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Kenya: Global Gender Equality Purse Grows By $40 Billion

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4 years ago

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Generation Equality Forum concluded with nearly $40 billion committed towards accelerating gender equality in the next five years.

The funding tackles a financial deficit that has, for more than 25 years, slowed implementation of Beijing Platform for Action, a roadmap for attaining gender equality across the globe.

Gender equality programs attract a mere four per cent in bilateral aid, a drop in the ocean in the financing of thousands of women and girl-focused projects across the globe.

Further, 62 per cent of the bilateral aid is gender blind, based on data from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which tracks-bilateral aid allocated in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The financial investments draw optimism towards reviving and speeding up the progress towards ending gender-based violence (GBV), promoting women’s economic rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is alongside to supporting feminist action for climate justice, feminist movements and leadership, technologies and innovations that support equality between men and women.

Philanthropic foundations

A total of $38.5 billion was committed, including $21 billion from governments and public sector institutions, $13 billion from the private sector while philanthropic foundations pledged to grow the purse by $4.5 billion.

Particularly, United States government’s commits to inject $1 billion to support programs focused on ending violence against women and a further $175 million on preventing and responding to GVB globally.

Canadian government could also boost the global gender equality kitty with $100 million for addressing inequalities in the care economy across the world, a sector where women spend more than nine hours in unpaid labour.