In Swedish development cooperation, gender has been a thematic priority for a long time. The international donor community, however, has not managed to deliver on the gender equality goals of the Paris agenda. The donors need a leader to take on the role as driver of the gender equality agenda. I believe that Sweden should take on that role, starting this week at the High Level Forum on aid effectiveness in Busan, South Korea.

The meeting is expected to adopt the ‘Busan Declaration’ and thus set the tone for the international development community for years to come. Now is the time for all participants to ‘walk the talk’. There are international agreements on gender equality, though plenty of reports and evaluations show a lack of responsibility in this regard. The design of aid must now be made relevant for this goal.

In recent years, many evaluations have demonstrated that the aid effectiveness agenda failed to deliver on gender equality goals. Increased country ownership of aid has not, as intended, led to gender equality being increasingly financed by national budgets. In fact, rather the opposite  seems to have happened. The resources allocated for gender equality have tended to decrease and the issue has disappeared almost entirely from the recipient countries’ sector budgets.

This situation has been explained by the lack of knowledge in finance and planning ministries, and in gender departments, of how to (i) mainstream gender perspectives in budget and planning processes and (ii) perform gender analyses in macroeconomic framework documents. The donors have not themselves adapted their country programmes and project portfolios to strengthening the implementation of national gender equality policies and objectives. One clear conclusion is that gender mainstreaming has not at all worked during the implementation of the Paris agenda.

In Swedish aid, gender has been a thematic priority for many years. The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, has this year for the first time made a separate presentation of results with a gender equality focus. Sida reported that eleven per cent of its aid now goes to activities that have gender equality as its main objective, compared with only seven per cent in 2008.

Although this increase is positive in itself, the share is still just over one tenth, which is too low. In light of the knowledge available about how important enhanced gender equality is for promoting social and economic development in a country, this figure needs to be radically increased.

I recently read a new study that follows up gender equality in Zambia over the last ten years. It states that the period 2000-2010 was a lost decade for women in Zambia.

The report states that key regional gender objectives such as those agreed in the SADC protocol have not been translated into national targets. Gender mainstreaming as a method for transforming Zambia’s Vision 2030 has not delivered the results because the conditions needed to work on integration have not been created. Resources for working with gender equality have not been built up in the government and traditional structures such as local chiefs or churches are not involved in the work.

Civil society in Zambia was also considered too weak to be able to assume its role as accountability watchdogs. Donors in Zambia also got scathing criticism for not having agreed on a common agenda with objectives for gender equality and programmes for improving women’s living conditions and the overall impact on societal development. It notes that there is no leader among the donors that takes on the role as a proactive driver of the agenda for gender equality.

I believe that Sweden should take on that role, not only in Zambia but globally. Sweden and Sida have a long experience of working with gender equality that we should build on and exploit in the dialogue with partners and in development cooperation globally.

I am therefore very pleased that so many of my consultancy colleagues and other gender experts in the aid community together with me have rallied around a Swedish petition which demands that Sweden’s representatives call for increased funding for gender equality in the forthcoming Busan Declaration.

We adhere to a Global Call for the Busan Declaration² to make a commitment to building national expertise for mainstreaming gender issues into national planning and budgetary processes; to financing national gender equality policies; to complying with international conventions; and to integrating gender in the overall policy framework, particularly focusing on aid, trade and investments.

¹ This article first appeared in Swedish in Sida’s magazine OmVärlden, November 2, 2011.
²The Global Call for Action on Financing Gender Equality can be seen here.