MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

In order to achieve gender equality, it is necessary, to place women’s empowerment at the center of national development plans. This includes ensuring that women and girls enjoy a set of basic human capabilities as measured by indicators on education, health, and nutrition; have equal opportunities to use or apply their basic capabilities, including in non-agricultural wage employment and political representation; and have reduced vulnerability to violence and abuse.

Elimination of gender disparity in education in Lao PDR has made slow progress. Fewer girls than boys are enrolled at all levels, and this share is even lower at the higher education levels. The number of girls per 100 boys in primary education has risen from 77 in 1991to 86 in 2006. Over the same period, indices for lower secondary education improved from 66% to 78%, for upper secondary from 56 to 74 and for tertiary from 49 to 62%. Low educational levels of girls adversely affect women’s prospects of non-agricultural wage employment. In the 10-year period (1995-2005) for which data is available, the share of women in wage employment increased less than 1percentage point per year, which is close to the rate at which girls narrowed the school enrolment gap. Because of the very slow pace at which the gender gap closes, achieving the MDG targets for elimination of gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015 seem ambitious.

The picture is different, however, when it comes to women’s political representation. The proportion of women members of the national legislature tripled between 1990 and 2003 and is among the highest in the region. More analysis is needed to assess whether and to what extent policy priorities have shifted as a result, to focus more on benefits for women, children and families. The national trend of increased women’s representation has not yet been extended in equal measure to the sub-national levels, where the real rigidities on gender roles may lie.

Meeting the targets: Meeting the Goal 3 targets requires a better understanding at all levels of the dynamics that sustain and/or create gender inequalities; targeted policies, strategies, actions and re-prioritising public expenditure. And this, in turn, requires committed leadership and political will. As gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions and market forces, political commitment at the highest national level is essential to institute the policies that can trigger social change and to allocate the resources necessary to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The newly set up Lao National Commission for the Advancement in Women (LNCAW) provides an excellent opportunity for the government to mainstream gender issues across various sectors. Although the government has begun to collect data disaggregated by sex, there is a need to further pursue data collection and dissemination on gender issues, in order to better sensitize decision-makers and communities to the problems faced by the female population.

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