Gender equality in Danish foreign aid

Since the mid-1980s women and gender equality have constituted a major priority in Danish foreign aid. For many years the issue has been one of three cross-cutting issues just below the overall objective of poverty reduction. This DIIS Working Paper describes the development of gender policies in Denmark’s official foreign aid and analyses the extent to which they reflect domestic politics and circumstances and to what extent organisational concerns in Danida and global norms on gender influence the policies. It is tentatively concluded that global norms play an important (and perhaps increasing) role together with the normative environment in Denmark while direct stakeholders seemingly have had little influence on the policies.

The paper is published as part of the research programme Global Norms and Heterogeneous Development Organisations. This research explores how international norms about gender equality are taken up by very different donor organisations including South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA), Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (DANIDA), World Bank, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Oxfam International, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The research programme runs 2014-2016.