These are excerpts from the panel was sponsored by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and Isis International, titled “What has happened to financing for gender equality?: A South Critical View of FFD, Debt Relief, Aid Effectiveness and Aid for Trade" at the ongoing UNCSW meetings. The Beijing Platform for Action incorporates very clear provisions regarding the need to fund the various aspects of gender equality, development and peace. Since the Beijing conference, the global community has been through a number of negotiations and agreements where financing had been discussed. This panel provided a critical examination of the implication to gender equality of some of the financing schemes and mechanisms employed for development. It raises the question: what is the overall and multi-faceted implication of the emergent financing architecture on
gender equality?

The panel was chaired by Gita Sen, member of DAWN and nominee for the position of Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Sen noted that unlike the 1980s where women had a clear position against structural adjustment programmes, the issues on financing for development are now more complex. There are complexities in macroeconomic politics brought about by globalisation, and there are new key players such as China that we have to take on, that women have to be cognisant of. But precisely because the current drivers of globalisation are at a loss regarding how to get out of the economic recession particularly in United States, there is room for alternatives. Women should be involved in shaping these alternatives by “meaningfully participating” in the debates around the Paris Principles on Aid Effectiveness and Financing for Development.

The panel emphasised the need for women’s organisations participating at CSW and beyond to engage in the debates about aid effectiveness for the following reasons: 1) There are existing global commitments to fund women’s empowerment and gender equality as stated in BPFA and other UN declarations. 2) From these commitments, gender equality programmes were set up by governments and women’s groups. But in many countries in the South, these programmes remain largely dependent on bilateral and multilateral aid. 3) Financing for gender equality are at consistently low levels.

These challenges are linked to the macroeconomics of aid. Neoliberal globalisation that promotes rapid market liberalisation has led to the contraction of women’s security and rights. Already marginalised in this context, the situation of women is expected to worsen as gender equality concerns are not taken on board in the current aid architecture outlined under the Paris Principles. Gigi Francisco, DAWN SEA Coordinator said: “The Paris Agenda which harmonises funding horizontally and aligns it vertically, will affect funding for women’s rights empowerment and gender equality”. As stated above, many of these women’s programmes were largely funded through aid.

The participants affirmed that women’s groups have to build their capacity to engage in these debates and influence macroeconomic policies and not just be dependent on the goodwill of governments or other civil society leaders. Research to produce sex disaggregated data for baseline comparisons should be pursued; alliances across movements must be forged for advocacy, and developing the capacity of local groups including young women to engage in this complex process should be developed.