GH5050 reviews organisations’ visions, missions and core strategy documents in the public domain to determine whether an organisation states a commitment to gender equality.
Findings
Public commitment to gender equality appears to be strong and growing: 79% (159/201) of organisations in the sample have committed to gender equality. The proportion of organisations that commit to gender equality has grown steadily since 2018. However, one in five organisations in our 2020 sample have yet to publicly state their commitment to gender equality, including one-third of funders and private sector companies.
Organisations are increasingly embracing a more inclusive and comprehensive concept of gender equality; one that focuses not only on the empowerment of women and girls but one in which all people, regardless of their gender, will benefit from tackling restrictive gender norms and shaping a more just society. The number of organisations that explicitly include transgender and non-binary people in their commitments to gender equality has doubled in two years, from 16 in 2019 to 33 this year. This represents however just 16% of our sample.
Examples of new and updated commitments to gender equality
Amidst the global shock to food systems wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, GAIN refreshed its organisational strategy, which includes “strengthened focus on negotiating and, when possible, transforming the gender power imbalances we encounter in the course of our work.”
The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) introduced a new webpage on gender equality in 2020, which recognises gender equality as a precondition of a healthy society and as a fundamental human right. IVI lays out a number of ways in which it is mainstreaming gender in its approach to vaccine development and delivery, with the global goal of “increasing access to vaccines and health services for all girls, women, boys, men, and persons with non-binary gender identities”.
Spurred on by the Global Health 50/50 analysis, the Sanofi Espoir Foundation has developed a gender statement which recognises gender inequality, alongside other inequalities, as a key determinant of health, and commits to advance gender equality in its own governance, through its health programmes, and in its partnerships.
“As a young person paving my career in global health, it's promising to see how much of the sector is committed to gender equality and diversity, in their own organisations and in the programmes and policies they implement. But we must continue to do better. GH5050 has empowered all of us working in this arena to understand our shortcomings. It has inspired us to demand and act.”
Zahra Zeinali, Member of the Global Health 50/50 Collective