Australia’s international support for gender equality

The Australian Government is firmly committed to gender equality and advancing the human rights of women and girls both globally and in the Indo-Pacific.

Gender equality benefits everyone. It is a necessary foundation for peace, prosperity and stability. It drives economic growth, enhances social cohesion and increases the wellbeing of all members of society.

The Australian Government has launched a new International Gender Equality Strategy, lifting our ambition to build a safer, more prosperous Indo-Pacific and world. The Strategy focuses on five priorities:

Work to end sexual and gender-based violence and advance and protect women's sexual and reproductive health and rights
Pursue gender responsive peace and security efforts
Deliver gender equitable climate action and humanitarian assistance
Promote women's economic equality and inclusive trade, and
Support locally led approaches to women's leadership.

Gender Equality

2025-26 Gender Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $66.0 million
2025-26 Inclusion and Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $3.5 million
2024-25 Gender Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $65.0 million
2024-25 Inclusion and Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $3.5 million
2023-24 Gender Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $65.0 million
2023-24 Inclusion and Equality Fund [budget estimate]: $3.5 million

In 2015, Australia established the Gender Equality Fund to strengthen work on gender equality and women's empowerment in the aid program. The Fund maintains flagship investments that promote gender equality in the Pacific and South-East Asia, and supports innovative investments at country, regional and global levels, including through partnerships with the private sector and civil society. The Gender Equality Fund plays an important role in shaping Australia's development program to drive strong gender equality performance and results.

To support gender-responsive COVID-19 efforts, the Gender Equality Fund received an additional $10 million in the financial year 2020-21, increasing the total to $65 million. The Australian Government has since maintained the same fund level for the Gender Fund.

Ending Gender-Based Violence

Australia’s efforts to address, prevent and respond to gender-based violence in all its forms include: supporting regional and 19 bilateral ending gender-based violence projects across Asia and the Pacific through our development and humanitarian programs, helping to build the evidence on what works to end violence, supporting knowledge exchange and collaboration between Australian organisations and our regional partners, and advocating for a strong focus on addressing and preventing gender-based violence in international forums.

Australia is also a member of several global advocacy partnerships focused on advancing efforts to end gender-based violence, including the UN Group of Friends for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, the Generation Equality Forum Action Coalition on Gender-Based Violence, Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, and the Call to Action on Protection of Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies.

Southeast Asia Gender-based Violence Prevention Platform

$20 million, 2024-2029

The Southeast Asia Gender-based Violence (GBV) Prevention Platform aims to improve coordinated and collaborative efforts to prevent GBV in the Southeast Asia region through evidence-based advocacy, dialogue, policy and programming. It will bring together partner governments, civil society, non-government organisations, regional bodies and international organisations to collaborate, share and work together to build capacity, evidence and action to prevent GBV.

This new flagship initiative will run from mid-2024 to mid-2029, with an estimated value of AUD$20 million over the 5 years. At the end of this period, there will be an option to extend the investment by up to another 5 years.

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Southeast Asia Gender-based Violence Prevention Platform

Support to UN Women

$22.5 million, 2020-2025

Australia is a long-standing supporter of UN Women's Ending Violence against Women and Girls global, regional and bilateral programs, providing funding since its establishment in 2010. In 2020 Australia commenced a new phase of funding through the Gender Equality Fund to support UN Women to deliver activities focused on prevention, essential services and support for local women's organisations to end violence against women and girls.

Specific activities funded under this investment include:

grant support for women's organisations responding to gender-based violence through the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women
delivery of prevention activities in the Indo-Pacific focused on stopping violence before it starts and
support for the UN Joint Global Programme for Essential Services for Women and Girls subject to violence to ensure frontline services are able to effectively respond to gender-based violence across Asia and the Pacific.

