Development spending cuts will hit women and girls

The need to support women globally

Women and girls, along with people who are LGBTQI+, are often in the greatest need around the world, particularly in relation to health care.

Nearly 300,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth globally in 2020, according to the UK’s parliamentary International Development Committee, – with 70 percent of these deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. A girl in South Sudan is more likely to die in childbirth than to finish secondary school.

The rights of women and LGBTQI+ are also under increasing attack. They face an unprecedent convergence of right-wing and nationalist groups, authoritarian leaders, religious groups, conservative organisations, and men’s online communities such as ‘incels’, attacking gender equality activists and the legislation they have fought for.

These interconnected movements against gender rights receive three times more funding (US$3.7 billion) than feminist and queer movements (US$1.2 billion) (Global Philanthropy Project 2020). The funding to movements against gender rights is directed towards a growing network of thinktanks and organisations, including in Europe, Russia and the US, all promoting anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-abortion agendas.

IDS is involved in two programmes investigating how women’s rights are being attacked, Countering Backlash and Sustaining Power, and we have seen the range of anti-gender tactics being used around the world.

Surge in discriminatory laws

In recent years 12 countries in Africa have seen a surge in discriminatory laws directed against LGBTQI+ people (Amnesty International 2024). In particular, 2023 was full of significant setbacks, with legislation proposed or signed into law to severely roll back LGBTQI+ rights in Uganda, Ghana and Kenya.

In Bangladesh, those advocating for women’s rights, face online abuse on Facebook, mocking and trivialising them and their families, and attacking them by critiquing / morally policing their choice of attire and personal freedoms.

In India, members of organisations working to prevent violence against women face various kinds of backlash such as threats from family members for working on women’s rights, caste discrimination, and face verbal and physical abuse and sexual violence within their own communities aimed at preventing women’s actions against discrimination.

In Europe, in 2021, President Erdoğan’ withdrew Turkey from the landmark Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, and in 2022 Hungary’s government tightened its abortion rules. Pregnant women must now listen to their foetus’ heartbeat before accessing an abortion.

Impacts of past ODA cuts

The scale of these attacks show the need for progressive governments to step up their support to funding for gender justice – especially to grassroots movements. However, in the UK, evidence shows that ODA budget cuts have already had a negative impact. A cut in the ODA budget from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5% in 2020 had a disproportionate impact on gender equality and women’s rights, as a result of programmes specifically targeting women and girls being cut, and due to the greater gendered impacts of broader cuts in areas such as public services and social protection.

Just last year, the UK’s cross-party International Development Committee reported on the “devastating impact” of the deep cuts made to UK ODA in 2020, reporting that the impact has led to “failing women and girls and marginalised people the world over”.

Evidence from Care International shows that UK aid spending with a focus on gender equality nearly halved between 2019 and 2022, falling from £6.3bn to £3.4bn.

The latest cut to 0.3% (0.15% if you take out UK-based expenditure) will undoubtedly compound these negative impacts, particularly alongside similar ODA budget cuts from other countries. And it really is a false economy.  When ODA is directed at projects supporting women and girls or gender equality, it can be transformational.  Successes include the Women’s Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme, which has transformed access to sexual and reproductive health and rights services for the poorest women and girls across 27 countries in Africa and Asia. Reaching over 6 million women and girls since 2018, it has averted nearly 37,000 maternal deaths, prevented 3.85 million unsafe abortions, and helped 300,000 girls and young women stay in school.

Positive progress

At IDS, we have seen the positive impact of development programmes supporting gender justice, as discussed in a recent webinar. The project Sustaining Power: Women’s struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia (SuPWR) examines when, how, and why women’s power struggles in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan succeed in retaining power and sustaining their gains against backlash.

The use of participatory, reflective and theatre-based methods has enabled the collection of qualitative, longitudinal data. It also gave 16 women’s rights’ organisations the space to come together in reflexive spaces together and think – a luxury that is ill afforded to those on the frontline fighting for women’s rights and gender justice. For example, NMES, the landless women squatters movement in Nepal, made connections with other movements in the South Asia, thereby amplifying their voices and strengthening solidarities.

Also, research by IDS and partners on policy responses to address the increase in women’s unpaid care and domestic work during Covid-19, across 59 countries of Asia and the Pacific, led to the development of a unique three-tier framework for policy action and comprehensive strategies for policymakers. This framework operationalises the Triple R agenda of ‘Recognise’, ‘Reduce’, and ‘Redistribute’ unpaid work. This approach is helping to redirect attention of the Triple R approach on quantity of care, to make a case for improving the overall quality of care.

Other ways to support gender justice

In light of these development programmes that are making real progress, the reduction of ODA is undoubtedly a huge blow. We hope progressive philanthropists will now step up to help counter the backlash against gender rights that we are witnessing around the world. There are non-financial ways to support gender justice, including building solidarities across movements and to overcome differences to further women’s and LGBTQI+ rights. IDS researchers have detailed six ways this can be done in our report Building Solidarities: Gender Justice in a time of Backlash.

We also support the call by the Gender and Development Network (GADN) for the UK Government to commit to using its voice to support women and girls on the global stage. This includes speaking up at the UN and in other international fora to resist the attack on women’s and girls’ rights, freeing up other funds, such as the cancellation of sovereign debt and building new forms of equitable partnerships with countries in the global South that move away from the outdated foreign aid model.

This year sees the 30th anniversary of the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, where world leaders created a roadmap for equal rights for women and girls. So much has been achieved since then. Let’s not allow this progress to falter.