Enhancing gender equality and women’s empowerment is a core pillar of USAID’s approach to advancing democracy around the globe, and women’s political participation and leadership (WPPL) is a key part of that. Currently, women do not have full and equal access to political life, nor are they able to fully exercise political agency and influence. To support efforts to promote WPPL, USAID developed a WPPL Assessment Framework, which: (1) maps the current WPPL environment, (2) identifies barriers and opportunities to WPPL, and (3) develops country-specific recommendations to advance WPPL. This assessment can be used by any stakeholders looking to get a more complete picture of WPPL in a country in order to design and implement gender-inclusive democracy and government programming.
In 2023, USAID conducted eight WPPL assessments in Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Honduras, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, and Tanzania. These assessments examined both women’s political participation – activities women can engage in as citizens – and political leadership – activities women can engage in as elected and unelected political representatives. These two components were analyzed through the lens of women’s access, i.e., their ability to take part in the political process, and women’s power, i.e., their voice and agency as political actors. USAID Missions used recommendations from the assessments reports to better integrate women’s political participation into their current and future DRG programming, and in some cases, to design stand-alone WPPL activities that address sociocultural, institutional, and individual factors that inhibit women’s full and equal access to public life.
If you are interested in learning more about the WPPL Assessment Framework findings, or would like to explore conducting one yourself, please contact drg.gender@usaid.gov.
