People experience gender-specific discrimination in every country. There are still clear inequalities between gender groups worldwide. Access to rights and services differs depending on a person's gender, social and ethnic background, age, physical and mental abilities or sexual orientation. The various forms of discrimination usually interact, are interdependent and can reinforce each other (intersectionality). Global crises such as climate change, violent conflicts, poverty and the COVID-19 pandemic have a particularly negative impact on the situation of women and girls. For German development cooperation, gender equality is a quality feature and explicit goal: the quality feature "human rights, gender equality and inclusion" is anchored in all development cooperation projects.
Implementation takes place in three fields of action:
1. Strategic positioning and targeted agenda-setting in international, national and internal BMZ processes
2. Capacity development in the BMZ and its implementing organizations
3. Development of environment and trend analyses as well as methods and concepts
German development cooperation has contributed to overcoming gender-specific discrimination and strengthening women's rights in relevant national and international processes. At national level, the second GAP (2016-2020) and the associated annual road maps were designed during the predecessor module.
Successful approaches such as the intergenerational dialog were piloted and prepared for scaling up. Stimuli for innovative approaches and measures were created through a competition for the empowerment of women through digital solutions. The development of GG1 quality criteria increased the effectiveness of the promotion of gender equality in GG1 projects.