The European Community and its Member States have legally and politically committed themselves to the promotion of gender equality in all their actions, including in their development assistance.  This is enshrined in various international agreements and declarations such as Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW 1979), the Cairo Programme of Action (1994), the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), and the Millennium Declaration (2000). In addition, the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005 called for donor harmonisation of actions to promote gender equality.  The EC, the Member States and most partner countries are signatories to these agreements. 

The EU Policy Framework: 

The EC has chosen two complementary approaches of gender mainstreaming and promoting specific measures in favour of women.  Gender mainstreaming is the systematic integration of the respective situations, priorities and needs of women and men into all policies.  The legal base for this approach is the 1998 Regulation on the integration of gender issues in development cooperation. The purpose is to work to achieve equality by actively and openly taking into account, at the planning stage, the effects of policies on the respective situations of women and men in implementing and monitoring.  This process is reinforced by a set of specific measures to support the empowerment of women through their economic, social and environmental roles.

The main responsibility for strengthening gender equality lies with national governments as outlined in the Programme of Action.   The Commission has a key role to play in supporting priorities and initiatives.  The topic must be included in the ongoing EC policy dialogue with government and civil society and concern should be expressed if national priorities do not include gender equality issues.  Partner countries are encouraged to build partnerships to facilitate information sharing and resource pooling with other international partners and organisations.

Activities in the field of promoting gender equality include, in particular:

• Strengthening human rights, with specific attention to women’s rights: land rights, access to credit, role of women and men in conflict and crisis, reproductive and sexual rights, right to physical integrity (responses against domestic violence, rape, trafficking in human beings, honour crimes, harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation etc);

• Supporting specific measures related to access to and control of resources and services for women, e.g. in areas of education, vocational training, employment opportunities, and political decision making and governance structures (parliaments, ministries, elections and local governments) and in the private sector.  Particular attention will be devoted to poor women in order to improve their access to services;

• Supporting the analysis and improvement of statistics disaggregated by sex and age, development and dissemination of methodologies, guidelines, gender impact assessments, thematic studies, indicators, and other operational instruments;

• Supporting awareness raising and advocacy work and supporting the Non State Actors active in the area of gender equality;

• Supporting activities aiming at strengthening institutional and operational capacities of key players in the development process, such as the provision of gender specialists, training and technical assistance and by supporting national institutions such as gender equality ministries, national women’s machineries or gender equality commissions and/or committees and Non State actors which can be strategically important for accelerating national progress towards gender equality.