Here to help you apply a gender lens to your innovation
This interactive guide is designed to support innovators (like yourself!) to create a positive innovation culture and help people inside and outside of organizations break barriers, come together, generate new ideas, and iterate for gender transformative change. It is the culmination of learnings shared by stakeholders of the Generation Equality movement, technology companies, innovation challenge organizers, challenge participants, and more.
Action Coalition on
Technology and Innovation
for Gender Equality
Here's how it works
Build your gender muscle with the help of the following learning modules. Each module asks a key question, and a number of activities that can be completed to attempt to answer to the question and access additional resources to dig deeper. Follow the steps on the wheel or choose your own adventure from the menu of cards.
Key steps for Gender Transformative impact
Foundation
Foundational knowledge, frameworks for understanding how gender shows up in innovation processes.
Assess
Entry points for organizations and individuals to get started on their journey.
Plan
Ways for organizations to start defining their gender targets and integrating gender into challenge.
Implement & Track Change
Ways for teams to support participants, track the progress and learn from each other.
Review & Sustain
Ways for organizations to reflect and share learnings and sustain the initiative for long term.
Scenario Decks
“We would like to integrate a gender lens into our existing innovation process”
Eg. You are global technology hardware company working on improving your product development process to be more gender-inclusive
“We are considering running an innovation challenge for the first time and want to understand if it is the right vehicle”
Eg. You are part of a govermental organization looking to run an open-innovation challenge in your country.
“We have organized innovation challenges before and want to evaluate if we are working towards gender transformation“
Eg. You are a global non-profit looking to overhaul your innovation challenge practice
All Modules
Foundation
What
This is a collection of activities to develop a basic, or deeper understanding of gender transformation at various moments during the innovation process
When
When you’re considering to host an innovation challenge and are aiming for a gender transformative process and outputs
What
This is a self-assessment activity to surface and reflect on the strengths and growth opportunities of your organization to enable gender transformative work.
When
When you’re considering to host an innovation challenge and are looking for insights into your organizational baseline
What
This is a team activity to understand and align on the intentions behind wanting to host an innovation challenge, and reflect on what should be true for it to be the right vehicle towards transformative outcomes.
When
When you’re considering to host an innovation challenge and need a gut check and internal alignment on the 'why'
Assess
What
This is a participatory activity that helps to identify the different identities of your users and their needs - and recognize how those differences may also be reinforced by gender, class, race, caste, ethnicity or age. It helps surface barriers and identify consequences that can be addressed in your innovation.
When
Use this when you want to understand your users, their different experiences with your innovation and the different considerations you need to make for them.
What
This is a participatory team activity to understand the context around your target users, and how that might enable or inhibit their behaviors.
When
Use this when you want to understand your users' context in order to come up with your focus area.
Plan
What
This is a co-creation activity to explore and align on your innovation challenge goals to ensure that your team and stakeholders are working towards a common vision and definition of success.
When
Use this when refining the focus area imagining what success looks like for your innovation.
What
This is an activity to better understand who you want to get support from and how to craft a narrative that is aligned with their motivations.
When
Use this when preparing to get support for your inclusive innovation.
What
This is a participatory activity that will guide you through a series of steps to plan the right support on your challenge and get started on the right foot.
When
Use this when setting up support structures for your users.
What
Understanding who are the types of participants you want to join in your innovation challenge and how to engage them.
When
Use this when planning an innovation challenge, pre-launch.
What
This is a team activity to analyse the situations of the target challenge participants and ensure their needs are considered and included in the challenge budget.
When
Use this while planning the challenge budget.
Implement & Track Change
What
To monitor and assess the impact of your activities, including an understanding of which indicators to use to measure gender transformation.
When
Use this when planning and preparing for your innovation challenge.
What
This is a set of activities to plan and build an internal feedback structure that encourages continuous learning and creates a process that’s open to flexibility and adaptation.
When
Use this during/after an innovation challenge, looking for ways to improve or iterate on your challenge, or providing support to participants looking for feedback.
Review & Sustain
What
This is a worksheet to consolidate and craft a succinct, comprehensive and inclusive impact story.
When
Use this at the end of an innovation challenge after impact has been monitored and evaluated.
What
This is an activity to evaluate how gender transformative an innovation is in terms of long-term impact and sustainability.
When
Use this when reviewing an innovation or when trying to understand the long-term gender transformative impact of an innovation.