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Home arrow About Us arrow Successes and Results arrow Women Thrive Puts Women at Center of $2.3 Billion in International Assistance
Women Thrive Puts Women at Center of $2.3 Billion in International Assistance PDF Print E-mail

Early this year,  Ritu Sharma Fox gave remarks at a public symposium on the newly-released gender policy by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).  Women Thrive Worldwide (formerly Women's Edge Coalition) worked closely with the MCC to develop this comprehensive and far-reaching gender policy that will be incorporated into billions of dollars in U.S. international assistance to the developing world.   Click here for Ms. Sharma Fox's complete remarks.

 Women Thrive has been the lead organization working with the MCC since its inception in 2004 to include gender analysis, which is an analysis of the social roles and responsibilities assigned to women and men in any society and their ability to access and control resources.  Under the new policy, countries receiving over $2.3 billion worth of MCC assistance currently must undergo rigorous planning and evaluation to ensure that the programs help both women and men in targeted countries.
“The MCC has shown tremendous global leadership by incorporating gender analysis that starts with project conception, consultation and program design, and follows through to all the steps of implementation and evaluation,” said Ritu Sharma Fox, Co-Founder and President of the Women Thrive Worldwide.

“This is the most comprehensive and practical U.S. policy on gender that I have seen,” she added. “It has the potential to ensure that the benefits of MCC projects reach millions of poor women, who often are left behind by development policies that do not take the reality of their lives into consideration.” Ritu Sharma Fox will be a speaker at the first public symposium on the new gender policy, being held by the MCC on Thursday January 11 in Washington, DC.

Decades of research and experience have shown that when gender differences are not taken into account, international development efforts often fail to meet their objectives.  Gender analysis factors in the different social, economic and cultural barriers women and men face when they participate in economic activity. This results in better-designed international development projects, and better potential outcomes for both sexes.  The benefits are especially great for women, who are more vulnerable to poverty worldwide because they tend to work in the lowest paid sectors, have less stable incomes, work longer hours, have less access to training and education, and have fewer economic opportunities than men.  

Under the MCC process, recipient countries have primary responsibility for project proposal design and implementation. The current policy mandates that they take gender into consideration to be eligible for MCC funds, and outlines what the MCC will do to assist in this process. Disbursement of some MCC funds may be conditioned on proper implementation of the gender guidelines.

For more information on the MCC’s gender policy visit www.mcc.gov/programs/gender/index.php
For Women Thrive's briefing paper on gender and the MCC, click here.
For Ritu Sharma's complete remarks at the public symposium on the MCC gender policy, click here.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 July 2009 )
 
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