Empowering Women

The Asian Development Bank recognizes that improving the status of women is crucial in achieving its overarching objective of poverty reduction.

ADB's gender and development policy promotes gender equity in all aspects of ADB operations.

In 2000, a gender and development action plan was drafted and five gender checklists on agriculture, urban development and housing, water supply and sanitation, education, and health were published. Gender training was conducted for ADB staff.

One of the major achievements in 2000 was the Gender and Development Initiatives, a regional technical assistance to support innovative pilot schemes among women's nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

The project provides small-scale grants to women's NGOs to

• conduct information campaigns in Bangladesh on the rights of women and children,

• provide consultations for poor women in Indonesia on legal issues,

• raise public awareness of women burn victims in Pakistan and improving facilities burn care centers,

• provide business education to women in 12 rural areas in Uzbekistan.

ADB also supports building capacity of government agencies and NGOs working on women's empowerment:

• in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, a regional technical assistance on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children assists governments and other stakeholders with action plans and legal and policy reviews,

• the Capacity Building of the Lao Women's Union supports gender action plan formulation and provides management training to provincial and district staff,

• the Financial Services for Poor Women project focuses on building the organizational and financial capacity of women-led micro-finance institutions in selected countries,

• a technical assistance on Gender and Governance under preparation aims to provide training to elected or nominated female representatives at the local government bodies.

ADB continues to work on improving the status of women and promoting gender equity through gender-sensitive project designs in its loan projects. For example:

• the Crop Diversification Project in Nepal, which promotes the production and marketing of agricultural crops, provides quotas for employing women at the field and project management levels. All project staff receive training in gender sensitization. It provides adult literacy classes for women so they can become effective decision makers.

• the Community Empowerment for Rural Development Project in Indonesia, which increases the incomes of poor families, enhances women's participation in planning. It also includes quotas for women's participation in training and in access to credit facilities.

• the Provincial Towns Water Supply and Sanitation Project in Papua New Guinea, which provides low-cost basic sanitation facilities for urban dwellers, has mobilized women's groups to ensure women's involvement in planning, designing, and implementing the project. Half the field workers employed by NGOs will be women from project area communities.

• the Primary Health Care Expansion Project in the Lao People's Democratic Republic improves access to health care among poor ethnic minority communities, targets reproductive health services, and trains minority women as health workers. It also provides scholarships to women without basic education and constructs or rehabilitates health centers in order to provide privacy for women. In addition, the project provides gender awareness training as part of health staff training and appoints female staff at project management level.

• the Health and Nutrition Program for Indonesia's Poor Mother and Infants supports improved nutrition services for the poor.

• the Second Primary Education Sector Project in Bangladesh, supports a project that provides 765,000 scholarships for girls to en

  courage families to enroll their daughters in secondary school.

• the Basic Education (Girls) Project in Lao People's Democratic Republic provides primary education for girls in 300 ethnic minority

  villages, which lack access to schooling.