In recent years, the movement towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in Angola has gained significant momentum. As part of a joint effort, the United Nations Gender Working Group (GWG) has played a pivotal role, aligning various UN agencies to ensure that women, girls, and other vulnerable and underrepresented groups have equitable access to opportunities, resources, and fundamental rights. Here, we explore key initiatives and emerging insights from this collaborative approach to gender equality. 

A United Approach to Gender Equality and Empowerment
The UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2024-2028 sets the tone of the UN development activities in Angola, supporting the implementation of Agenda 2023, emphasizing a peaceful and resilient society that Leaves No One Behind. In alignment with the UNSDCF, the UN Gender Working Group harnesses the strengths of interagency efforts and partnerships to mainstream gender equality, ensure expertise and create sustainable and inclusive impacts in women and girls’ economic, social and political empowerment and full, equal and meaningful participation and representation at all levels.  

One UN it’s the way to go!

In the context of Angola, multiple Agencies have been making efforts and progress towards gender equality and women empowerment. However, agency interventions might be missing the opportunity to have a more systemic and integrated approach in coordination with other Agencies. Working together or in coordination would allow to optimize resources and take advantage of complementary expertise. Similarly, it would help increase the impact of the initiatives on the ground by offering women and girls access to more services, opportunities and support by converging multiple lines of assistance.  We may think of it as a UN Gender Portfolio if you will. 

Let me give you a good example to illustrate this: previous experience from UNDP’s trainings has shown that women and girls have a significantly lower rate of participation in trainings and although we may start with more than 60% of women registered to attend the trainings, a considerable number of women and girls miss classes and are not able to complete training. From interviews and observation, we have concluded that this is mostly due to the fact that women bear the primary responsibility for unpaid care and domestic tasks, including childcare. Without support system or alternative arrangements to childcare they often have to choose between take them to training or missing the training, which significantly impacts their capacity to improve their skills.