ODA Spending

How much ODA does Spain allocate to gender equality?

Gender equality is a cross-cutting priority of Spain’s development assistance. However, in 2023, Spain only ranked 14^th out of DAC donors in terms of its overall spending toward projects related to gender equality in absolute and relative terms.

How is Spanish gender equality ODA changing?

Spain’s government is increasingly prioritizing gender equality, gender empowerment, and gender-based interventions at the domestic and international levels. The Spanish Secretary of State for International Cooperation, responsible for implementing Spain’s development cooperation policy, aims to prioritize gender-based approaches in all areas of Spanish development cooperation. This includes gender mainstreaming, or applying a gender lens to development policies, creating gender-specific guidelines for humanitarian action, monitoring multilateral funding provided to institutions working on gender equality, and strengthening gender-specific multilateral initiatives. In 2020, the Spanish government emphasized the need to protect the most vulnerable people, particularly women, as part of the country’s international response against the COVID-19 pandemic.

This prioritization is starting to be reflected in a steady increase of gender equality-related ODA since 2020. This includes an increase in funding for projects with gender equality as a principal objective.

How does Spain allocate gender equality ODA?

Bilateral Spending

According to the Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2018-2020, the Spanish government focuses its gender equality work on ending GBV and fostering women’s empowerment, equal rights, and opportunities.

Mutlilateral spending and commitments

In November 2020, Spain presented the UN Resolution on Women and Girls and the Response to COVID-19 aimed at placing women and girls at the heart of the global response to the COVID-19 crisis and recovery. Together with Sweden and Germany, Spain co-led the Generation Equity Forum’s Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights. In 2021, the abbrMAEC met with 20 women leaders from the African and Mediterranean regions as part of the RAISA program aimed at fostering women's empowerment on the African continent and in the MENA region. In line with SDG #5, this program attempts to ensure women’s full and effective participation in society and promotes equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life.

Funding & Policy Outlook

What is the current government's outlook on gender equality ODA?

Gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights are among Spain’s top, cross-cutting priorities of Spain’s development policy. Four specific interventions are outlined in the Master Plan 2024-2027:

• Fight against gender-based violence;
• Promote women’s rights and their effective participation in public affairs;
• Foster Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) for all women, girls and adolescents; and
• Advance towards the economy of cares.

On October 17, 2023, the MAEC presented the new Action Plan 2023-2024 to implement the Spanish guideline for a feminist foreign policy during 2024-2025.

Foreign minister José Manuel Albares noted that the new plan is aimed at strengthening Spain’s feminist foreign policy in two directions: integrating a gender-based approach in all the actions of the Spanish foreign policy and fostering Spain’s priorities to advance gender equality worldwide.

The priorities include:

• Women, peace, and security;
• Human rights;
• Elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls;
• Women's participation into democratic institutions; and
• WEE.

Key Bodies