Women in Politics and Aid Effectiveness: An Aid to Evaluation of MDG 3

Women in Politics and Aid Effectiveness: An Aid to Evaluation of MDG 3

This paper discusses Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3 to 'Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women.' This paper is concerned with the fact that the only indicator for MDG3 is political progress measured by counting the number of women elected to national political office.  The author questions whether this is an accurate way to measure the promotion of gender equality and empowerment in the Asia Pacific. Using specific country cases this paper interrogates the ethics of this being the only measure of evaluation/effectiveness, providing discussion about the concept of empowerment, leadership, governance, and effective reporting measures to generate creative and meaningful alternative suggestions for the Asia Pacific context.