Lao PDR

Millennium Development Goal 3

Promote Gender Equality

To achieve gender equality, it is necessary to place women's empowerment at the centre 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 higher education levels. The number of girls per 100 boys in primary education has risen from 77 in 1991 to 86 in 2006.

Over the same period, indices for lower secondary education improved from 66 percent to 78 percent, for upper secondary from 56 to 74 percent, and for tertiary from 49 to 62 percent. 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 are available, the share of women in wage employment increased less than 1 percentage point per year, close to the rate at which girls narrowed the school enrolment gap.

Because of the very slow pace at which the gender gap is closing, however, achieving the MDG targets for elimination of gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015 seems ambitious.

The picture is different 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 or not, and to what extent, policy priorities have shifted as a result, to focus more on benefits for women, children and families. At the same time, the national trend of increased women's representation has not yet been extended in equal measure to the subnational 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, as well as targeted policies, strategies, actions and re-prioritised public expenditures. This, in turn, requires committed leadership and political will. Because gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions and market forces, political commitment at the highest national level is essential to institute policies that can trigger social change and to allocate the resources necessary to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment.

Establishment of the new Lao National Commission for the Advancement in Women (Lao NCAW) provides an excellent opportunity for the Government to mainstream gender issues across sectors. In addition, although the Government has begun to collect data disaggregated by sex, a need exists to further pursue data collection and dissemination on gender issues, in order to better sensitise decision makers and communities to the problems faced by the female population.

See the indicators for MDG 3

Update from the 2010 UNDP report Beyond the Midpoint: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals:

The country has made progress regarding the number of women in politics: women's representation in Parliament is at 25 percent, and women's involvement in local level decision-making processes is relatively strong. Women's participation in the non-agricultural sector has also improved, with more than 40 percent of women employed in the civil service. Lao PDR is on track to reach these targets.