Gender equality

© GIZ/Ahmad Daghlas

Gender equality can only be achieved by securing change at many levels. This is why GIZ’s support ranges from policy advice to media training.

 
The international community, the European Union and Germany have all made gender equality their objective. Structural inequality and discrimination on the basis of gender should be things of the past. These aims are anchored in, among other agreements, the 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals/SDGs), the European Consensus on Development, and the coalition agreement covering the 19th legislative period of the German Bundestag.

GIZ supports these policy objectives. Its work is underpinned by human rights, its own gender strategy and the ‘do no harm’ principle. It seeks to ensure that aid measures are planned in a particularly conflict-sensitive manner.

GIZ produces a gender analysis for each project. This enables potential to promote gender equality to be defined at an early stage. It also enables project teams to identify and eliminate undesired negative effects. Effective knowledge management, for example by expanding sector- and country-specific gender expertise, also forms part of these approaches. This expertise is available to both internal and external users via GIZ websites under ‘Gender’ and at www.genderingermandevelopment.net.

GIZ works at a number of different levels to promote gender equality.

  • It advises state partners on designing policy, legislation and measures at all levels to meet the differing circumstances and needs of women, men, girls and boys.
  • It supports women and civil society initiatives working to achieve gender equality. GIZ offers these women and projects access to information, scope for networking and ways of securing active involvement in social, political and economic processes.
  • It helps to prevent and overcome gender-specific discrimination and violence, including domestic and sexual violence and harmful traditional practices, including female genital mutilation and child marriage.
  • It works to target compliance with and strengthening of the rights of women, girls and sexual minorities.
  • It equips women and girls to use digital media. Women lag behind men in their use of digital technology, and GIZ wants to narrow this ‘digital gender gap’. Examples include the infotainment app on employment rights in Myanmar and the media campaign ‘Ana Hunna / I am here / Je suis là’ intended to strengthen the participation of women in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

GIZ supports gender equality through innovative and tried and tested approaches, targeted awareness raising, exchanges, dialogue and the equal involvement of women and men, girls and boys. It aims to encourage societal changes that ensure greater gender equality in the long term.