Since 2020, UN Women has launched and rolled-out the 'Making Progress in Prevention Possible' monitoring framework, 'RESPECT Women: Preventing Violence against women – Implementation Package' and 'Policy Handbook on Multisectoral National Action Plans to Prevent Violence' to support prevention activities in the Indo-Pacific. Through the UN Joint Global Programme for Essential Services, UN Women provided direct technical support and developed new guidance to improve services for survivors, including the launch and roll-out of a 'Training Package for Prosecutors', 'Handbook on Gender-responsive policing practices', published guidance on 'Safe consultations with survivors of violence against women and girls' and 'Global Costing Tool' guidance on estimating resource requirements for services.

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Support to UNFPA – kNOwVAWdata Initiative

$3 million, 2021-2025

Australia is supporting UNFPA to deliver the second Phase of the kNOwVAWdata initiative to support and strengthen regional and national capacity to measure violence against women (VAW) prevalence in Asia and the Pacific.

Launched in 2016, kNOwVAWdata is a partnership between UNFPA, DFAT, the University of Melbourne and Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS), which provides technical support and capacity building, enabling countries to undertake VAW prevalence studies in an ethical and scientifically robust way.

Australia provided $2.9 million to support the successful first phase of the kNOwVAWdata program between 2016-2021. During Phase 1, kNOwVAWdata supported 23 countries in Asia and the Pacific with violence against women data prevalence activities. The Phase 1 evaluation found that kNOwVAWdata had increased awareness and knowledge of violence against women data, and this had influenced policy and advocacy efforts in several countries across the region.

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UNICEF - Empowered and Equal Futures for Girls through Education in Southeast Asia

$7.04 million, 2023 – 2027

Australia is supporting UNICEF to strengthen education systems across Southeast Asia to address gender-based violence, promote positive gender norms and make schools safe for girls. Through this program, UNICEF is implementing whole-school approaches in primary and secondary schools in Cambodia and Vietnam by supporting schools, families and communities to create a safe school environment. The program is also working with regional institutions to strengthen education policies on ending GBV in and around schools and promote regional exchange and collaboration on advancing gender equality through education.

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Women's Leadership

Australia works across the region to support and recognise women’s voice and leadership was supported and recognised. A 2023 meta synthesis of GEF funding identified innovative DFAT investments as ' “catalytic” and an important mechanism for greater reach to grassroots rights organisations, along with multi-level advocacy'.

RiseUp!

$9 million, 2020 – 2026

Recognising the vital role of women and girls, DFAT supports young women across six countries to take up formal and informal leadership roles in their networks and communities through World YWCA. Women aged between 18 and 30 access training, safe spaces and networks to build and exercise their leadership capabilities and advocate for change based on local contexts and priorities across the Indo-Pacific region.

Amplify-Invest-Reach: A partnership with regional Women’s Funds

$12.5 million, 2022-26

Women’s funds in the Asia-Pacific region work to support human rights defenders and advocacy for the rights of women, girls and other marginalised groups. In recognition of this critical work, DFAT is partnering with Women’s Fund Asia (WFA), Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights – Asia and Pacific (UAF A&P), Women’s Fund Fiji (WFF) and the Pacific Feminist Fund (PFF) through the Amplify – Invest – Reach (A-I-R) Partnership. This work advances the rights of with human rights defenders, women’s rights organisations and networks, including by funding 156 grants in 25 countries in 2023.

Women's Economic Empowerment

Australia supports various activities to enhance women's economic empowerment and promoting sustainable and inclusive economic development that accounts for both the disproportionate impacts of economic downturns on women, and also harnesses their agency to contribute to and benefit from economic recovery measures and emerging green job opportunities.

