The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has a long-standing commitment to women’s economic empowerment and gender equality through thoughtful and innovative programming. With resources from the former Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Fund at USAID, the Agency is implementing 78 activities in more than 60 countries, partnering with 470 private sector, non-governmental and local organizations, as well as host country governments, to advance women’s economic empowerment globally. Through December 2020, roughly half of these activities reached 181,543 women (see Figure 1). These women often benefited from multiple economic empowerment interventions, such as access to markets, business training, loans, and more. This report showcases a snapshot of these activities, as the Agency continues to build on successes and lessons learned.
USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub (GenDev) continues to support activities that empower women to prosper in the workforce and succeed as entrepreneurs, and that address discriminatory laws, improve employer practices, and change harmful gender norms. This work breaks barriers across sectors, such as health, gender-based violence (GBV) including sexual harassment, lack of childcare, and other critical areas integral to advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
USAID uses a three-pronged approach to advance women’s economic empowerment in every region where we work and is well-positioned to lead the larger development community in creating opportunities for women to participate in the economy on an equal basis with men. First, we manage funding and ensure that we have optimal outcomes and results, and that investments are efficient and effective. Second, as a team of technical experts, we work relentlessly to identify the most promising proposals for accelerating women’s economic empowerment, provide initial funding to pilot these approaches, and then bring the best performers to scale. Third, we leverage our extensive field presence to advance women’s economic empowerment and gender equality globally.
