Washington, DC
[Remarks as Prepared]
DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR ISOBEL COLEMAN: Good afternoon, and welcome! This has been such an incredible event so far. I’m pleased to introduce our next panel on “Advancing Women’s Political and Civic Participation.
But first, I’d like to acknowledge the launch of USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Policy yesterday, which elevates four strategic objectives across all of our operations and programming:
- To reduce gender disparities;
- To mitigate the harmful effects of gender-based violence;
- To increase women and girls’ agency to fully exercise their rights; and
- To advance structural changes that address the root causes of gender inequality.
The promotion of gender equality is more urgent now than ever. Progress empowering women and girls has stalled as countries face compounding shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and conflict. And as we see around the world, democratic backsliding also fuels backsliding on gender equality.
Authoritarian leaders are launching a simultaneous assault on gender equality and democracy, threatening decades of progress on both fronts. These attacks are not limited to closing space for human rights and freedoms, but also are manifest through brutal gender-based violence, harassment, and other targeted crimes.
This is not simply because misogyny and authoritarianism tend to occur in parallel, but because they are mutually reinforcing ills.
Women’s empowerment is not simply an outcome of democratization but a precursor to it – and through the implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Act and the U.S. Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security, the United States recognizes the critical but difficult task of putting gender equality and women’s empowerment at the core of our democratization, human rights, governance, and peace and security agendas.
We are elevating the Advancing Women’s and Girls’ Civic and Political Leadership Initiative as a core U.S. government commitment toward achieving the Summit for Democracy objectives to bolster democracy and defend human rights globally.
USAID has made significant progress during the Year of Action to fulfill this commitment and we continue to target individual, structural, and socio-cultural barriers to the political empowerment of women and girls.
Our “ecosystem approach” aims to improve the environment for women’s civic and political participation and leadership, while we simultaneously work to build the pipeline of women who are willing and ready to lead.
Working alongside our local and international partners, USAID will provide more than $15 million dollars to launch this initiative and improve the environment for women’s leadership in eight initial focus countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Tanzania, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Kyrgyz Republic, and Yemen.
We know, however, that the barriers to women’s leadership are much larger than what one donor can achieve alone. So we are seeking to leverage the efforts of other key partners as well.
To this end, USAID has brought together a Network for Gender Inclusive Democracy to provide strategic direction and a platform to coordinate these programmatic and diplomatic efforts.
We are so pleased to be joined in the Network by a diverse group of partners committed to improving coordination, knowledge management, and advocacy to advance gender inclusive democracy and women’s political participation and leadership. The breadth and depth of experience of these partners will enable us to leverage critical relationships, resources, and data necessary for gender-transformative outcomes.
Initial Network members include:
- the Governments of Australia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom;
- Intergovernmental partners, including UN Women, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States, International IDEA, and Open Government Partnership;
- As well as Civil society, and leading academic partners
In addition, and in recognition of the growing tendency of anti-democratic actors to repress and silence their opponents through the misuse of technology, USAID is also launching the Transform Digital Spaces to Reflect Feminist Democratic Principles program, or “Transform” for short.
Transform will invest up to $6 million dollars over three years to understand, prevent, respond to, and mitigate the risk of technology-facilitated gender-based violence, including when perpetrated against women in politics and public life. Through the Transform activity, we will contribute to the important work of the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, which we’ll hear more about during our second panel discussion.