UNCDF work promotes gender equality and helps to empower women.

Financial Services for the Poor: The link between increased access to financial services and women’s empowerment dates to the early days of the microcredit movement in the 1970s, when most lending was to women’s groups. Even today, the majority of clients of microfinance institutions worldwide are women. Women with access to financial services are more likely to start businesses, plan for life-cycle events such as weddings and funerals, and cope with setbacks such as the sudden illness of family member. There are also positive inter-generational effects:  women with access to savings and credit are more likely to keep their children – including their daughters – in school. Roughly 60% of the clients of UNCDF-supported financial service providers are women, and all UNCDF-supported providers sign performance agreements with clear targets for outreach to women.

Public Finance for Local Development: UNCDF’s local development work also helps to empower women. Gender Equitable Local Development (GELD), is a global UNCDF – UNWomen initiative that seeks to mainstream gender responsive planning, budgeting and operating at the local level. This is leading, for example, to new wells to save women the backbreaking daily ritual of long journeys to find water, new clinics for maternal and child health services, water and toilet infrastructure for girls in schools offering them privacy and dignity, and investment in women owned and operated businesses. GELD is being piloted in six African countries, with a view to wider rollout. UNCDF also supports a Postgraduate Diploma in Gender and Local Economic Development at Makerere University in Uganda, and helped establish a  Local Development Fund for Gender Equity in Nicaragua as part of a broader UN initiative on Gender Equity and Women's Empowerment. 

All recent UNCDF evaluations have assessed project-level contributions to women’s empowerment. A larger strategy for mainstreaming and tracking the gender dimension in all of UNCDF’s programmatic work is currently being developed.