Mid-term review of the Norwegian Action Plan for women’s rights and gender equality in development cooperation (2007-2009)

This paper investigates to what extent Norway has contributed to development results for women’s rights and gender equality in selected partner countries. The paper indicates that the marker on gender as a main objective of Norwegian projects and programmes showed a stagnation from 2007 to 2008, but the overall relative use of the gender marker increased. Yet, the paper finds that the entire contribution in this regard is still relatively low, which should encourage stronger work on gender.

The paper notes that the gender budget line of Norwegian government was designed to support the implementation of the “Gender Action Plan” (GEAP). However, the guidelines mainly focus on projects and programmes which target women, and not on promoting gender mainstreaming in an innovative way.

As a result, the paper makes the following conclusions and recommendations:

• evidence of gender mainstreaming is weak, and this is the weakest part of the “Women’s Rights and Gender Equality” (WRGE) work
• governance and human development generally score high on the gender marker, while other sectors such as infrastructure and energy score low
• the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) should decide on a management system for the “Gender Action Plan” that allows systematic planning and reporting, and sets priorities and asks for results
• there is a need to look at reporting formats to better cover the good work that has been done
• MFA should give clear mandates to the gender unit on how wide their rights and duties to report on the action plan are, but place overall responsibility for the action plan at a higher management level
• it should set up a gender focal network on the management level, to supplement the focal network of gender-knowledgeable persons in current network
• it should increase knowledge production and synergy between bi- and multilateral investments.