Gender equality in Danish foreign aid

Abstract:

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 concerns ranked just below the overall objective of poverty reduction.

This paper describes the development of gender policies in Denmark’s official foreign aid and analyses the degree to which they reflect domestic politics and circumstances and to what extent organisational concerns in Danida and global norms on gender influence the policies. The tentative conclusion is that global norms play an important (and perhaps increasing) role, together with the normative environment in Denmark, while direct stakeholders seemingly have had a declining influence on the policies.