Our strategy
Our Gender Equality Division strategic initiatives build on the foundation’s existing strengths in data, health, and development. As a philanthropy, we have the resources and remit to take on complex, multi-dimensional challenges – and we take that privilege and responsibility seriously. We provide deep technical and functional expertise, coordination, and platform investments to improve the impact of teams within the foundation. We work specifically on cross-cutting approaches that can enhance programmatic outcomes, improve sustainability of our work, and improve more lives, more quickly.
Areas of focus
We aim to identify scalable approaches that address the unique barriers that young people face to improving life-long health and economic opportunity.
We aim to identify scalable approaches that address the unique barriers that young people face to improving life-long health and economic opportunity.
We are partnering with community leaders to expand data and evidence on effective strategies for engaging and reaching young people at critical points. For example, preventing an unplanned pregnancy could allow a girl or boy in a low- or middle-income country to complete their education, which can unlock access to formal employment, in turn improving earning potential and opening pathways to enjoy a safer, healthier future.
Our work includes generating primary data, promoting more robust data modeling, and ensuring that evidence quickly informs action.
Our work includes generating primary data, promoting more robust data modeling, and ensuring that evidence quickly informs action.
We support both internal foundation teams and external partners in creating, testing, and advocating for the inclusion of measures in key surveys to better describe the nuanced experiences of our beneficiaries around the world. We focus on decision quality, grounding our global investments and strategy decisions in evidence and data-informed insights, among other considerations. For example, we have supported the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia to integrate qualitative and quantitative data to enhance the design and delivery of maternal and newborn survival interventions by enabling the government, districts, clinics and programs to more effectively understand and reach the population most likely to benefit. More nuanced population data makes it possible to identify which group, or segment of a population, is most at risk for specific negative outcomes and which factors are most strongly associated with those risks. This, in turn, supports the development and delivery of health care services and solutions in low- and middle-income countries that are more precisely accessible and suited to those who need them most.
Digital connectivity is increasingly vital for managing one’s health, generating income, and participating in the economy.
Digital connectivity is increasingly vital for managing one’s health, generating income, and participating in the economy.
Many mobile-based interventions have emerged to benefit low-income people, including digital financial services, digital agricultural advisory tools, and mobile health tools. But despite growing investments in digital solutions for health and development, women continue to be left behind across geographies and income segments. We collaborate with teams across the foundation on digital interventions to ensure they are accessible and useful for all intended beneficiaries. We do this by supporting action-oriented research and innovation and the development and testing of tools and platforms, as well as through collaboration with partners and connecting researchers.
This team provides flexible capacity to deliver strategic, technical, and decision support for time-bound, high-priority within the Gender Equality Division.
This team provides flexible capacity to deliver strategic, technical, and decision support for time-bound, high-priority within the Gender Equality Division.
We also guide the foundation’s global staff in best practices, with key insights from our partners. We provide staff with resources which help them ask the right questions as they consider investments to reach all intended beneficiaries. To support our global teams in developing programs that are designed to fit beneficiary needs, we provide staff and prospective grantees with tools to assess if and how well gender has been considered in the design of a programmatic grant. Based on the type of investment, these are:
- The Upstream Marker for Health supports assessment and improvement of the sex and sociodemographic intentionality of investments in health innovations.
- The Gender Integration Marker supports assessment of the level of gender intentionality, sometimes called gender mainstreaming, in the design and implementation of programmatic grants.
Examples of some of our past technical projects include:
- An evidence review on how gender can influence development outcomes in the sanitation sector.
- A study that explored the FDA’s post-approval decision to introduce sex-specific dosing of Zolpidem (Ambien). This example of the possibility of sex differences in drug efficacy, raises questions as to whether the drug development industry has adequately explored sex differences in clinical trials.
- A brief providing insights to inform the design of maternal nutrition interventions in Pakistan, with a focus on supplementation.
- A report to enhance understanding and inform strategies to support women’s engagement in livestock production in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso.
