Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Executive summary
25
Cambodia,
Rwanda, and
South Africa
all made
commitments
to gender
equality a key
component
of their
constitutions
its additional Millennium Development Targets. No country has adequately
addressed women’s poverty and economic opportunity—either in terms of
their participation in labor markets or of asset ownership and control.
In each of the four countries the conditions have been created for fostering
large-scale societal transformation. Each country has a critical mass of change
agents, within government and civil society, with a vision of gender equality
and women’s empowerment. In some instances, such as in Rwanda and South
Africa, leaders in governments have worked in alliance with leaders in civil society,
while in others, as in Chile, the pressure of an independent women’s movement
forced change within government. Institutional structures and processes
are all being transformed through constitutional change, legal reform, and the
formation of new government organizations. Cambodia, Rwanda, and South
Africa all made commitments to gender equality a key component of their
constitutions, and all three, as well as Chile, have implemented major legal
and legislative reforms to advance equality between women and men. And, in
each country a national women’s machinery has been put in place, supported
by political leaders, with strong mandates for achieving gender equality.
It is difficult to establish whether adequate technical resources exist in
each of these countries for implementing the country’s commitments to gender
equality. However, the multilayered responses (legislative, policy, and project)
to gender inequality in each country suggest that technical capacity is not
lacking.
Moreover, based on the evidence available, it is not possible to comment
explicitly on whether the gender equality machinery in each country has adequate
financial resources to do its work. Yet, the advent of gender budget initiatives,
especially in Chile, Rwanda, and South Africa, holds the promise of
such information becoming available and useful to gender equality advocates
within and outside government.
Finally, each country has women’s movements that can hold governments
to their promises. Gender budget initiatives are an important monitoring and
accountability mechanism. Each country is also a signatory to the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, but it is
not clear whether the associated monitoring mechanism truly serves to hold
governments accountable for bringing about the changes required to meet the
convention’s provisions.
Gender mainstreaming in Millennium Development Goals-based
country policy processes
Poverty reduction strategies within low-income countries are the mechanisms
for influencing development policies and plans and ensuring that actions to
address the Millennium Development Goals are implemented. Thus, a critical
entry point for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment at the
country level is the poverty reduction strategy process.