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Social and cultural biases and constraints have prohibited women from equally benefiting from economic development, resulting in feminization of poverty. Development assistance will be effective only when it can tackle gender inequality and promote women's empowerment.
It is in this respect that Korean Women's Development Institute undertook a two-year research to develop strategies for gender mainstreaming of Korea's development assistance. While OECD/DAC and major donors consider gender as a cross-cutting issue, it is a separate sector of its own in Korea's ODA. As a result, projects are women-targeted than gender-responsive and women-targeted projects are rather oriented to basic human needs such as health than gender equality and women's empowerment. According to a recently adopted three year strategy, gender is selected one of highly significant thematic areas and gaining a bigger support in Korea's development assistance.
As Korea is fast growing as a donor country, it is required that the country develops a systematic development assistance principle and institution for gender equality and cultivates gender experts in the field. Gender-responsive M&E guidelines and tools along with project design mechanisms need to be developed to ensure the application of the principle. Gender training for staff, experts and volunteers is in great and urgent need as well.
It is also required that the country prepare itself for OECD/DAC membership by educating itself with gender equality guidelines and gender marker. The country will truly benefit from the membership when it actively participates in policy networks such as GENDERNET. |