Efforts to enhance women’s agency need to work at multiple levels, to help create an enabling environment where a woman’s right to make decisions about her own life is recognised, where women are economically empowered and where women and children are safe from all forms of violence. Pacific Women is funding activities with a primary focus on enhancing agency and supporting an enabling environment. These include a large focus on research, with activities aimed at understanding the many dynamics contributing to gender inequality, so the program can collectively understand how best to address these complex problems. Other activities underway focus on building the capacity of national women’s machineries and women’s organisations to support legislative and policy reform. Enhancing agency also includes activities that support coalitions to build a local understanding of solutions for change and activities working with men. Pacific Women supports these activities in recognition that enhancing women’s agency involves directly supporting catalytic women leaders, their organisations as well as coalitions for change.
