Podcast Summary: "Empowering Women Benefits Everyone"

Podcast: The CGD Podcast
Host: Center for Global Development
Guest: Susan Markham, Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at USAID
Release Date: January 19, 2016

Overview

This episode focuses on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5—achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls by 2030. The host and Susan Markham discuss why gender equality is vital for economic development and shared prosperity, moving quickly from the “why” to the critically important question of “how.” The conversation explores USAID’s strategies to promote gender equality, the challenges of transforming deeply entrenched societal norms, the role of men in gender programming, how policy and data drive progress, and the everyday courage of women driving change around the world.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Moving Beyond "Why": From Rationale to Practical Solutions

• Global Progress & Evidence: There’s broad recognition that income inequality can only be addressed by tackling gender inequality.
• USAID’s Gender Policy:
  • Updated three years prior to the episode (c. 2013) to sharpen focus on sustainability and effectiveness.
  • Holistic approach: Ensuring both men and women have equitable access to resources (e.g., government services, credit, bank accounts).
  • Every intervention, whether seeds for farmers or school enrollment, checks if men, women, boys, and girls have equal access—and, if not, investigates the reasons.
  • Addressing gender-based violence (GBV) is central, as it affects every country and can be exacerbated even by development programming.

“We have refocused our efforts on issues of gender and women’s equality because we found that our work is not as sustainable or as effective without addressing some of these issues.”
—Susan Markham (01:02)

2. Engaging Men and Redefining Gender Roles

• Potential for Backlash: Empowering women can disrupt power dynamics, occasionally provoking resistance or violence from men, necessitating a broader approach.
• Engaging Men:
  • “How do we work with men? How do we work with the partners in these women’s lives...for them to understand how empowering women benefits everyone in the community?” (02:55)
  • Markham stresses working with fathers, husbands, sons, and community leaders—making it a “gender” not just a “women’s” program.
• Challenging Societal Norms:
  • The root challenge is deeply ingrained gender roles regarding who should be breadwinner or caregiver, who participates in councils, and who controls income.
  • Example: Fathers marrying off daughters thinking it’s protection, tied to social concepts of masculinity and responsibility.

“It’s not the fact that women aren’t smarter or don’t have access…It’s the roles that are created in societies.”
—Susan Markham (03:50)

3. Shifting Perspectives on Girls’ Education and Early Marriage

• Health Impacts: Education delays marriage and childbirth, leading to dramatic improvements in girls’ health and survival rates.
• Engagement with Families: USAID works directly with families to raise awareness about the risks of child marriage and the benefits of keeping daughters in school and delaying first pregnancy.
• Involving Men in Health: Programs encourage husbands to support their wives’ health and family planning, demonstrating broad community benefits.

“No one wants their children to die in childbirth or otherwise…Helping men understand how it just doesn’t benefit the girl, but it benefits the whole family and the community. We have found that to be very effective.”
—Susan Markham (05:33)

4. Scaling Impact: From Villages to Governments

• Partnering with Governments:
  • To achieve scale, USAID embeds gender-sensitive programming within national health systems and policies.
  • Leverages international agreements (e.g., CEDAW) to motivate political will—“You’ve signed on to this. We are just trying to help you accomplish your goals.” (07:56)
• Philosophy of Partnership over Conditionality:
  • USAID prefers to argue that “good development” includes gender equality, rather than using threats or aid conditionality.

5. Integrating Gender Throughout USAID Programming

• Operationalizing Gender Lens:
  • Markham and a network of gender experts review how every USAID program integrates gender.
  • Example: Ebola crisis revealed different exposure pathways for women (as caregivers) and men (as burial handlers), prompting nuanced health responses.
  • Gender impacts extend beyond health to infrastructure (“a kilowatt is gender-neutral, but it’s not...who gets electricity first?”).

