By Maeve Bannister

Gender-equality funding for global projects that improve the lives of women and girls is under pressure as foreign aid cuts take hold, with the Australian government urged to a positive lead.

Just 2.3 per cent of total global foreign aid is spent principally on ensuring women’s access to healthcare, education, nutrition, sanitation, shelter, safety and rights, according to new research released by the Lowy Institute.

More than half of that is expected to disappear as sweeping cuts are made to foreign aid budgets globally.

Reductions in commitments from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and several smaller European and Asian nations will cause foreign aid to fall by 37 per cent by 2027.

It means vulnerable women and girls will experience further regression to their access to basic services, personal safety and health measures.

“The international system for funding gender equality is fractured,” report author Grace Stanhope said.

“Under-investment in a global public good such as gender equality is not only a development failure but a profound foreign policy risk.”

Ms Stanhope said there needed to be a strategic shift to ensure gender-equality aid reaches core sectors where it is needed most in basic healthcare, sanitation, education, safety in conflict and disaster zones, and women’s rights.

“A tiered funding target, backed by a broad coalition of states, would entrench this rebalancing and provide accountability,” she said.

At last week’s Women Deliver conference, a major global gender equality summit held in Melbourne, funding for women and girls was a key discussion point.

In 2025, the United Nations reported that nearly half of all organisations aiding women in crises faced closure within six months, and 90 per cent of those surveyed had reached “breaking point”.

Australia should be seen as a leader in foreign aid and was one of only a few countries that had not cut its commitments, United Nations Population Fund executive director Diene Keita told AAP.

“We need to reinvent the way we do multilateralism, the way we interact with each other … with every partner making the best contribution they can to ensure that people will thrive and people will not be left behind,” she said.

“It is also time to make sure that we find innovative ways of financing development with the private sector, with foundations as well as through national domestic resources.”

Australia, which has placed gender equality at the centre of its foreign policy strategy, is well positioned to lead other nations when it comes to aid commitments, alongside European countries, the Lowy report found.

“These states need to strengthen their political will in order to rejuvenate international cooperation on gender equality in line with their own stated values and strategic interests,” Ms Stanhope said.