UN Women Gender Action Lab

$7.1 million, 2024-2028

UN Women works with the private sector to advance gender-responsive business conduct through the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) –7 principles that provide companies a roadmap to become more gender-responsive throughout their value chain. To deepen this approach, in 2024 DFAT and UN Women launched the UN Women Gender Action Lab (GAL): Innovation and impact for gender equality in the Asia-Pacific region, powered by the Women’s Empowerment Principles. The GALs will identify, pilot and scale innovative multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives, such as thematic innovation labs, hackathons, incubators and accelerators, policy labs and applied research initiatives. A consultative process will determine and co-design activities with partners in areas such as:

Creating more inclusive workplaces, including for people living with disabilities
Advancing family-friendly workplaces, for example through employer-supported care services
Implementing innovative practices for gender-responsive procurement
Strengthening accountability through gender-reporting
Supporting innovation in climate tech and opportunities for women in the blue and green economies.

The four priority countries are Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, with the aim to expand over time into other countries.

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Investing in Women

Up to $80 million, 2023-27

Investing in Women (IW) is a multi-country initiative in Southeast Asia that seeks to accelerate women's economic empowerment through increased and equitable opportunities in the private sector, contributing to inclusive, sustainable economic recovery and growth in targeted countries.

Building on the lessons under the first seven years of the program (2016-2023; $102 million), IW works with business leaders, investors, and policymakers to remove barriers to women's full economic participation in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and (in a limited way) Myanmar. IW's efforts focus on women in the formal sector and small-to-medium-sized business owners, recognising them as crucial drivers of progress on gender equality that can stimulate broader change. The program's workstreams include:

Workplace Gender Equality supporting partners, including Business Coalitions that work with influential businesses on shifting workplace cultures, practices, and policy to achieve workplace gender equality, reaching more than one million employees.
Enabling Policy Reform: working with credible local institutions to strengthen the evidence base and drive collective action needed to influence and inform policy reform that supports women's equal economic participation, particularly related to the care economy.
Campaigns and Communities of Practice: supporting locally driven campaigns that positively shift gender norms amongst women and men that inhibit women's economic participation. Working with a community of advocates, IW will build evidence and networks that support the broader adoption of more gender-equal attitudes and behaviours.
Gender Lens Investing: working to increase investment in small and medium enterprises that disproportionately benefit women in Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Key program achievements since 2016:

Established Business Coalitions that improve workplace gender equality in the private sector in Southeast Asia. Together these coalitions have enlisted 128 major businesses, representing over 1 million employees, to implement more equitable workplace policies and practices.
Invested AUD 15.4 million into 82 women led or owned SMEs with 10 investing partners. This investment helped catalyse over AUD 525 million of additional capital and follow-on investment funding to bridge the finance gap for women entrepreneurs. These investments have generated over 4,500 jobs (over half for women), supported over 3,000 smallholder farmers, and over 20,000 e-commerce entrepreneurs
Worked with market building partners to normalise gender lens investing in the regional investment community, driving a 3.4x increase in the number, and a 7x increase in the value of deals made with a gender lens.
Supported local partners to deliver targeted advocacy campaigns, reaching over 350 million people across Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

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Women's World Banking

$16 million, 2024-2028

Women's World Banking is a leading global organisation working with financial service providers and policy makers to give low-income women increased access and capability to use financial tools and resources – thus increasing their economic empowerment. This investment provides both core (global) funding and targeted support in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam). It builds on work undertaken during DFAT’s earlier partnerships with the organisation (2016-2024).

Women’s World Banking helps women build financial security and resilience to shocks, through access to savings products, credit and capital for their businesses, micro-insurance and secure digital financial products (including government social protection payments). It is on track to reach 100 million women globally by 2027, through financial solutions that are relevant to their needs, reduce their risk of falling into poverty, and enable them to fully engage in productive economic activities. It also engages with policy makers to overcome barriers to women's financial inclusion and researches the impact of financial inclusion on women's economic empowerment.

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Orange Bond Initiative

$12 million, 2022-2028

DFAT has supported the Asia Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) since 2016 when, in partnership with the US, we provided funding for the first Women's Livelihood Bond (WLB). DFAT provided further support to IIX for subsequent WLBs and in 2021 to IIX's COVID-19 Relief, Recovery and Resilience (RRR) program. In 2022, with DFAT support IIX developed, and brought the WLBs under, the ‘Orange Bond Initiative' (OBI). The OBI is created as a recognised asset class for gender bonds, to encourage more players to bring more and high-quality gender bonds to market.

