The 2030 Agenda aims for a world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed. Without gender equality and women’s empowerment, the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved. Yet investments into gender equality and women’s empowerment are lagging behind investments for most other goals.

Implementing commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment requires a range of tools and efforts, all underpinned by financial investments. While ODA remains an essential source of financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development commits development actors to a new way of thinking about financing for sustainable development, and official flows beyond ODA are becoming an increasingly important feature. This paper sets out an overview of what we know about the financing landscape for gender equality and women’s empowerment, a way forward in order to ensure more and better financing for gender equality, and some draft principles to guide future efforts.