As part of a commitment to human rights in its foreign policy, Finland has championed gender equality as a development co‑operation priority through a combination of mainstreaming, targeted action, and bilateral and multilateral influencing. Maintaining positive international leadership on gender equality is a key challenge for OECD governments amid a backlash against gender equality and human rights at home and abroad.
Advancing gender equality as a foreign policy priority through Finnish development co-operation
Abstract
Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls are fundamental human rights essential for sustainable development. Over the past two decades, Finland has effectively mobilised its development co-operation expertise, resources and influence to advance gender equality as one of its foreign policy priorities. Maintaining this positive international leadership as domestic contexts change can be a challenge for OECD countries, with Finland’s July 2024 development policy reflecting a departure in policy compared to previous practice. OECD governments’ leadership on gender equality remains essential in a global context of backsliding on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action for women's empowerment and backlash against gender equality, human rights and democracy more broadly.
Gender equality has been considered an important part of Finland’s own societal and economic development, and successive governments have made gender equality a central priority of Finland’s foreign policy and included it in their official Government Programmes and foreign policy reports. The effectiveness of these efforts over the past two decades has relied on several key elements:
Grounding foreign policy in a human rights-based approach. Under the Constitution of Finland (732/1999), Finland participates in international co-operation for the protection of peace and human rights and for the development of society. Policy documents have helped staff to operationalise this focus on human rights, among them the 2022 Government of Finland Report on Human Rights Policy. Women’s rights as well as the rights of sexual and gender minorities are individually listed as specific priorities of Finland’s international human rights policy.
Nominating leadership and making gender equality expertise available to Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) staff. An Ambassador for Gender Equality based in the MFA’s Political Department has led on gender equality work within the MFA. Gender equality sector advisors in the Development Policy Department have played an important support role to staff across the ministry, including by hosting internal training and developing knowledge tools to facilitate coherent advocacy in international discussions.
Mainstreaming gender equality into development co-operation programming and across the MFA’s work. Gender equality and the principle of non-discrimination have been listed as two discrete cross-cutting priorities in Finnish development co-operation. The principle of non-discrimination in particular aims to ensure that different forms of discrimination, including multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, are considered when development interventions are planned, implemented and evaluated.
Using targets to guide decision making. In 2020, Finland set a target of having 85% of new development projects advance gender equality as a significant or principal objective by 2025. It also developed a roadmap and guidelines to support staff in implementing the target.
Backing up priorities with resources. UN Women and the United Nations (UN) Population Fund are among the biggest recipients of Finland’s core multilateral funding, which it couples with strong political support, and Finland was a key advocate for the establishment of UN Women. In a context of stretched human resources in the MFA, dedicated sectoral expertise enabled the ministry to effectively and credibly advocate for Finland’s priorities internationally.
As a result of implementing an approach that combines mainstreaming, targeted actions, and bilateral and multilateral policy influencing efforts in a coherent manner, Finland has:
Effected change in the policies and practices of multilateral organisations. Finland’s strategic influencing on gender equality and human rights has enabled it to drive improvement within the UN system. For example, it has contributed to a greater focus on the inclusion of women and girls and persons with disabilities as well as efforts to combat sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
Achieved results on gender equality at country level through targeted development programmes. Through a project with UN Women, for example, Finland was instrumental in developing gender mainstreaming guidelines within the public service of the United Republic of Tanzania. It further supported the development of Tanzania’s comprehensive and multi-sectoral 2023 National Gender and Women's Development Policy, which addresses, among other issues, women's economic empowerment, gender-based violence, economic justice and rights, gender equality in leadership and decision making, gender statistics, and women, peace and security.
Effectively integrated gender equality into different sectoral areas. In 2021-22, Finland included gender equality objectives in 68% of its screened bilateral allocable official development assistance, up from 53% in 2019-20. A greater share of Finnish interventions with a gender focus are in the agriculture, rural development and energy sectors than other countries’. For example, an ongoing programme in Tanzania focused on forest value chain development has also sought to boost women’s participation, with the share of women entrepreneurs increasing from 37% of the micro-businesses supported in the first phase (2020-21) to 48% in the second (2022-23).
