Women’s Economic Empowerment: How Women Contribute to and Benefit from Growth

This Strategic Guidance Note explains the background to and international thinking on women’s economic empowerment and then explains how the Market Development Facility programme addresses women’s economic empowerment. It contains three parts:

- How women can contribute to and benefit from growth – This reflects on the background to the Market Development Facility’s position on women’s economic empowerment, how this ties into the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s thinking on gender and how this approach has built on the experiences of other market development programs and on emerging research.

- Defining women’s economic empowerment and the women’s economic empowerment framework – This provides a definition of women’s economic empowerment as it is currently understood and sets out the women’s economic empowerment framework and explains how this will be incorporated into the Market Development Facility approach.

- Operational steps for integrating a diagnostic women’s economic empowerment framework into the Market Development Facility approach – This sets out the steps for operationalising women’s economic empowerment and integrating women’s economic empowerment analysis, monitoring and management into the program’s core life cycle approach.