About Us
This is our driving force
Gender at Work believes we are facing a crisis of democratic institutions where the power of actors and institutions to represent and fight for social justice has been undercut and civil society spaces for advocacy and action are severely restricted. Work on social justice and rights is being forced underground; institutions which proclaim the urgency of making progress on women’s rights are themselves sites of entrenched gender discrimination and new actors are increasingly selling quick fixes to structural issues of inequality through ‘empowerment lite’ solutions, with conditionality requirements for access to resources that skirt hegemonic power dynamics.
We work in partnership with activists and researchers to bring together new knowledge on deep structures of inequality and discriminatory social norms, with innovative approaches and tools to transform them in organizations and communities.
Our analytical framework
Gender at Work brings together new knowledge on deep structures of inequality and discriminatory social norms with innovative approaches and tools to transform them in organizations and communities. Using our unique and widely tested Gender at Work Analytical Framework, we help change agents to uncover and challenge these formal and informal barriers to gender equality.
Gender Action Learning
Gender at Work brings together new knowledge on deep structures of inequality and discriminatory social norms with innovative approaches and tools to transform them in organizations and communities. Using our unique and widely tested Gender at Work Analytical Framework, we help change agents to uncover and challenge these formal and informal barriers to gender equality.
Knowledge resources
BUILDING THE FIELD OF GENDER EQUALITY
We engage with analysis and action premised on feminist inquiry and intersectional principles. This enables us to bridge theory and practice in ways that nurture collective understanding and shift discriminatory social norms. Our resources draw from grounded experiences of change interventions in organizational and community settings which also involve mind-body work.
Our work in organizations & systems
Stories of change
Our work has led to transformational change in organizations – big and small. Read our compilation of case studies to learn more about how our processes have effectively challenged and changed social norms that perpetuate exclusion and inequality.
Pathways to change
Gender at Work’s approaches try to disrupt conventional thinking and tackle what are sometimes called “wicked” problems – those that have innumerable causes, are tough to describe, and don’t have one right answer. This requires engaging many stakeholders to build solutions together.
- Capacity Development Strategies
Gender at Work uses capacity development strategies such as gender action learning, strategic planning and program development, training, and reflective learning to engage with teams, organizations and networks.
We work at three levels:
1) with specific projects and programs;
2) at an organizational level, and
3) in the larger field of knowledge and institutional change.
Our partnerships have included multi-year engagements that build the capacity of internal change agenda to improve teamwork or use gender action learning for systematic change. Take a look at our work with social change organizations in India. Partnerships have also included short-term contracts to support development of a gender policy, a strategic planning process or any other organizational priority.
- Learning & Evaluation for Collective Impact
We support organizations to undertake learning and evaluation from a gender equality and rights-based perspective. They do this using our analytical framework to map inter-connected change processes and collective impact.
Partnership support can range from design and implementation of an evaluation for a program/portfolio to deepen understanding of change theory and help build leadership.
Work can also include analytical support and training on practices such as “Most Significant Change”. Additionally, we provide guidance on innovative writing/story-telling techniques to identify shared strategies. Take a look at our work on Most Significant Change with Oxfam Novib Partners.
- Harvesting New Knowledge
Our founders and Associates collaborate with each other and a wide range of partners to pilot new approaches, analytical frameworks, and learning strategies in support of gender and institutional change.
Through writing, speaking and increasing the use of social media, we are developing Collaborations for Gender Equality to unite individuals working on different aspects of gender inequality so that we can test new ways of working across geography and mindsets.
In the past two years, we have produced four books including Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for the 21st Century, Routledge. We have also produced accompanying multimedia resources that assemble the best thinking and experience on changing institutionalized gender discrimination in diverse organizational sites. And finally, we are producing articles, power-point presentations and other media on diverse issues related to gender equality. You can access some of these in our resource section!