At a glance
- When we understand how gender inequality contributes to poverty, hunger, disease, and every other issue our foundation takes on in global health and development—and when we use that knowledge to intervene in the right ways—we can make more of an impact, more quickly, and in a more inclusive way.
- The Gender Integration team works across the foundation to advance gender equality and improve global health and development outcomes generally.
- We do this through capacity building, consultation, and technical assistance to help foundation staff assess and address gender-related implications in all investments, strategies, and key internal operations.
Our strategy
Our team ensures that the whole foundation is working toward gender equality. We do this by advising teams across the organization on how to elevate gender as a consideration in every strategy, body of work, and investment, to advance gender equality and accelerate progress in all our program areas.
Our approach is comprehensive:
We work in close partnership with teams across the foundation to elevate gender in every aspect all our work—from strategies and programs to advocacy efforts and research. By doing so, we can ensure that our foundation grants and programs have greater impact, while avoiding unintentionally favoring certain people and further disadvantaging others.
We train the foundation’s global staff in best practices for gender integration, with key insights from our partners. Staff members in grantmaking roles receive additional training, including in how to use our custom Investment Marker tool, which helps them ask the right questions as they consider investments, such as “How do women and girls experience the problem differently?” and “Do any gender-based policies or customs come into play?”
Why focus on gender integration?
People of different genders face different norms, opportunities, and barriers. And yet, in 2020 only 45% of development aid from governments considered gender as a factor—and only 5% of that aid went to programs with gender equality as the principal objective.
When our teams invest in programs without considering gender implications and barriers, they limit their impact. Consistently integrating gender considerations can greatly contribute to the success and impact of an investment, whether for a new intervention, technology, or product.
In alignment with best practices, the foundation uses a two-track approach—investing directly in gender equality programs as well as integrating gender considerations into other program areas such as polio, neglected tropical diseases, and water, sanitation and hygiene.
Gender integration goes beyond simply targeting women with products and services. It is informed by context-specific gender analysis that considers how people might experience a problem differently because of their gender. It also aims to identify gender gaps in access to and control over resources, as well as gendered power relations that can affect how a problem might be best addressed.
Related work
Our work
Learn how our seven divisions collaborate with partners in over 130 countries to address the issues we care about and drive change.