Embedding Gender: WEE within MSD programs

Executive Summary

Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) is now recognised as both a critical enabler and outcome of poverty reduction and successful economic development. WEE is one of the three pillars of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Gender equality and women’s empowerment policy. This knowledge exchange brief discusses how WEE has been integrated into Market Systems Development (MSD) programs.

It explores how MSD programs such as the Market Development Facility (MDF) have, from an initially low base, had considerable successes in formally incorporating WEE into their interventions and monitoring. The brief highlights some of the key challenges faced when trying to integrate WEE and suggests ways to overcome them. It concludes with findings from recent work MDF has undertaken on women’s agency, arguing that MSD programs diagnostic approaches are able to offer unique insights in this area that could be adopted by other programs.

This knowledge exchange brief is part of a series developed by the DFAT-funded Market Development Facility (MDF). The briefs reflect a range of perspectives from roundtable discussions facilitated by MDF at DFAT in Canberra in October 2018 as part of MDF’s learning agenda. The briefs acknowledge the diversity of policy perspectives on MSD and incorporate examples and lessons learned from MDF and other MSD programs. The learning agenda aims to support learning and information sharing by MDF, one of DFAT’s largest, most sectorally diverse and geographically dispersed MSD programs. Learning Agenda sessions are aimed at deepening understanding of the value, application and complementarities of MSD as well as other private sector approaches in complex economic and political environments.