UK's global women and girls strategy must go further
There is much to welcome in the new global Women and Girls strategy from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It makes an important commitment to put women and girls at the centre of the FCDO’s operations, with a target of 80% of the UK’s bilateral aid having a focus on gender equality by 2030.
While the strategy has promise - there are also some gaps. For us at Sightsavers, the gap which concerns us most is the lack of specific action on reaching women and girls with disabilities.
Almost 1 in 5 women are women with disabilities. They are often amongst the most excluded in any society, experiencing disproportionately high-rates of gender-based violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Girls with disabilities are amongst the most likely to be excluded from education, and women with disabilities are less likely than women without disabilities, and than men with disabilities, to access employment.
To be effective, commitments to gender equality need to apply to women and girls in all their diversity. Too often women and girls with disabilities are not meaningfully included in programmes and policies that focus on disability or those that focus on gender.
At the 2022 Global Disability Summit the UK government committed to ensuring that women and girl with disabilities were meaningfully embedded across key priorities and that the new strategy would ‘mutually reinforce’ the existing Disability Inclusion and Rights strategy. We feel it falls short of this commitment – and doesn’t even mention the disability strategy at all.
It does recognise the increased risk of violence, significant barriers to accessing and remaining in education, for those with disabilities. It makes a very welcome commitment to support grassroots women’s rights organisations with a focus on disability and published the strategy in an easy to read format.
But the new strategy does not do enough to recognise the situation of women and girls with disabilities or to be explicit in how the strategy will reach them. There is no recognition, for example, of the additional and complex barriers that women and girls with disabilities experience in access their sexual and reproductive health rights, despite this being a priority area in the strategy. The reference to prioritising support for women with disabilities could be hugely important, but it lacks detail.
While we are concerned about the gaps, there is potential for this strategy to deliver for women and girls with disabilities. They have committed to developing a delivery plan and to tracking progress through results-focused reporting, which could demonstrate how this strategy can deliver for women and girls with disabilities.
The delivery plan must clearly set out what it means to prioritise support for women and girls. It should contain specific targets on disability inclusion, including on the percentage of the 80% of programmes that will have a focus on gender equality will be disability inclusive. In its biennial public report on progress against the strategy there should include clear disaggregation of results by disability.
The delivery plan must be clearer on how the strategy will be operationalised alongside the FCDO’s Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy. For example, the ‘equalities continuum’ mentioned in the disability inclusion and rights strategy as one of the main tools to guide and support inclusive policies across FCDO, is not mentioned.
If it is to deliver on its promise, the strategy must be sufficiently, transparently and dependably funded. This should include specific financing to reaching women and girls with disabilities, and more importantly include processes that ensure resources are allocated to mainstreaming disability inclusion across all policies and programmes. In the context of a reduced aid budget, it is even more important that funding decisions are based on robust equalities assessments and prioritise reaching those who are at most risk of exclusion.
As a champion of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s promise to ‘leave no one behind’, the UK government must ensure that its commitments apply to all women and girls, particularly those who face additional discrimination and barriers in society. Only by doing this will they be able to meet the commendable goal to tackle gender inequality around the world.
Hannah Loryman is Head of Policy at Sightsavers and previously worked at the UK Department for International Development.
