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WID supports gender integration throughout USAID.

Gender Matters brochure
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Women in Development: Achieving Results

Top Left: Photo of woman at a construction site. Top Right:   Photo of a group of children in a classroom. Bottom Left: Photo of a girl smiling through a fence.   Bottom Right: Photo of two women working at a computer.  Caption Reads: USAID Missions are working to make sure women and men share in the benefits of development. Global Snapshots provides a look at some of their activities. (Look for more snapshots monthly).
See Global Snapshots (locator at right) for examples of how USAID Missions are working to make sure women and men share in the benefits of development. Look for more snapshots monthly.

The contributions that women make to the economic, social, and political lives of their nations, communities, families and the next generation make them key actors in effective development. More than 800 million women are economically active worldwide -- in agriculture, small and microenterprise, and, increasingly, in the export processing industries that drive globalization.Over 70 percent of these women live in the developing regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Women's unemployment rates remain high relative to those of men, and when employed, they are paid less than men for the same work. It is not surprising, then, that women constitute 60 percent of the rural poor.

Limitations on women's legal rights and participation in civil society are widespread. Political leadership positions are still largely occupied by men although women have increasingly provided dynamic leadership in the nongovernmental (NGO) and small enterprise sectors. Legal restrictions on women's land and property ownership continue to hamper women's ability to acquire productive assets and to reduce their vulnerability when family or other crises affect them. Girls' education has been shown to have a dramatic impact on women's earning power and on families' welfare but progress toward gender equality in education still lags, both in absolute terms and relative to those of boys.

Conflict and crisis have a disproportionate impact on women, who are frequent targets of rape and other forms of sexual violence, branding, maiming, and displacement. Not only does such violence impede women's ability to live full and productive lives, but it restricts their contributions to family, society and economic development, often leading to starvation, trafficking, disease, the disintegration of families, ostracism of the victims, and ultimately mental, medical and economic consequences of untold proportions.

Promoting a stronger and more productive role for women in development demands a broad and flexible approach. USAID's approach to gender integration is to design programs that take both women's and men's participation into account. When this is done development programs are more effective.

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