Funding trends

What are the important trends in gender equality ODA?

Top donors

Who are the top donors of gender equality ODA?

Analysis on gender equality-related donor finance typically looks at all funding tagged with the gender equality policy marker, meaning both principal and significant funding. While analyses including both principal and significant are important for understanding the broader finance landscape, they tend to give an inflated impression of donors' commitment to gender equality. This is in part because when the gender equality policy marker is applied, the whole value of a project gets counted as "gender-related" funding, even if only a small component of the project is actually furthering gender equality goals.

Because donors are required to meet higher standards to qualify funding as 'principal', principal-tagged gender funding serves as a better, though still imperfect, indicator for assessing donors’ actual commitment.

Looking at principal gender equality-related funding over time, the picture is rather grim. Although total gender equality-related funding increased in recent years, most new funding has supported non-principal projects.

On the level of individual donors, approaches are mixed. For example, Canada has scaled up spending on principal gender projects almost five times faster than its overall ODA, while other gender equality policy 'champions' like the UK have not increased gender equality ODA as expected. Many donors have introduced targets to increase their principal spending, but few have met these commitment. For example, in 2021, France set an ambitious target for 20% of its ODA to have gender equality as a principal objective by 2025, as part of its Programming Law on Inclusive Development. However, in 2022-2023, only 6.3% of France’s bilateral assistance actually targeted gender equality as a primary objective. The majority of its gender-focused ODA is still marked as a significant, rather than principal, objective.

Top Sectors

What are the top sectors for gender equality ODA?

Health & populations was the sector receiving the largest volume of funding to projects tagged with the gender equality policy marker in 2022. This trend was likely due to ongoing spending related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both health and government funding include gender-specific purpose codes and are highly funded sectors overall.

Definitions

What does gender equality mean?

According to the SDGs, gender equality means "women and girls, everywhere, must have equal rights and opportunity, and be able to live free of violence and discrimination." Gender equality is an important precursor to the achievement of development across all other sectors. As such, some donors have adopted an approach of "gender mainstreaming," or integrating gender equality into all kinds of development programs. In addition to being a cross-cutting issue, gender equality is a goal in-and-of-itself. Because of this dual nature, it can sometimes be hard to identify what exactly is being referred to in discussions about gender equality, and when a project has tangible and measurable impact on women and girls.

At the Generation Equality Forum in 2021, the global community agreed on a framework for understanding gender equality across six key action areas. The Generation Equality Forum was a major global gathering for gender equality, bringing together government delegates, UN representatives, youth leaders, civil society advocates, academics, and members of the private sector to bring new life to the global movement for gender equality and set a course toward bold gender equality outcomes by 2026.

What are the key debates and topics surrounding gender equality?

The Generation Equality Forum held two meetings in 2021, in Mexico City in March and in Paris in June, and culminated in the launching of a 5-year Global Acceleration Plan to achieve irreversible progress towards gender equality. The Acceleration Plan is based on a series of ambitious, concrete, and transformative actions, and is backed by US$40 billion in financial commitments pledged at the summit.

In addition, the Mexico City event officially launched the Forum’s multi-stakeholder Action Coalition partnerships across six major themes of gender justice. Each coalition identified critical goals in its theme to be achieved by 2026, which are helpful in understanding and defining the many dimensions of gender equality. (For more information on the Action Coalitions' design and goals, view the Generation Equality Forum Global Acceleration Plan.

In 2024, UN Women released the Generation Equality Accountability Report, which provided an in-depth analysis of progress made under the Global Acceleration Plan. The report outlined that financial pledges increased from the original US$40 billion to US$50.3 billion, and that US$40.4 billion of the pledges have been secured, and US$21.9 billion has been spent, listing sectoral allocations as:

• Economic justice and rights: US$30.9 billion pledged, with US$27.4 billion secured and US$12.4 billion spent;
• GBV: US$10.3 billion pledged, with US$8.5 billion secured;
• SRHR: US$6.7 billion pledged, US$3.3 billion secured, and US$2.3 billion spent;
• Feminist action for climate justice: US$560 million pledged, with key efforts on creating green jobs for women; and
• Technology & innovation: US$211 million pledged, with US$149 million secured and US$133 million spent.
  

Still, despite the additional funding and significant progress made in implementing the commitments, the report warned that women and girls face 137 more years of extreme poverty unless current funding and implementation trends accelerate. Challenges to progress include persistent funding gaps for CSOs, youth- and adolescent-led organizations, and grassroots initiatives, as well as insufficient data on marginalized groups due to poor tracking of key equality and GBV indicators.

The report recommended:

Increasing investments in youth-led and grassroots organizations;

Scaling up evidence-driven prevention strategies, particularly in areas like climate justice and digital inclusion; and

Developing gender-disaggregated data for better tracking of progress.

According to the UN, as of 2024, none of the indicators under SDG #5 have yet been fully achieved. Nonetheless, some trends have been promising. Women now hold one-fourth of all parliamentary seats, which represents a significant rise over the past decade. Still, fully achieving the goals outlined in SDG #5 remains a challenge, with some indicators far from their respective targets. For instance, currently 1 in 4 girls continue to be married as children, and the Generation Equality Accountability Report cautioned that with current progress, child marriage is unlikely to be eradicated before 2092.

In recent years, there has been a significant wave of countries developing or institutionalizing FFPs, such as Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. This momentum has been underpinned by the ambition to embed gender equality, human rights, and inclusive development across all levels of foreign policy. However, despite the initial surge, several pioneering countries have recently deprioritized or retreated from their FFP commitments. For example, Sweden has shifted away from its hallmark FFP under a new conservative government, and other donors such as Germany and the Netherlands have signaled a slowdown or backlash against FFP agendas. This retrenchment is occurring in the context of a global rise in anti-gender movements, which are not only well-financed but have actively challenged donors' ability to deliver on their gender equality commitments. These movements have complicated the implementation of FFPs and gender funding, making it increasingly difficult for donors and advocates to translate their policy commitments into tangible progress for women’s rights and broader gender equality goals.