Women’s Empowerment and Gender Integration

1. Assessing the Evidence: Women’s Empowerment and Gender Integration Women’s Empowerment and Gender Integration The Asia Foundation Workshop Bali: February 2014

2. Why the Focus on Women and Gender Equality? • There is a strong correlation between a country’s gender gap and its national competitiveness, income and development (World Economic Forum) • Yet in no country in the world is there full gender equality. • Investing in women is ‘smart development’

3. Why the Focus on Women and Gender Equality in Asia? • Limiting women’s job opportunities costs Asia-Pacific region between $42 to $ 46 billion (USD)/ year (UNESCO) • In particular, the Asia-Pacific region continues to lag behind other regions (ahead only of the Middle East) on gender equality measures related to economic participation and opportunity

4. Overall Comparisons • The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report measures the degree to which countries have closed the gender gap (relative measure) • The Asia-Pacific region occupies 4th place out of 6 regions this year on overall score.

5. Status of women: Political participation • National political participation • The share of female parliamentarians in East Asian and Pacific countries is just below the global average of approximately 18% (2011) • The highest in Asia are Nepal (33.2%) and Timor-Leste (38.5%), both of which have a quota • Without a quota, countries above 20% include Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Laos • The lowest are PNG at 2.7% and Sri Lanka at 5.8%

6. Political Empowerment Subindex

7. Status of Women:Economic Participation • Female labor force participation rates are rising in most places, but • Persistent gender wage gaps for similar work • Women are more likely to work in small firms and do more informal work • Women have less access to assets areas such as financial capital or new information technology • Numbers of women in management positions is low • Land rights practices are biased against women such as inheritance and collateral

8. Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex

9. Education • The East Asia-Pacific now has the highest primary school ratio of female-to-male enrollments among all developing regions and second highest at the secondary level. • However, there are gaps related to urban-rural divide, and among specific ethnicities and socioeconomic groups. • Cambodia and Laos remain challenged in this area. • There is a reverse gender gap in Mongolia. • South Asia has challenges in the female-to-male education gap.

10. Status of Women: Rights and Security • Across the region, most countries now have decent laws in place related to rights and security but implementation is a big gap. • Gender-based violence remains an area of serious concern, with far-reaching impacts for women in terms of results of abuse.

11. Thank you!

12. Questions for Discussion • 1. What are the most critical issues in your country context in this core area? • 2. Is TAF addressing these critical issues? If so, what is TAF’s approach to addressing them? • 3. What are lessons learned from working in this area? • 4. Identify opportunities that TAF is well-positioned for in this area.

13. Status of Women:Economic Participation • The 2011 female-male labor participation rates show significant variations across the region. • In Southeast Asia, the rates range from the fiftieth percentile (Malaysia is 57th) up to a high of 90% in Vietnam and Cambodia. Despite rapid change in Timor-Leste, the rate has held constant at 52%. • In South Asia, rates tend to be significantly lower. For example, Pakistan is showing a steady increase although the rate is still only 28%; India is 36% but actually decreasing over time. Bangladesh scores well at 68%.