Banyan Global implemented the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Equality Technical Assistance (WE3 TA) task order, awarded under the Advancing the Agenda of Gender Equality (ADVANTAGE) indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. With the direction of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub, Banyan Global provided advisory services to stakeholders to better analyze, design, implement, and monitor interventions addressing women’s economic empowerment and equality constraints and opportunities in support of USAID’s Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy.

Through WE3 TA, Banyan Global produced the “Gender Inequality Causes Poverty Briefer” highlighting the long-standing and structural barriers contributing to gender inequality, preventing women from full economic participation, and consequently causing and perpetuating poverty. In international rankings, such as the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the countries where women have the fewest freedoms, including economic rights, are also shown to be the poorest and most conflict-ridden in the world. The evidence all points in the same direction: that unequal conditions for women and girls are a causal contributor to poverty and suffering around the world. In other words, gender inequality is not a symptom of poverty, but a fundamental cause of poverty. If we are to eliminate poverty in emerging economies, we will have to resolve gender inequality first, with a focus on economic inclusion.