Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in developing countries requires significantly increased investments. The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate is working to address this challenge. Investing in gender equality is not only the right thing to do; it is a global public good and pre-requisite of inclusive, sustainable development for all.

1. www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development
www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development
Putting finance to work for gender equality and women’s
empowerment
“We will work for a significant increase in investments to close the gender gap”.
Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in developing countries requires
significantly increased investments.1
The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (DCD) is working to
address this challenge. Investing in gender equality is not only the right thing to do; it is a global public good
and pre-requisite of inclusive, sustainable development for all.
How can we achieve this?
Official Development Assistance (ODA) is and will remain an important source of financing, especially in the
Least Developed Countries. The full “toolbox” of development finance needs to support gender equality
to implement the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and deliver for women and girls. This means:
 mobilizing financial resources dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment as a main
objective from sources including and beyond ODA;
 getting better at integrating (mainstreaming) gender equality into all development investments,
and investment by other actors; and
 ensuring that, at minimum, development flows and other investments do not undermine gender
equality and women’s empowerment.
Collectively, donors and partners need to maximise both the quality and quantity of financing to SDG 5:
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. We need to ensure that women benefit from
all sources of finance in addition to ODA, such as flows from the private sector, development finance
institutions, foundations, and civil society. Ideally public, private, domestic and international resources
would work holistically together to address gender equality and women’s empowerment, including
through partnerships, innovative financing models and mechanisms such as blended finance, green finance
and social impact investments, efforts towards gender responsive domestic resources mobilization, etc.
Source: OECD Global Outlook on Financing for Sustainable Development (2018)
1
2017 HLPF Thematic review of SDG 5
Blended finance
Philanthropy
Impact
Investing:
Gender
lens
investing
Public Private
Domestic
International

2. www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development
www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development
Where are we now?
The current view is partial – while good data sources
exist for some elements, it is hard to know overall
what finance supports investments in gender
equality, and what the needs and gaps are.
The OECD DCD tracks ODA using the DAC Gender
Equality Policy Marker2
, which shows that USD 44.8b
or 38% of ODA integrates gender equality, though
only 4% of ODA is dedicated to gender equality
programmes. The sectors of focus include
government and civil society, humanitarian aid,
education, and agriculture
Data from a number of philanthropic
foundations that report to the OECD shows that
only 16% of financing reported targets gender
equality, or USD 1.2 billion a year.
2
The most established measure of financing for gender equality, the marker records aid that focus on gender equality
as either a significant (mainstreamed) or principal (dedicated) objective.
Source: New unpublished analysis, based on OECD data (2019)
Source: Development finance for gender equality and women’s
empowerment: A snapshot (2019)
Source: Development finance for gender equality and women’s
empowerment: A snapshot (2019)
While the several multilateral institutions reporting
their gender focussed flows noted that as much as
35% integrated gender equality, the bulk of financing
from these organisations was not screened for gender
equality. The philanthropic and multilateral data can
be strengthened through increased reporting to the
OECD DCD.

3. www.oecd.org/dac/gender-development
www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development
Initial analysis indicates the potential to tap commercial finance to contribute to gender equality.
For example, blended finance refers to the
strategic use of development finance3
for the
mobilisation of additional (primarily
commercial) finance towards sustainable
development in developing countries. Of the
160 funds and facilities surveyed by the OECD
in 2019, 56% said they consider that their
investment strategy contributes to achieving
SDG 5.
Where are we heading?
The OECD DCD is developing a compass to guide actors over the next 2-4 years in financing SDG5. This will
draw on cross-disciplinary specialists, analytical and policy tools, convening power and diverse policy
communities, including the DAC Network on Gender Equality (GENDERNET). The aims are to expand the
evidence base and to facilitate dialogue and build the expertise of practitioner communities.
3
Development finance here refers to official sources of finance with an explicit development mandate. This includes
Official Development Assistance (ODA) as well as instruments such as guarantees, equity investments, and non-
concessional loans.
Source: Preliminary data from the OECD Survey on Blended Finance Funds
and Facilities 2019 (forthcoming).