Gender Innovation Guide logo

Gender
× Innovation
Guide

A free digital guide to understand
gender in innovation and create
transformative impact for all.


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.

Generation Equality logo

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.

Transformative cycle

Key steps for Gender Transformative impact

Chapter 1

Foundation

Foundational knowledge, frameworks for understanding how gender shows up in innovation processes.

Chapter 2

Assess

Entry points for organizations and individuals to get started on their journey.

Chapter 3

Plan

Ways for organizations to start defining their gender targets and integrating gender into challenge.

Chapter 4

Implement & Track Change

Ways for teams to support participants, track the progress and learn from each other.

Chapter 5

Review & Sustain

Ways for organizations to reflect and share learnings and sustain the initiative for long term.


Scenario Decks

Scenario 1

“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

Scenario 2

“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.

Scenario 3

“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

Chapter 1

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'

Chapter 2

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.

Chapter 3

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.

Chapter 4

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.

Chapter 5

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.


A project in collaboration with

IDEO.org logo
UN Women logo

Developed with the support of

Govt of Finland logo

Co-authored and co-designed by

The Leaders of the Action Coalition on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality

Generation Equality logo