Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps his Department is taking to increase women’s rights in developing countries.

The UK is an international leader on gender equality and promoting women’s and girls’ rights. Gender equality is a top development priority and priority for the UK. We will not achieve any of the Sustainable Development Goals while gender inequality persists. Gender equality is considered in the design of all of DFID’s programmes. Our support is delivering results at scale – between 2015 and 2019, UKAid supported 5.8 million girls to gain a decent education; helped 23.5 million women and girls with modern methods of family planning; and reached 60.3 million children under 5, women of childbearing age and adolescent girls through our nutrition-related programmes.