Led by its Steering Committee (on which DFAT is a member) and with over 100 consultations, the OBI designed a set of global principles for gender bonds. It has built the ecosystem and infrastructure to mobilise at greater scale capital transactions that tap into the multi-trillion-dollar debt capital markets, to address financing gaps within gender lens investing (GLI) and the sustainable development agenda. The OBI aims to mobilise USD10 billion and empower 100 million women, girls and the LGBTQI+ community to create inclusive, resilient and green outcomes by 2030.

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Women, Peace & Security

The five year, $25 million WPS Investment 2022-2027 is one significant and substantial means through which DFAT will contribute to achieving the goal of Australia’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2021-2031: that in the context of increasing insecurity with climate change, diverse women and girls realise their human rights and achieve meaningful participation in all of Australia’s work to prevent and resolve conflict and establish enduring peace.

Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund

$7.5 million, 2022-2027

The Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) is a UN multi-partner trust fund which finances women’s participation, leadership, inclusion and empowerment in humanitarian responses and peace and security settings. Australia was a founding donor and supporter for the WPHF.

UN Women Regional Framework Towards Peaceful, Inclusive Societies: Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Asia Pacific Region

$10.5 million, 2022-2027

The Regional Framework addresses priority WPS issues and emerging trends in the Asia-Pacific region. Activities under this investment include:

technical support to governments in the region to develop, implement and review National Action Plans and the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on WPS;
research, data and tools on WPS;
creation of a coordination mechanism and engagement platform for government, civil society organisations and other WPS actors;
technical and financial support to civil society organisations to implement the WPS agenda at the regional, national and community levels; and
capacity strengthening and networking opportunities for women’s rights civil society organisations to advance WPS.

ActionAid Australia

$3.36 million, 2022-2027

This investment supports (i) the establishment of a Pacific Women Mediators Network (PWMN), and (ii) strengthened civil society engagement on WPS in Asia-Pacific and the Great Lakes region in Africa.

The PWMN will provide regional actors with women mediators and negotiators, coordinated by the Shifting the Power Coalition. Activities include:

creation of a network of women mediators;
development of a knowledge management platform to support advocacy and action on WPS in the Pacific; and
establishment of channels for the PWMN to engage with national and regional actors through convening of meetings.

Civil society engagement on WPS includes strengthening dialogue and engagement among women peacebuilders in Asia, the Pacific and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Activities include:

mapping women’s organisations and activists working across the regions on WPS;
research and development of evidenced-based briefs to support advocacy and accountability for implementation of the WPS agenda;
regional convenings to share learning, build understanding and identify and define priorities for advancing WPS; and
development of communication tools and digital platforms for engagement.

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

$1.1 million, 2022-2026

This investment supports the Southeast Asian Network of Women Peace Mediators (SEAWPM). The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) is a well-established regional organization with experience implementing conflict transformation and peace process facilitation. The CPCS is also the secretariat of the SEAWPM.

The SEAWPM was established in 2019 to facilitate the involvement of its women mediators and negotiators in all phases of peace and conflict resolution processes in Asia. The SEAWPM is an independent but complimentary mechanism to ASEAN, making it uniquely placed to accompany ASEAN as a regional mediation mechanism. Activities include:

diplomacy with decision-makers and actors in analysing and exploring strategies and mechanisms for preventing, deescalating, and transforming political crises in Asia;
convening stakeholders in processes that enhance the potential for constructive dialogue across and within concerned parties relevant to conflicts and their resolution; and
responding to emerging opportunities for mediation and facilitation in regional peace processes.

