UK aid and women and girls

Warning: this briefing discusses violence against women and girls, including sexual violence, which some readers may find distressing.

Empowering women and girls has long been a priority for UK aid. Under 2014 legislation, the government must aim to spending aid in a way that is “likely to contribute to reducing poverty in a way which is likely to contribute to reducing inequality between persons of different gender”.

In 2025, UN Women reported that despite declining poverty and narrowing of gaps in education, global progress remains off track on Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality and empowering all women and girls).

This briefing sets out development challenges facing women and girls, global aid spending on gender equality, and UK spending and strategy.

Development and women and girls

Global development challenges affect different people in different ways, and can be influenced by their economic status, sex, gender, ethnicity, migration status, location, faith or belief, sexual orientation, age or disability.

The UK Government’s 2026 International Strategic Framework on Women and Girls says that advancing women’s rights would “have a tangible and positive impact on the delivery of key domestic and international priorities: from growth and prosperity, to security, climate and migration”.

Compared with men, women and girls often experience higher rates of poverty and increased risks during humanitarian crises and natural disasters, including displacement. Child marriage rates have fallen globally for girls and boys (though more girls than boys are married aged under 18), but conflict-related sexual violence and intimate partner violence are high. Globally, gaps remain in sexual health services and reproductive rights.

Although education participation rates between girls and boys have narrowed globally, education participation disparities between boys and girls remain in low-income and conflict-affected countries. The participation of women in the labour market also remains lower than expected, given increased educational participation. Women and girls assuming greater informal caring responsibilities is cited as one factor in this.

Peace processes that involve more women are associated with longer-lasting peace agreements, but women remain underrepresented in peace processes and in parliaments across the globe.

How is UK aid supporting women and girls?

The government’s 2026 International Strategic Framework on Women and Girls aims to “mainstream” work on women and girls throughout UK aid spending and international work. It has four priorities:

1. ending violence
2. economic empowerment
3. advancing political participation
4. health and education

The strategy has been launched at a time when UK aid spending is to be reduced to 0.3% of gross national income by 2027.

The UK Government is aiming for 90% of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office bilateral aid (aid for a specific country or programme) to have women and girls as a priority by 2030 (in 2024, it was 81%). However, equality assessments of UK aid spending in 2021, 2023 (PDF), 2025 and 2026 have found that aid for women and girls were among the areas affected by the reductions in budgets since 2020.

In 2026, the government has said its support for some multilateral organisations, such as Education Cannot Wait and the UN Population Fund, and its partial protection of aid in areas such as the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative will mitigate the effects of spending cuts.

What initiatives has the UK launched?

Global initiatives led by the UK include the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative in 2012 and a new global coalition against violence in 2026. The government plans for an international conference against violence against women and girls in 2027. Under its national action plan on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), the government also implements UN Security Council resolutions on the WPS agenda, which promotes women leaders, humanitarian actors, and human rights defenders.

How is global aid spending changing?

There is no specific data on aid spending on women and girls. However, aid reported to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses a three-point scale to measure whether gender equality is a “significant” or “principal” objective of a programme, or neither. 32 states report their data to the OECD, including all major donors except China.

In 2024, around, US$5.1 billion of aid globally was targeted at gender equality as its principal objective, with a further $48.5 billion having gender equality as a significant objective. While being the second-highest amount on record, major aid donors are reducing their aid spending and spending on gender equality is falling with it. In the case of the UK, in 2023 and 2024 spending was around £6.7 billion, though this was lower than peak in 2019.