A Look Into Institutional Award Incentives

Anyone who works to advance gender equality in international development knows that it’s no easy task. That being said, they know how critical it is to keep striving toward gender equality so that global development results in a more fair and just world for all, regardless of gender and other intersecting identities. Persistent gender norms and the systems that uphold them are a complex and multilayered  web to untangle and disrupt, but around the world, there are many people from a range of roles who believe in something better and are challenging the status quo. To achieve this vision, we need to think outside of the box and try new approaches when the current conditions hinder our progress. This process of imagining a future that does not yet exist requires creativity. 

As members of the Chroma Collective, we aim to do just that, employ creativity to solve hard problems. We are a network of gender practitioners from government and multilateral institutions who are committed to gender mainstreaming (GM) within global development systems. Early in our journey together, we identified common challenges in our work, roles, and systems that hold us and others back from achieving effective gender integration in international development. Since then, we have embarked on a journey of cross-institutional learning through the Collective, using human-centered design to co-create and test early prototype solutions. 

The challenges are persistent, but our knowledge sharing, design research and techniques have revealed promising and effective approaches in our field. One emergent strategy surfaced by our membership was the use of incentive systems to stimulate the prioritization of GM across international development institutions and stakeholders. A recent conversation among a subset of Chroma Collective members who lead gender in the major development banks highlighted their experience using institutional awards to incentivize GM. 

As we’ve collaborated and created together, we recognize that we aren’t alone in our efforts. We are one subset of passionate gender equality practitioners and advocates, within a broad community of gender champions, who contribute to this work from all corners of the world. To build on what emerged from our conversations together, we invite others to reflect and share with us their own perspectives. And, it’s critical to acknowledge that the point of view included in this summary stems largely from examples within multilateral development banks headquartered in the Global North.

EXPLORING INSTITUTIONAL AWARDS TO INCENTIVIZE GENDER MAINSTREAMING

During this member discussion, we learned that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) instituted an annual “Gender Award”, a stand-alone award program that solicited submissions for projects designed through a gender lens from across the institution via their daily newsletter, gender network, etc. This award program entertained different categories of gender implementation, such as including women community member leaders, a new product design for women-centric needs, attracting more women into a male-dominated sector, retaining or promoting women, and so on.

With involvement from IFC senior management, the high-level annual event increased GM visibility, with winners receiving public accolades. That said, most submissions were standalone gender programs — either investment or advisory — where the sole objective was to close a specific gender gap, rather than programs focused on integrating a gender lens to accomplish a sector-wide outcome. Also, the work required to coordinate the awards program, (i.e., encouraging submissions, judging projects, organizing the awards ceremony, and ensuring audience participation) was a heavy load on the gender staff at IFC. As a result, after about five years, the award program was redesigned and integrated more widely into IFC’s existing Corporate Awards Program.

This annual program awards efforts that fall within the core focus areas of IFC’s strategic business outlook. For three to four years, one of the core focus areas for IFC was Gender. During that time, a team or an individual could submit work related to a gender-integrated, sector-specific program or a gender standalone project; however, often the gender standalone projects were “more exciting as they could demonstrate greater gender equality impact”. Unlike the first Gender Award program, IFC’s Corporate Awards Program attracted more diverse submissions, as it included a monetary prize and a high-profile award ceremony that the CEO of IFC attends.

Integrating Gender into the Corporate Awards Program itself served as a form of mainstreaming; recognizing gender performance as a business deliverable on par with other strategic business areas. In addition, the selection of the gender award winner was carried out by a broad, multidisciplinary jury, shifting ownership and accountability beyond the gender experts on IFC’s staff. This standalone award category for gender has since shifted to the corporate awards integrating a gender focus in the different award categories.

A Chroma member from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) also shared their own institutional gender awards, called the “Shireen Lateef Gender Equality Operations Awards”, a stand-alone annual program named after ADB’s first head of gender. This non-monetary award program consists of five categories: best project with gender designs; best gender equality results; best gender knowledge event/publication; the ADB gender champion; and a special award category that changes year to year. Submissions are nominated by project team leads, gender specialists, or division directors. The jury consists of staff from across ADB, including directors from ADB departments not involved in operational transactions in order to foster judicial impartiality. It is chaired by the Chief of the Gender Equality Thematic Group, which is positioned within the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department. This awards program has been successful in shining light on GM activities, engaging leadership in public support of gender-related efforts, and incentivizing staff to up their performance. While the overall volume and quality of gender-informed work has increased, and more contribution is seen coming from the private sector operations, the awards program has not necessarily been the catalyst for change or innovation, but rather a tool to reward staff who pursue such efforts.

ACKNOWLEDGING NUANCES AT THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL

Our conversation with Chroma members highlighted that using institutional awards to incentivize GM — whether they be in the form of public accolades or financial incentives — do not always result in increased implementation of quality GM. There also often needs to be a system, such as scorecards and performance targets that concretize GM mandates, enable staff to carry out requirements, and track staff’s GM efforts as an inherent part of their job performance. A Chroma member from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for example, posited that an accountability system linked to performance reviews, professional growth, and career goals could have a deeper and more widespread impact on GM than the institution’s award program. “An award is a special, annual, one-off incentive given to a few out of hundreds who might be deserving. The probability of winning is low, even if you are committed to the gender and diversity targets.” IDB has had an award program similar to the one described above at IFC; however, given the low likelihood of winning, this annual award is arguably more symbolic than a system that rewards achievements based on corporate targets for gender and diversity efforts. For example, staff and teams base their work plans on these targets and are evaluated against them. Staff are then rewarded for their performance in the forms of promotions, salary increases, monetary bonuses, etc. These targets organically cascade throughout the organization, and as a result, stronger levels of gender equality and diversity investments are achieved. This collective impact may, therefore, more effectively move the needle on gender within large institutions.