International Women’s Day: Don’t just say you care about women’s rights - prove it.
CGP Delegation to Zimbabwe | Feb 2025 – Visiting Danda Primary School funded by the Supporting Adolescent Girls Education programme, in partnership with Plan International & Christian Blind Mission Global, which has helped 13,200 marginalised and at-risk girls return to the classroom. It is one of the programmes at risk of closure following the announcement of further cuts to the aid budget announced last week.
International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate progress, but also to scrutinise the gap between words and action. Women’s rights cannot merely be acknowledged in theory; they must be actively upheld and protected.
For years, the UK has been seen as a global leader in gender equality, advocating for the rights of women and girls on the international stage. But recent drastic cuts to the aid budget, including the most recent reductions last week, cast serious doubt on whether these commitments hold any weight.
The impact of the aid cuts on women and girls
We are still waiting to understand the full ramifications of the latest budget cuts announced by the Prime Minister last week, but early indicators are deeply concerning. The 2021 cuts under the last government disproportionately harmed programmes aimed at supporting women and girls including disproportionately high cuts to programming tackling violence against women and girls, sexual health programmes, and education. Now, with further reductions, the situation is poised to worsen.
This is partly due to competing priorities. Early indications suggest that the Government will maintain much of its spending for multilateral organisations, squeezing the remaining budget for bilateral programmes. Furthermore, there are questions over whether they will honour the commitments they made to climate funding through Official Development Assistance (ODA) which is expected to be around £2 billion of bilateral aid in the final year 2025/26. And what of the previous government's commitments to spend £1 billion on humanitarian aid? All the while, 0.16% of GNI was spent on refugee hosting in 2023. If this trend continues, this will equate to half the overall aid budget by 2027. So, we must ask, where does that leave support for women and girls?
At the same time, other key supporters of women and girls' rights globally have stepped back: USAID has made significant cuts, particularly targeting sexual and reproductive healthcare. If global leaders are serious about women’s rights, this trend cannot continue. Rights are meaningless unless women and girls can exercise them - access to education, healthcare, and autonomy over their own bodies are not optional; they are essential.
The UK is - or was - a global leader on empowering women
Despite the troubling trajectory, the UK has historically invested in empowering women. Since 2015, the government has supported nearly 20 million children, over 10 million of them girls, to gain access to education. In 2023, a commitment was made to ensure that 80% of the UK’s bilateral aid programmes had a focus on gender equality by 2030, a policy that the new Labour Government has also pledged to uphold.
Beyond funding, the UK has played a leading role in shaping the global agenda on women’s rights. Holding the pen on the Women, Peace and Security agenda at the United Nations Security Council, and commissioning research into violence against women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic, positioned the UK as a key player in global efforts to protect and uplift women. These commitments must not be abandoned now.
Progress… unravelling
Despite a strong record, the UK’s impact is slipping. Bilateral aid spending on gender equality has declined each year since 2019, now at its lowest recorded level since 2014. FCDO analysis in 2023 warned that without targeted efforts, those hardest to reach, including women and girls, would suffer the most from these cuts. We are seeing this play out in real time.
During a recent CGP delegation to Zimbabwe, MPs witnessed firsthand the transformative impact of investing in women’s health. Neotree, an innovative, low-cost tech solution developed in partnership with UCL and funded by UK aid, has significantly reduced neonatal death rates by 10–50%, with the greatest impact on the most vulnerable babies.
By leveraging data analysis and a structured checklist, Neotree enhances decision-making, improving outcomes in neonatal care. The initiative achieves a healthy life year gained for just $6.80 to $26, making it one of the most efficient health-tech solutions available.
Neotree has also improved antibiotic prescribing, sped up diagnoses, and piloted innovations in newborn care during the critical first hours of life. This relatively simple yet highly effective intervention has already supported the care of 40,000 babies across Malawi and Zimbabwe. Yet, with Labour announcing further aid cuts, such life-saving programmes are at risk. The cost? More babies dying, more women’s lives in danger, needlessly.
Education is another fundamental pillar in empowering girls, giving them the skills and opportunities to shape their own futures and achieve economic independence. In 2021, the Girls’ Education Department of the FCDO saw a devastating 54% funding cut, including an 87% reduction for Education Cannot Wait – meaning 115,000 girls missed out on education in 2023/24.
In spite of these setbacks, the UK granted £11.9 million to the Supporting Adolescent Girls Education initiative, helping 13,200 highly marginalised, out-of-school adolescent girls – many of whom were already married or mothers. Through bilateral programmes like these, more than a million at-risk girls across 19 countries have stayed in school, including 150,000 girls with disabilities. Without the 2021 cuts, this impact could have been even greater. The cuts announced last week threaten to wipe out these gains entirely, shutting the door on the futures of thousands of young women.
Beyond empty words
What is the point of championing women’s rights in speeches and declarations if we refuse to act when it matters? Women and girls do not need more high-level committees on violence against women. They do not need more diplomatic statements. They need healthcare, education, economic opportunities – and most crucially, the freedom to exercise their rights in practice, not just on paper.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, let’s honour the incredible women in our lives by fighting for those denied the same opportunities. Let’s not take for granted the rights that others still struggle to attain: the right to healthcare, to education, to bodily autonomy, to choice. Women’s rights must not be a privilege of the few, but a reality for all. Anything less is a failure.
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Footnotes:
Ian Mitchell, Sam Huges, ‘Breaking Down Prime Minister Starmer’s Aid Cut’, Center for Global Development, 26 Feb 2025, link.
FCDO, ‘UK government support for girls’ education worldwide’, 19 Feb 2024, link.
FCDO, ‘International women and girls strategy 2023 to 2030’, 8 March 2023, link.
FCDO, ‘Equality Impact Assessment for ODA Allocations 2023-24’, 17 July 2024, link.
FCDO, ‘Equality Impact Assessment for ODA Allocations 2023-24’, 17 July 2024, link.
GEC & UKAid, ‘Project Evaluation Report: Endline Evaluation of the Supporting Adolescent Girls’ Education (SAGE) Programme in Zimbabwe’, 31 May 2023, link.
FCDO, ‘International women and girls strategy 2023 to 2030’, 8 March 2023, link.