DEVELOPMENT: Gender Focus Urged for U.S. Aid

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alison Raphael

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 2008 (IPS) - Women’s groups weighed in Tuesday on the growing debate over new goals and strategies for U.S. foreign aid, arguing that to work effectively, foreign aid should target women.

Three leading organisations pointed out at a Capitol Hill media briefing that in most developing countries where aid is distributed, women are the poorest and least empowered members of society, and should be “placed at the centre of development,” in the words of Yolanda Richardson.

Richardson is president of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), which co-sponsored the briefing with several members of a congressional women’s caucus.

“By supporting women,” she said, “CEDPA promotes development.”

In a paper distributed at the briefing, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and a third group, Women Thrive Worldwide (WRW), argued that “40 years of evidence” shows that investing in women yields vital, society-wide dividends.

In India, for example, a World Bank study showed that states with the highest percentage of women in the workforce grew faster and experienced greater poverty reduction than others.

In the jointly prepared paper, “Value Added: Women and Foreign Assistance in the 21st Century”, ICRW and WTW argue that focusing aid efforts on women helps to “reduce poverty and break the cycle of inter-generational poverty.”

World Bank studies show that when development aid is targeted to women, it generally leads to better health and increased school attendance for their children, and longer life expectancies for both women and their children.

But in countries where gross inequalities between opportunities for men and women persist, as is true in much of sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth is reduced by nearly one percentage point, slowing progress for entire nations.

Today, the paper argues, especially in light of the current spike in food costs, the goal of reducing food insecurity is vital.

“If a major U.S. goal is to reduce food insecurity in Africa, aid programmes need to recognise African women’s primary role in food production and family nutrition” and identify ways to overcome the obstacles they face, the paper pointed out.

In many sub-Saharan African countries women lack access to credit and technology, and legal rights to own or inherit land, according to the four authors of the paper, which reduces their productivity.

CEDPA, ICRW, and Women Thrive were responding to a growing initiative backed by leading international development experts organised into the Modernising Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), with the goal of revamping the U.S. foreign aid system.

The Brookings Institution, Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and InterAction, which represents some 168 U.S. aid and development groups, are among those backing the new foreign aid initiative, launched in mid-June.

A few days later, bipartisan legislation aimed at revamping U.S. foreign assistance was introduced in the House of Representatives. MFAN and congressional backers hope to pave the way for early action under a new president in 2009.

MFAN argues that the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act is long overdue for an overhaul, and that since today some 26 agencies are involved in distributing foreign aid, each with its own goals and methods, the U.S. needs a new, cabinet-level agency to impose a more coherent approach.

At Tuesday’s briefing, InterAction President Sam Worthington reiterated the call for a new strategy and framework to govern U.S. foreign aid, along with the creation of a new Department of Global and Human Development.

While the rest of the world is committed to development assistance aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the goals of U.S. assistance are “fragmented”, Worthington noted.

The three women’s groups agree but held Tuesday’s briefing to remind MFAN and its backers in Congress that promoting gender equality should be a central goal of any new U.S. development strategy.

According to ICRW and Women Thrive, “no U.S. assistance programme has fully embraced gender integration” and more funds need to be channeled into improving women’s economic opportunities, through micro-credit, entrepreneurship training, and other similar investments.

Three of the key themes that should underpin a new development assistance strategy, said CEDPA’s Richardson, are “capacity building, collaboration, sustainability, and coherence.”

To be sustainable and effective, foreign aid should focus on community-based work with women, collaborating with them to achieve their goals and building their capacity to play a more active role in their communities and nations, she concluded.

The event at the Rayburn Building was organised in partnership with several women members of Congress, including Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Lois Capps and Diane Watson of California, Yvette Clark (New York), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas) and Betty McCollum (Minnesota).