| Overview : Gender equality and the empowerment of women are recognized as integral to successful human development and fundamental aspects of women’s human rights. They are major themes in the global commitments emerging from the world conferences of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, including the Fourth World Conference on Women and its follow-up, the Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals. This has been further enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals where there is a specific Goal 5 on GEWE and current UNDPs global Strategic Plan 2018-2021. In line with these commitments, UNDP adopted gender mainstreaming in all its activities across the board. For UNDP gender mainstreaming means supporting partners to develop, implement and assess all development efforts through a gender lens to ensure that they reduce, rather than exacerbate, gender inequalities. Reducing gender gaps in health, education, labour markets, access to finance, employment opportunities and other areas results in improving women’s position in society, as well as in lower poverty, higher economic growth, greater productivity, and more resilient communities. The Tanzania CPD 2016-2021 adopted a gender mainstreaming approach whereby instead of having a standalone gender outcome, it was made a significant objective in the three outcomes. The development challenge analysis of the CPD underpins the gender differences and provides sex disaggregate data showing how women and men are impacted differently by the prevailing conditions. The programme theory of change also shows how the proposed interventions will impact the two groups and how change will be measured. Projects formulated under each outcome and outputs have been assessed to have at least a Gender Marker of GEN 2 – whereby gender equality is a significant objective of the project. For projects that had rolled over from the previous CPD, they were reviewed and revised in subsequent years of implementation, to ensure that they meet at least GEN 2 level by adjusting their interventions. It is against this background that this mid-term thematic evaluation is being undertaken to assess how successful have the interventions implemented under the current CPD been in improving the position of women, reduce the level of inequality and increased level of women’s empowerment. |
