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.

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.

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.

From GIIN - Resource library of different strategies to achieve gender impact.

From UN Women - This new guide provides corporations and their suppliers with a deeper understanding of the barriers and challenges preventing women-owned businesses from accessing and fully participating in local and global values chains. It provides the tools and techniques for reducing or eliminating these barriers and for leveraging the vast untapped economic potential represented by women-owned businesses. For many women, entrepreneurship offers a path to economic empowerment and it is incumbent upon corporations to help create conditions that permit this.

This guide is intended to support signatories of the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which UN Women and UN Global Compact jointly promulgate, to take action on Principle 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women. Corporations are well positioned to promote gender equality and empower women in their workplaces, in their communities and through their purchasing policies and practices.

From Financial Alliance for Women - A wide collection of how-to guides and case studies ranging from data analysis, market research, public policy, women’s market strategy, and more.

From Oxfam & Unilever - There is growing evidence that business leaders and managers understand that the unequal and heavy share of unpaid care and domestic work done by women and girls is an issue which matters to the effective (on-going) operations of their firms. Some companies have already taken practical steps to address the issue by supporting employees along their value chain, for example with workplace policies that enable care responsibilities to be met, and by innovating with products and services that meet the evolving needs of consumer family and household care, so simultaneously creating business value.

This Oxfam/Unilever Business Briefing shares complementary learning and insights gleaned from working on unpaid care and domestic work with communities and consumers around the world, and with businesses and brands to share emerging good practice and evidence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From Equilo - collection of gender analysis frameworks and tools.

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.

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.

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.  

From WEDO - Summary: A gender just transition must further take into account the role of women’s unpaid care work, particularly in developing countries, as well as women’s informal work, both of which in essence subsidize our current economic systems and are financially unrecognized or undervalued. The precariousness of women’s work is compounded by current trends such as seasonal and forced migration, the feminization of agricultural labor, the lack of formal recognition for women as farmers, the lack of health protections in the informal sector, the transportation of women in Qatar and the Arab peninsula, among others. Women entrepreneurs are also disproportionately represented in small enterprises, which have less access to credit and loans, and in the micro and small informal sector. As feminists in the labor movement denounce, while working conditions in general are poor in many industries, they are often worse for women.

From WOCAN and the W+ Advisory Council - This white paper posits that if we don’t address gender and climate jointly, we undermine both agendas. By integrating the two, we can amplify the impact of both. The cost of inaction is high. To reach the scale required for fast climate results, we cannot afford to exclude the knowledge, skills and networks of women by neglecting their contributions to tackle climate change, nor ignore the threats climate change poses to global gains in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment.

From Green Climate Fund (GCF) - This manual addresses GCF’s potential to mainstream gender into climate finance, building on its mandate to support a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development. Developed with UN Women, this toolkit guides GCF partners on how to include women, girls, men, and boys from socially excluded and vulnerable communities in all aspects of climate finance.

From Asian Development Bank - The paper highlights the need and demand for mitigation measures that tap women’s potential to contribute to emissions reductions and sustainable development.

From Asian Development Bank - This publication confirms the shared commitment of ADB and the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) to mainstreaming gender equality in climate change and showcases how this priority is being integrated into the design of ADB’s CIF projects.