Religious actors play an important role in the formation of people’s values, norms of acceptable behaviour and life roles. Consequently, religious actors occupy a unique position to make transformational and sustained progress towards gender equality and empowerment.

PaRD's Gender Equality and Empowerment Workstream pays particular attention to increasing understanding of this crucial topic as well as improved religious literacy within the international community and in religious communities and organizations. To that end, the work-stream is working on a comprehensive analysis of religious engagement on sexual and gender-based violence as a baseline for its future activities. It aims to achieve this goal through knowledge exchange among actors, capacity building and advocacy actions.