Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Overseas Aid

(asked on 23rd June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which official development assistance programmes funded by his Department are targeted at supporting women and girls.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 1st July 2020

The UK’s Gender Equality Act 2014 (an amendment to the International Development Act 2002), legally requires all overseas development funding to meaningfully consider the impact of how it will contribute to reducing gender inequality.

The Department works with trusted delivery partners, such as the World Bank, to ensure that women and girls are accounted for throughout the delivery process. The Department uses its position as a Board member to ask all delivery partners to disaggregate the data they receive, to show how each project levels the playing field for women and girls.

Our two research and innovation funds, the Newton Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund, recognise the importance of women and girls. Both funds define gender equality as an eligible research for development objective and all funding calls require applicants to submit their Gender Equality Statement, against which funding applications are assessed.

Some examples of the Funds’ gender work include: the Gender, Justice and Security Hub, which delivers innovative, interdisciplinary research on the challenge of achieving gender justice and inclusive security in conflict-affected societies; the Newton-Bhabha partnership with India, which has funded research into maternal care across a range of eight lower- and middle-income countries; and a project in Brazil with Sempreviva Organizção Feminista, which aims to develop skills in sustainable agriculture and commerce to help women in rural Brazil have better access to markets, both as producers and consumers.

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