Gender at Work Framework

We help organizations see their work from new perspectives by combining best practices in organizational development with feminsit thought in what we call the "Gender at Work framework". 

Using this framework, we help organizations uncover and see the largely almost invisible values and mindsets that underpin everyday, informal culture. We help bring to light the unrecognized beliefs and values that are constantly at play in interactions among people working or volunteering in organizations, and also in the communities they serve. By using our framework, which draws on the best of organizational development and feminist thinking, to really analyze how people interact and how decisions are made and how things get done in your organization, we help you to carry out infinitely more effective gender-equality planning and implementation.

Our CSO Strengthening Program participants have this to say about the Gender at Work framework:

"The framework helped me at two levels - one, it helped me assess where I stand vis-à-vis gender equality, and two, it helped me assess whether my organisation is prepared to work on gender issues.” (India Program Participant)

"This tool builds an analytical skill for people who have not had positions of structural power." (South Africa Program Participant)

"The framework is very interesting, it is useful to map and see our strengths and weaknesses up there; one can learn a lot and share it further on a larger forum.” (India Program Participant)

"The Gender at Work analytical framework as well as this engagement helped to push and stretch participants beyond their initial horizons. One of the most outstanding differences with the outcomes in this region, was the extent to which partners worked overtly with traditional cultural and religious leaders such as chiefs, headmen and imams." (Horn Program Participant)
 

To have a significant impact on gender inequity, we must change institutions. While the terms "institution" and "organization" are often to mean the same thing, they don't.

Institutions are the rules – both stated and implicit – for achieving social or economic ends; the rules that determine who gets what, what counts, who does what and who decides. These are the rules that maintain women’s unequal position in society. They include values that perpetuate the gendered division of labour, devalue women’s lives, restrict women’s access to land and other key economic resources, restrict women’s mobility and, perhaps most fundamentally, devalue reproductive work.

Organizations are the social structures created to accomplish particular ends but which embody the institutions (rules) prevalent in a society.

Although much has been accomplished toward gender equality, nowhere in the world are women and men truly equal in political, social or economic rights. We believe that this is because the bulk of the efforts toward gender inequality ignore the role of the institutions, those all-important but often unrecognized “rules” that maintain women’s unequal position. Our framework helps organizations uncover those inequities and creates a pathway to developing and implementing projects that engender real change.

To download a comprehensive overview of Gender at Work’s framework, click here.