Legal Action Worldwide

$1.09 million, 2023-2024

This investment supports the establishment of an innovative, international Gender Justice Practitioner Hub. Legal Action Worldwide is an independent non-profit organisation comprised of human rights lawyers and jurists working in fragile and conflict-affected areas, providing advocacy, strategic litigation, legal aid, empowerment, and technical assistance.
The Practitioner Hub will be constructed in two phases.

Phase 1 (18 months) will involve consultations with diverse stakeholders, mapping of existing initiatives, scoping of needs and development of initial resources and website.
Informed by Phase 1, Phase 2 will involve the establishment of the Practitioner Hub.

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Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund

Gender data

Australia's policy engagement and investments are strengthening capacities to collect, analyse and make accessible statistics on gender equality and the empowerment of women. Improvements in gender data support progress in such areas as women's health and wellbeing, women's workforce participation, and ending violence against women. In addition, high-quality data are critical for enabling governments in our region to ensure their policies are effective for all.

UN Women: Making Every Women and Girl Count (Phase 2)

$7 million, 2022-2026

Australia contributes to funds UN Women's global flagship program on better gender statistics, Making Every Women and Girl Count (Women Count). Working with partner governments, international agencies and other actors, Women Count assists governments to collect, analyse and use good gender data, including to monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Women Count has three driving outcomes; 1) creating an enabling environment for gender statistics to inform policy, through the institutionalisation of gender data and gender sensitive considerations into policy frameworks; 2) increase gender-sensitive data production as standard practice; and 3) improving data accessibility and use.

International Women’s Development Agency: Equality Insights

$2.1 million, 2023-2024

In addition, Australia has been at the forefront of supporting a move towards multidimensional, gender-sensitive data and poverty measurement that can accurately capture gender inequalities. Through a partnership with the International Women's Development Agency, Australia has supported the Equality Insights program since 2014, when it was being developed as the Individual Depravation Measure. This program aims to make gender-sensitive, individual-level, multidimensional data accessible to governments and decision-makers, improving the evidence available to them for policy decisions that advance gender equality.

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United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)

$31.16 million, 2022-2025

UN Women is the United Nations (UN) entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. UN Women is a valued partner for Australia in advancing gender equality and women’s and girls’ human rights, in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.

Australia provides UN Women with funding to support its work, guided by the Strategic Partnership Framework between the Australian Government and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) 2022-2025. This includes annual core voluntary contributions, totalling $31.16 million for the period 2022-2025. In addition, Australia provides funding to support UN Women’s activities at the regional and country level.

The Strategic Partnership Framework identifies the following shared objectives:

promoting, protecting and strengthening global norms, policies and standards on gender equality and women’s empowerment;
strengthening the UN system’s action on gender equality;
advancing disability and social inclusion;
reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience;
women's economic empowerment;
ending violence against women and girls;
women’s participation in leadership and decision-making, including in building sustainable peace and resilience;
improving the availability and use of disaggregated data and evidence on gender equality; and
delivery representing good value for money in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.

Our cooperation with UN Women complements Australia’s own efforts for the achievement of gender equality, domestically and internationally, with a particular focus on women’s leadership and decision-making, women’s economic empowerment, ending violence against women and girls, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

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United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)

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Australia’s international support for gender equality

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Gender Equality

Ending Gender-Based Violence

Southeast Asia Gender-based Violence Prevention Platform

Support to UN Women

Support to UNFPA – kNOwVAWdata Initiative

UNICEF - Empowered and Equal Futures for Girls through Education in Southeast Asia

Women's Leadership

RiseUp!

Amplify-Invest-Reach: A partnership with regional Women’s Funds

Women's Economic Empowerment

UN Women Gender Action Lab

Investing in Women

Women's World Banking

Orange Bond Initiative

Women, Peace & Security

Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund

UN Women Regional Framework Towards Peaceful, Inclusive Societies: Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Asia Pacific Region

ActionAid Australia

Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies

Legal Action Worldwide

Gender data

UN Women: Making Every Women and Girl Count (Phase 2)

International Women’s Development Agency: Equality Insights

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)

Gender responsive resources