Women’s Empowerment and Gender Integration

Assessing the Evidence: Gender

Equality

Advancing Women’s Political

Participation

Increasing Women’s

Rights and Security

Expanding Women’s Economic

Opportunities

Women’s Empowerment and Gender IntegrationThe Asia Foundation WorkshopBali: February 2014

Why the Focus on Women and Gender Equality?

There is a strong correlation between a country’s gender gap and its national competitiveness, income and development (World Economic Forum)

Yet in no country in the world is there full gender equality.

Investing in women is ‘smart development’

Why the Focus on Women and Gender Equality in Asia?

Limiting women’s job opportunities costs Asia-Pacific region between $42 to $ 46 billion (USD)/ year (UNESCO)

In particular, the Asia-Pacific region continues to lag behind other regions (ahead only of the Middle East) on gender equality measures related to economic participation and opportunity

Overall Comparisons

The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report measures the degree to which countries have closed the gender gap (relative measure)

The Asia-Pacific region occupies 4th place out of 6 regions this year on overall score.

Status of women: Political participation

National political participation The share of female parliamentarians in East

Asian and Pacific countries is just below the global average of approximately 18% (2011)

The highest in Asia are Nepal (33.2%) and Timor-Leste (38.5%), both of which have a quota

Without a quota, countries above 20% include Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Laos

The lowest are PNG at 2.7% and Sri Lanka at 5.8%

Political Empowerment Subindex

Status of Women: Economic Participation

Female labor force participation rates are rising in most places, but Persistent gender wage gaps for similar work Women are more likely to work in small firms and do

more informal work Women have less access to

assets areas such as financial capital or new information technology

Numbers of women in management positions is low

Land rights practices are biased against women such as inheritance and collateral

Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex

Education The East Asia-Pacific now has the highest

primary school ratio of female-to-male enrollments among all developing regions and second highest at the secondary level.

However, there are gaps related to urban-rural divide, and among specific ethnicities and socioeconomic groups. Cambodia and Laos remain challenged in this

area. There is a reverse gender gap in Mongolia.

South Asia has challenges in the female-to-male education gap.

Status of Women: Rights and Security

Across the region, most countries now have decent laws in place related to rights and security but implementation is a big gap.

Gender-based violence remains an area of serious concern, with far-reaching impacts for women in terms of results of abuse.

Thank you!

Questions for Discussion

1. What are the most critical issues in your country context in this core area?

2. Is TAF addressing these critical issues? If so, what is TAF’s approach to addressing them?

3. What are lessons learned from working in this area?

4. Identify opportunities that TAF is well-positioned for in this area.

Status of Women: Economic Participation

The 2011 female-male labor participation rates show significant variations across the region. In Southeast Asia, the rates range from the fiftieth

percentile (Malaysia is 57th) up to a high of 90% in Vietnam and Cambodia. Despite rapid change in Timor-Leste, the rate has held constant at 52%.

In South Asia, rates tend to be significantly lower. For example, Pakistan is showing a steady increase although the rate is still only 28%; India is 36% but actually decreasing over time. Bangladesh scores well at 68%.