The 2X Ignite Digital Academy
Online learning platform for emerging gender-smart fund managers, offering modular courses from VC basics to fund exits — built on real-world expertise and industry insights.
Gender Lens Investing (GLI) Fund Manager Training
Free, beginner-friendly training for fund managers and investment professionals looking to integrate gender lens investing into their practice, built around the 2X Criteria framework and available in English and French.
2X Criteria Reference Guide
The essential how-to resource for applying the 2X Criteria across sectors, geographies and investment contexts — the global standard for gender-lens investing.
Inclusive Design for Climate Innovation: A Practitioner's Guide
Inclusive Design for Climate Innovation: A Practitioner’s Guide is your go-to resource for creating programmes that embrace inclusivity from the start. Inclusivity means creating space for diverse people, perspectives, and ideas, ensuring each receives respect and equity. This extends beyond gender equality to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across various underrepresented groups. Starting with inclusion not only strengthens engagement but also leads to more innovative and diverse outcomes.
This guidebook is designed for the process of establishing a new programme, especially for innovation projects. You can also use it to evaluate ongoing programmes or capture lessons when closing a project. Each section combines research on the importance of inclusivity with practical exercises to apply it. Use it as a roadmap to ensure every step is intentional, inclusive, and impactful.
Integrating Gender-Responsiveness into the NCQG
This one-pager presents options for integrating gender-responsiveness into the COP29 NCQG decision, providing a pivotal opportunity to enhance the quality of climate finance. By doing so, developing countries can optimise the social impact, beyond climate outcomes, that resources under the NCQG can provide.
A 'How To' Guide to Measuring Women's Empowerment
From Oxfam - This paper shares Oxfam GB’s experience of developing an approach to measuring women’s empowerment over the course of five years, for use in its series of Effectiveness Reviews. Oxfam’s aim is for this to be an easy and practical guide which shares experience and lessons learned in order to support other evaluators and practitioners who seek to pin down this ‘hard-to-measure’ concept. The hope is that the reader will make use of the measurement tools presented in this paper as guiding instruments that can be adapted to their needs.
How Business Can Tackle Gender Based Violence in the World of Work
From Business Fights Poverty - GBV affects employees physical and mental health and well-being, leading to stress, anxiety, loss of self-esteem and motivation. Often women are forced to leave their jobs. It contributes to the gender pay gap and seriously affects women’s opportunities for advancement and career progression. Women usually bear the brunt of GBV, although others are at risk, including men and members of the LGBTQI community.
The costs of GBV are high, with estimates totalling $1.5 trillion, the equivalent of 2% of global GDP. The #MeToo movement has shown there is an unprecedented demand for change, including from employees and some business leaders across the world. Companies are beginning to innovate to tackle GBV. More firms must now follow.
Yet, many companies remain unclear on how to address the problem. That’s why we agreed to partner to better understand how businesses can most effectively address GBV. The Toolkit includes a 5-step framework to help companies comprehensively tackle violence and harassment at work: 1. PREVENT violence and harassment by identifying potential risks; 2. COMMIT to gender equality and diversity across the workplace; 3. PROTECT employees with supportive policies and procedures; 4. COLLABORATE AND CAMPAIGN beyond the immediate workplace; 5. BE ACCOUNTABLE and monitor action.
Mitigating Risks of Gender-Based Violence
From Criterion Institute & UNICEF - The purpose of this tool is to equip investors to understand the risk their investments are exposed to as a result of gender-based violence. This tool enables investors to determine how their existing due diligence process can be used to determine a potential investment’s exposure to the political, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks of gender-based violence. This tool is one component of a broader global effort to ensure the right to live free of violence.
Navigating Impact Project Gender Lens Theme
From GIIN - Resource library of different strategies to achieve gender impact.
Investor Toolkit with Girls and Young Women Focus
From Spring Accelerator - Aimed at investors and other development practitioners, this toolkit highlights the potential of using finance to impact and empower adolescent girls and young women in emerging markets. The toolkit is based on the work of SPRING and four years of experience in running its accelerator for girls and young women impact ventures in East Africa and South Asia. This specific focus on gender and age-group in emerging markets represents a convergence of three recent movements in investment: gender lens investing, impact investing and investing in youth. As the context and background sections of this toolkit make clear, there is a wide variety of exciting investment opportunities in this space, across a range of sectors.
Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration Toolkit
From Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) / Frontier Incubators - The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration Toolkit (GLIA Toolkit) is an instructional guide for incubators, accelerators, and other entrepreneurial support organizations operating in Southeast Asian countries with the aim of improving the various issues surrounding working women in Southeast Asia. The GLIA Toolkit was developed with the aim of building a gender smart entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southeast Asia by incorporating a gender perspective into the activities of entrepreneurs and surrounding stakeholders.
Designing a Gender Lens Investing Action Plan
From Criterion Institute - Criterion Institute has created a tool that can be used by anyone looking to develop a gender lens investing strategy – from foundations, to women’s funds, to investors across asset classes. Following a standard investment cycle, this tool supports the design of an investment strategy with considerations for how gender dynamics might present risks and opportunities. It provides a framework to consider building a gender lens into new or existing strategies. This tool can be used to inform investment strategy or in diligence. Wherever you find yourself in your gender lens investing journey, we hope this tool helps expand imagination of what is possible in the field.
Gender Equality Mainstreaming Framework (GEM)
From MEDA - The Gender Equality Mainstreaming (GEM) Framework is a practical manual and toolkit for assessing gender equality, and identifying, implementing and measuring gender equality mainstreaming strategies within companies. The framework builds upon the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment standard by mainstreaming gender across ESG criteria. This alignment with the ESG investment standard promotes adoption in an industry that is increasingly ESG-compliant.
Designed for organizations seeking financial and impact returns through investing or providing support to companies, the manual is applicable to a wide range of investors (e.g. private equity funds, government donors, foundations) and capacity builders (e.g. accelerators, technical assistance providers, NGOs).The ultimate aim of the framework is to transform companies to be more gender equitable while supporting business growth and impact.
Gender Analysis Toolkits
From Equilo - collection of gender analysis frameworks and tools.
Gender Equality Scorecard
From SEAF - This measurement mechanism is demonstrates that SEAF portfolio companies can provide appropriate financial returns and measurable impact, including women being economically empowered through investment and development activities.
Gender-Smart Investing Resource Hub
From ICRW - Learn how to better integrate gender into investment processes to make smarter investments that enhance returns, gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
A Gender Lens on Pakistan's Startup Investment Landscape
From i2i Insights - Pakistan's startup ecosystem has rapidly developed in the past few years. Although currently experiencing an economic slowdown, the ecosystem’s stakeholders continue to demonstrate resilience and a forward-thinking approach.
EMERGE- Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality
EMERGE (Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality) is a project focused on gender equality and empowerment measures to monitor and evaluate health programs and to track progress on UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: To Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Girls.
Factsheet: Care in Crisis
From International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA)- This is a factsheet created by IWDA on the value of care in the time of COVID-19. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated more than ever that care work, paid and unpaid, underpins economic and social life in all societies. It is critical to sustaining society’s wellbeing, supporting people to live meaningful and healthy lives.
Metrics That Matter: Best Practices from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Practitioners and Academics
From The Center for Financial Planning- This report presents articles from academics and practitioners. These articles outline recommendations and lessons learned based on their research and experience with the goal of diversifying the financial planning profession. Each article addresses a different stage and component of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) journey.