Gender

No country can fully realize its economic potential if women and girls are left behind.

In 2005, the United Nations’ World Summit reaffirmed gender equality as a development goal unto itself (Goal 3) and emphasized its importance as a means to achieving all of the other Millennium Development Goals.

Despite the progress that has been made, six out of ten of world's poorest people are still women and girls, less than 16 percent of the world's parliamentarians are women and two thirds of all children shut outside the school gates are girls [Source: United Nations Development Programme]. Gender equality and women's empowerment are human rights that lie at the heart of development.

What Counterpart International is Doing:
Counterpart adheres to a gender and development approach that emphasizes gender mainstreaming and equity in all program activities, including staff hiring practices, partner selection and grantee selection.

Counterpart’s approach seeks to create a balance between resources allocated for women and men. Counterpart's purpose is to demonstrate that empowerment of women is not achieved at the expense of men, but rather to their benefit.

Our programs include capacity building for women's NGOs, business women's associations, advocacy organizations, organizational partnerships and sector coalitions. Counterpart programs track gender attendance and involvement in program training sessions, workshops, and seminars, and in the use of program facilities, such as information resource centers.

Counterpart’s gender programming includes the creation of a Women’s Association and Women’s Center in Tajikistan, teaching mothers the importance of breastfeeding in India and providing small grants to women-led organizations in Afghanistan.

Our capabilities within Gender:

Gender Equity and Mainstreaming

Defined: Gender Mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is the public policy concept of assessing the different implications for women and men of any planned policy action, including legislation and programs, in all areas and levels.

Noteworthy

In Afghanistan, Counterpart catalyzed a Gender Budgeting process by bringing together key government ministries and CSOs. The result of this effort was a commitment to gender-sensitive budgeting, and a $5 million earmark for women's programs in the 2009 parliamentary budget.

Our Work

Listen

Listen to the story of Bunivoni Navovar:
how Counterpart helped empower Tajik women who were being barred from the local workforce, and changed a community in the process. Counterpart International’s Senior Vice President, Arlene Lear, recalls a story rooted in the organization’s first forays into NGO development work in Tajikistan, just after the Soviet Union dissolved.