In early February, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade released its new International Gender Equality Strategy. The strategy is designed to target Australia’s development assistance toward improving the conditions for women and girls — with an understanding that societies faring better in the treatment of women tend to also have lower levels of poverty, autocracy, corruption, instability and civil unrest.

Yet there is a caveat. For international development policies aimed at improving the conditions of women and girls to produce long-term positive results, there is a need to recognize that the agency and advancement of women and girls doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The lasting success of these initiatives often relies on nullifying or minimizing men’s resentment toward women’s agency and advancement — or ideally gaining men’s support.

This is not to say that women and girls need the permission of men to advance — or need to develop policy that placates men’s negative impulses — but it’s necessary to recognize that the male backlash to female empowerment is a locally and globally destabilizing force. Women’s gains don’t come at the expense of men, yet many men think or feel they do — and this is a major social and political problem.