Helped protect progress on gender norms in key international forums. Finland initiated and actively led the European Union (EU) Member States’ working group on gender-transformative approaches to build bridges of understanding and support for the EU’s Gender Action Plan (GAP) III.
Clear policy statements and political leadership can support coherent decision making. Including clear statements on the importance of human rights and a human rights-based approach in high-level political and policy documents provided a solid basis for gender equality to be effectively mainstreamed into the Finnish Government’s work domestically and internationally. As a result, MFA staff reported, gender equality became part of the DNA of Finland’s foreign affairs. An Ambassador for Gender Equality has given visibility to Finland’s commitments to gender equality and highlighted, to staff and partners, the importance of the issue.
Building a positive reputation takes time and resources but is valuable. Finland’s strong reputation as a long-standing and visible champion of gender equality has added weight to its dialogue with development partners. Partners expect Finland to advocate for gender equality.
Maintaining international leadership is challenging when domestic contexts change. Following a change of government in 2023, Finland’s new development policy (published in July 2024) signalled a narrower approach to gender equality, focusing specifically on women and girls and including language that undermines Finland’s strong human rights-based approach. A significant departure in policy for Finland, this potentially undermines Finland’s influencing and leadership on this priority issue. Some other OECD Development Assistance Committee members have also faced challenges in recent years as gender equality faces pushback globally.
Specialist expertise is needed. MFA staff in Helsinki and in embassies rely on gender specialists to provide expert advice on policy documents and to support staff in negotiations and in mainstreaming gender equality across development co‑operation and foreign policy areas.
Targets can usefully guide decision making. Setting targets sends a clear signal on priorities, provides a benchmark for measuring progress, and guides course corrections and adjustments. Incorporating international standards such as OECD Recommendations, including the 2024 DAC Recommendation on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of All Women and Girls, could further enhance the measurement of progress.
It is more challenging to integrate gender equality across foreign policy areas beyond development co-operation. While the women, peace and security agenda has opened possibilities to consider gender issues in other foreign and security policy areas, learning shows that gender equality can quickly disappear from what are considered harder policy areas such as, for example, international security policy. Evaluations have pointed out that regularly updating tools to advance gender equality and having a clear strategy that crystallises goals can help ensure it remains a focus across all areas of foreign policy.
Resources must match ambition. In the context of budget cuts across Finland’s MFA, protecting resources on priority issues is necessary to ensure the continued quality of projects and the legitimacy of advocacy work in multilateral institutions.
Vastapuu, L. and M. Lyytikäinen (2022), Gender Equality in Finnish Foreign Affairs from 2019 to 2022, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Helsinki, https://um.fi/documents/35732/0/Gender+equality+in+foreign+affairs_Vastapuu_Lyytikainen.pdf/4aef250d-4d89-41cd-d390-6059951d4aa9?t=1668426670061.
OECD (2024), OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews: Finland 2024, OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris (forthcoming).
OECD (2024), DAC Recommendation on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of All Women and Girls in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-5022.
OECD (2022), “Guidance on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls”, Fundamentals, Development Co-operation TIPs – Tools, Insights, Practices, https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=1143_1143052-b7ff8og4ir&title=Guidance-on-Gender-Equality-and-the-empowerment-of-women-and-girls.
OECD (2020), Development Co-operation Report 2020: Learning from Crises, Building Resilience, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/f6d42aa5-en.
To learn more about Finland’s development co-operation see:
OECD (2024), "Finland", in Development Co-operation Profiles, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/dbcd0a36-en (accessed 21 May 2024).
See more In Practice examples from Finland here: www.oecd.org/development-cooperation-learning?tag-key+partner=finland#search.
