Commitment to Gender Equality Across the Generations

March 8th marks International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the social, economic, and cultural achievements of women and a call to action to boost women’s equality. This year the theme, I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights, observes the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and girls worldwide. There have been advancements since 1995 but achieving gender equality will require expanding family planning method choice, ending gender-based violence, and realizing gender-transformative programming and increased leadership of women and girls.

For more than 40 years, JSI has been (and continues to be) part of efforts to realize parity for women through its health-focused work in the United States and globally. Here are some snapshots from across our portfolio.

JSI manages the Title X Family Planning Centers (FPNTC), which uses knowledge management solutions to strengthen the capacity of more than 90 Title X-funded organizations across the United States to provide high-quality family planning and preventative health services. These grantees lead networks of more than 4,000 sites that serve over 4 million medically disenfranchised people each year. FPNTC is a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs implemented in partnership with the World Health Organization Collaborating Center and the National Implementation Research Network at the University of North Carolina. 

Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) increased community-based access to health services and products, including high-quality family planning, in more than 40 countries. In 22 countries, APC strengthened family planning by training health workers, building local nongovernmental organization (NGO) capacity, advocating for policy change, and introducing new methods. The project provided contraception to women and men equal to almost 839,000 couple-years of protection,* and reached more than 276,000 new family planning users and more than 2.7 million people with information about family planning methods. It also trained more than 17,000 health workers to deliver high-quality counseling on contraceptives and family planning, and built the capacity of 23 NGOs to provide these important services. 

Through USAID Advancing Nutrition, the Agency’s flagship multi-sectoral nutrition project, JSI is empowering women and reducing gender inequality to address the root causes of malnutrition. One of the project’s eight guiding principles is to embrace gender equality and women’s empowerment by working women and girls, as well as boys and men, to change attitudes, behaviors, roles, and responsibilities so that they can fulfill their potential as equal members of society. As a first step, the project created a gender equality strategy and systematic process for integrating gender across the project’s technical activities. Thus far, we have incorporated gender into the design and implementation of 21 activities to improve food systems, and strengthen nutrition and health systems in both development and humanitarian contexts. 

JSI is committed to advancing gender equality in partnership with governments, civil society, donors, and people like you across the generations. Show that you are #GenerationEquality by clicking here and tweeting a message of solidarity. On International Women’s Day, use your platforms to support women who are mobilizing for an equal future everywhere. Use #IWD2020 to join the movement and check out our social media package.  

Small actions can have big impact.

*This is a measure of the estimated protection provided by family planning services over a 1-year period, based upon the volume of all contraceptives sold or distributed free-of-charge to clients during that period.

Written by: Elizabeth Creel, Elizabeth Costello, and Kate Litvin