up of our new research programme which is now kicked off. It has three big...
Working Paper
Using Evidence and Operational Responses to Accelerate Gender Equality in KenyaAgriculture is a main contributor to pro-poor growth in Africa, but gender inequalities in the sector hold back agricultural growth and affect household welfare negatively. The sector has been characterized by a lack of gender-disaggregated data and...
Working Paper
Gender Inequality, Female Leadership, and Aid AllocationThe aid allocation literature has neglected gender-specific needs for aid. We assess the hypothesis that gender inequality in education is more likely to affect the aid allocation of donor countries with female leadership in the relevant ministry. We...
Working Paper
Unpacking Women’s Health in Public-Private PartnershipsThere has been a significant increase in funding for health programmes in development over the last two decades, partly due to the formation of public-private partnerships. This paper examines the impact of public-private partnerships from the...
Blog
Goodbye and hello ReCom!
The research programme ReCom – Research and communication on foreign aid – is ending this year. There is a large and unique collection of research...
Journal Article
Social Transfer Programmes and School Enrolment in MalawiThis paper investigates the impact of social transfer programmes on school enrolment and child labour in Malawi utilizing a micro-simulation evaluation method. For this purpose, we simulate four hypothetical scenarios in which a household receives:...
Working Paper
Asian Donor Support for Gender Equality and Women’s EmpowermentSince the 1990s, gender mainstreaming has been a widely accepted strategy for promoting gender equality within governments, multilateral agencies, and development NGOs, although critics continue to question its premises and results. This paper...
Working Paper
The Ideal of Gender Justice and the UNSCR 1325The paper examines why the efforts to promote gender justice by development aid have not succeeded in dealing with deeply-rooted structural injustices which prevent the realization of social justice and gender equality. The study analyses the...
Blog
Seven reasons why research doesn’t become policy
Over the last decade there has been increasing demand to make research more useful and applicable for policy-making. And that is also very true within...
Blog
No rest until New Year’s Eve
Silence reigns in the office these days. Doors are closed, discussions are short, and faces look strained. The reason is that we are in the process of...
Research Brief
Gender MainstreamingThe three Nordic development agencies Danida (Denmark) Sida (Sweden), and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (FMFA) all recognise gender mainstreaming as an important part of the policy-making process. Gender equality is a well-funded...
Research Brief
An Assessment of a Village Development Programme in MozambiqueThe programme did lead participating households to use improved seeds. Food consumption scores did not improve after the programme. However during the programme participating households moved to more sustainable strategies to cope with food shortages...
Research Brief
Impact of Aid for Health and Education on Gender Equity and Human DevelopmentInitial high human development index scores and per capita income have a strongmimpact on the outcomes of aid to the health and education sectors. An increase in the share of the government budget allocated to education and health improves overall...
Research Brief
The Effectiveness of Aid to Women’s Political Participation in MENAOfficial development assistance to women’s equality organizations and institutions is effective in increasing women’s political empowerment. In contrast, aid targeting reproductive health and family planning does not appear to impact women’s...
Research Brief
Assessing the Role of Gender in DfID and Sida Challenge FundsCorporate actors are now playing an important role in international development and contributing new ideas to development aid. Corporate–donor partnerships represent unique opportunities to combine the experience of donors with the innovative...
Working Paper
The Care ConnectionWith the aim of reducing women’s greater unpaid care work than men’s and increasing women’s paid employment, this paper examines the extent to which World Bank investments address unpaid care work. The paper conducts an in-depth gender analysis of 36...
Blog
Fragility is also an opportunity
One of the more difficult issues aid organizations are facing is how to plan and conduct interventions in fragile situations where armed conflict is...
Working Paper
Determinants of Foreign Aid in Family PlanningThe Mexico City Policy (MCP) prohibits the United States Agency for International Development from providing aid to international non-governmental organizations that provide abortion-related services. This paper employs a panel data of 151 developing...
Working Paper
Social Transfer Programmes and School Enrolment in MalawiThis paper investigates the impact of social transfer programmes on school enrollment and child labour in Malawi utilizing a micro-simulation evaluation method. Four hypothetical cash transfer programmes, differentiated in terms of their conditions...
Working Paper
Multiple Pathways to Gender-Sensitive Budget Support in the Education SectorIn order to correct for the initial gender blindness of the Paris Declaration and related aid modalities as general and sector budget support, it has been proposed to integrate a gender dimension into budget support entry points. This paper studies...
Blog
Getting ready for Copenhagen
After two ReCom Results Meetings in Stockholm we are returning to Copenhagen. The next event ‘Challenges in Fragility and Governance’ is coming up...
Research Brief
Gender Sensitivity of World Bank InvestmentsMany World Bank investments include women’s concerns only superficially. Lack of attention to gender roles negatively impacts women’s rights. The Bank’s continued promotion of user fees in sexual and reproductive health projects prevents poor women...
Working Paper
Gesture Politics or Real Commitment?Donors of foreign aid increasingly claim to consider gender inequality in the recipient countries to be a serious concern. While aid specifically to promote gender equality receives only a tiny share of aid budgets, allocations to education, health...
Working Paper
Non-Traditional Aid and Gender EquityThis paper investigates the role of non-traditional aid in meeting global challenges in improving gender equality and gender-related socioeconomic needs in the twenty-first century. We define non-traditional aid as private donations from individuals...
Working Paper
The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid to Women’s Equality Organizations in the MENAIn this paper, we address the question of whether official development assistance promotes gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa region by examining the effects of aid to Women’s Equality Organizations and Institutions on women’s...
Working Paper
Impact of Sectoral Allocation of Foreign Aid on Gender equity and Human DevelopmentWhile developing countries have made some progress in achieving human development since the turn of the century, many are still lagging behind in important human development goals such as education, health, nutrition and access to clean drinking...
Working Paper
The Challenge Fund Aid ModalityThis paper compares the use of Challenge Funds by the UK’s Department for International Development and Sweden’s International Development Agency to address gender challenges in development. Challenges Funds are meant to bring the interests of...
Working Paper
Assessing the Effectiveness of World Bank InvestmentsToday it is widely acknowledged that increasing the gender sensitivity of development aid increases its effectiveness. This report evaluates the extent to which the World Bank integrates gender concerns into its policies and investments, pointing out...
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Context
Main subject
This project is part of ReCom - research and communication on foreign aid
Theme: Past, 2010-11