“When you started to look at the different roles men and women play in society, we found that women were getting Ebola in greater numbers...So everything from Ebola to when you think about energy...These are questions that men and women in different parts of the country are affected differently by.”
—Susan Markham (09:07-09:55)

6. Addressing Economic Empowerment and the Private Sector

• Moving Beyond Microenterprise:
  • Past focus on small/medium enterprise and microcredit needs to shift toward women's inclusion in the formal workforce.
• Engaging with Corporations:
  • Helping companies embed gender equality into supply chains, workforce, and leadership, not as charity, but as business investment.
  • Training women in skills like coding and agribusiness standards to enable participation throughout the supply chain.

“We are helping them do is think through the gender issues…not just as consumers, but as part of the creators of what they’re doing in that company.”
—Susan Markham (12:31)

7. Measuring What Matters: Data and Impact Evaluation

• Mandating Sex-Disaggregated Data:
  • All USAID data must be separated by gender to reveal participation and outcomes.
• New Tools:
  • Women’s Economic Index in Agriculture (WEIA) measures not just yield, but also control over income and time use, and empowerment in community decision-making.
• Challenges:
  • While program outcomes are better tracked, measuring changes in self-perception and agency (“Has it changed the way she thinks about her life?”) remains complex.

“We have made some strides in it. We need to do better about this idea of how different sectors empower each other...We’re doing much better measuring the impact of our programs and learning from that and making changes—even mid-program...”
—Susan Markham (14:30-15:25)

8. Gender as a Cross-Cutting “Enabler” Goal

• Interconnected SDGs:
  • Progress on gender equality is necessary for progress on many other development goals (health, education, poverty reduction, resilience).
• Example:
  • Increasing girls’ education requires improvements in child marriage rates, health, and more.

“While we have specific indicators...they will work together for the broader goal.”
—Susan Markham (16:24)

9. The Real Inspiration: Everyday Women

• Memorable Stories:
  • Markham is inspired by the ordinary women she meets, from rural Colombia to Afghanistan, who attend workshops under tough conditions, run for office despite threats, and advocate for their daughters’ futures despite immense challenges.

“It’s really just the day to day work, the day to day living that women are doing in some of the harshest environments...they still sing and they still have hope and they give me inspiration.”
—Susan Markham (18:29)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On integrating gender into all programming:

  “If we’re providing seeds or schooling, we want to make sure that men and women, boys and girls can access these resources, and really pay attention to if they aren’t, why is that?”
  —Susan Markham (01:20)

• On the necessity of including men:

  “It’s not a women’s program, it’s a gender program.”
  —Susan Markham (04:44)

• On policy and partnership with government:

  “When we are working with governments...we bring this up. You’ve signed on to this. We are just trying to help you accomplish your goals.”
  —Susan Markham (07:56)

• On economic empowerment:

  “Just having women work or become entrepreneurs is not a long-term sustainable program. So how do we get women jobs in the formal workforce with benefits that they can then learn skills and join the formal economy?”
  —Susan Markham (11:13)

• On the resilience of women globally:

  “They’re willing to risk things and put their lives on the line and work from sun up to sundown and well past that time to make sure their kids are getting a better life.”
  —Susan Markham (18:39)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:06] – Introductions & SDG #5
• [00:56] – USAID’s gender policy & programming strategy
• [02:29] – Engaging men and preventing backlash
• [03:47] – The importance of challenging gender roles
• [05:20] – Girls’ education, health, and early marriage
• [07:19] – Scaling up: Policy, partnerships, CEDAW
• [08:49] – Example of gender analysis in the Ebola response
• [10:57] – Women’s economic empowerment and the private sector
• [13:31] – Evaluation and gender-disaggregated data
• [16:16] – Gender as a cross-cutting development enabler
• [17:39] – Sources of inspiration: Stories from the field

Tone

Empowering, thoughtful, and practical. The episode balances optimism with realism, acknowledging persistent barriers but spotlighting evidence-based hope and the inspiring determination of women worldwide.