With Michelle Yeoh’s record-setting Best Actress Oscar win during Women’s History Month, the actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador also took a moment to amplify the voices of women and girls that bear the brunt of crises around the world. In an Opinion piece for the New York Times, she wrote, “Women are hit hardest in disasters. Women and girls are often at a disadvantage when it comes to rescue efforts, and women are more likely than men to suffer from hunger.”

Indeed, research has demonstrated that for many of the critical challenges facing our world today, women and girls are often disproportionately affected, while at the same time hold significant roles in creating solutions that are community-centered, innovative and impactful. It is not a new sentiment to highlight that half of the world’s population must not be left behind in our journey to build a more resilient and inclusive world, and that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, ‘Gender Equality’, is a catalyst for accelerating progress towards all of the SDGs.

Yet, the landscape of funding that goes towards social and environmental change does not currently reflect this: according to the OECD, in 2019-2020 only 45 percent of governmental development aid considered gender as a factor, and only 5 percent of that aid funded programmes with gender equality as the “principal objective”. When we fail to adequately acknowledge that people of different genders face different opportunities and challenges, and that their different lived experiences equip them with different perspectives to collectively tackle the greatest global problems we face—whether climate change, pandemics or the latest threat to humanity on the news—we are limiting our potential for transformative impact and solutions.

So, how do we transform the current systems of philanthropy and aid, where “gender equality” is often funded as a siloed theme? How can we include intentional analysis of the intersectionality of gender—both with regard to how gender intersects with other funded impact themes such as climate, health or youth, and how it intersects with other aspects of inequality such as race, class or disability? How can we apply a “gender lens” to our giving across different themes, sectors and geographies?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation elevates gender considerations across all grantmaking, across themes including addressing poverty, hunger and disease. In collaboration with the Global Center for Gender Equality, the Gates Foundation grantmaking staff joins training that incorporates questions such as “How do women and girls experience the problem differently?” and “Do any gender-based policies or customs come into play?”. This approach of intentionally integrating community-based gender factors into strategy, advocacy and research could act as a pathway to entry for both foundations and philanthropic individuals.

The UN Women Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) offer a guide to empowering women in the workplace, marketplace and community, serving as a pathway for corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes and corporate foundations to be more intentional in using a gender lens to advance the effectiveness of their philanthropy. They could serve as a good approach for corporate foundations.

Another approach for the philanthropic sector is the AVPN Principles for Gender Lens Giving, co-authored by members of the Asia Gender Network. These Principles were launched at the B20 Summit in Indonesia last year and comprise a set of common guidance co-developed based on best practices by leaders in the philanthropic and gender mainstreaming fields and aim to improve outcomes for programme beneficiaries, women and girls, and funders.

To use this framework of gender lens giving as one of the tools to make philanthropy more effective and meaningful, it’s important to first distinguish between “gender lens giving” versus other related—and important—tools and trends upon which this framework builds.

Gender lens giving builds on “gender mainstreaming”
Gender mainstreaming is “the process of integrating a gender lens into all aspects of an organisation’s strategies and initiatives, and into its culture, systems and operations” without necessarily the detailed focus on the process of funding. This concept has a history dating back to the UN 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the subsequent 1997 UN Resolution mandating that gender become an integral part of policy and programme design “so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated”. This was a paradigm shift at the time—from thinking of women only as beneficiaries or even victims, to a more holistic analysis of structured inequality and the agency of women’s leadership. While gender mainstreaming applies to broader policies across the board, gender lens giving aims to hone in on the funding aspect in order to amplify impact.

Gender lens giving is not limited to giving to causes that empower women and girls, though that is important too
Gender lens giving does not ask you to abandon your existing funding of other focus themes such as climate action, health resilience or youth opportunities—but seeks to help improve those portfolios by intentionally considering how women and girls might be differently impacted by those issues. In line with gender mainstreaming, gender lens giving “does not preclude dedicated initiatives specifically directed towards women or targeted directly to men with the objective of promoting gender equality”. In fact, we recognise that there is a significant funding gap to gender equality organisations around the world, especially those that are led by grassroots women. As such, gender lens giving is not a silver bullet to supporting changemakers nor is it meant to be a replacement to increasing direct funding for women and girls—rather, both are necessary.

Gender lens giving is not focusing only on women philanthropists, though that is a trend worth noting, especially in Asia
Gender lens giving is not only for people who identify as women—it is a framework that we encourage all philanthropic individuals and funder organisations to adopt. At the same time, it is worth noting that the most prominent givers to the cause of gender equality are women, and that there is a global trend of rising women’s wealth. Boston Consulting Group found that in 2020, one-third of the world’s private wealth was held by women in an upwards trend—and further, that this trend is most pronounced in Asia, the region which overall saw the world’s highest growth rate of women’s wealth. While this trend may have an effect of increasing the number of gender lens givers, based on research that shows women philanthropists are more likely than their male counterparts to give to causes for women and girls, it is important to note that gender lens giving is open to all givers.

What gender lens giving is, is a way for individual philanthropists and funder organisations to explore the ways embedding a set of standardised principles and guidance for incorporating gender considerations can help design more effective philanthropic programmes. There are three main ways to do this, as identified in the development of the AVPN Principles for Gender Lens Giving:

● Reach all intended beneficiaries: ‘Gender neutral funding’ usually does not reach men and women, and boys and girls equally, given the social constructions, different realities of and expectations from (and of) both genders. Therefore, it is not about providing the same programmes, treatment and opportunities for women and men, but rather creating transformative, meaningful opportunities and pathways that are appropriately targeted in order for both to benefit in the maximum possible way
● Address the drivers underlying complex problems: Gender-specific considerations often contribute to seemingly unrelated challenges, e.g. household poverty rates might be driven by women’s unpaid care burden and resulting inability to engage in the workforce
● Bring focus to the most marginalised, whether they are men or women: A gender lens brings multiple dimensions of inequality and discrimination to the forefront, e.g. race, caste, migrant status

As we move towards the 2030 target of achieving the UN SDGs, be more intentional in reflecting the lived realities of the communities you aim to uplift by integrating gender considerations into the way you give.