Building Gender Capacity at the Institution Level

How might internal capacity building effectively advance gender mainstreaming in international development?

International donors and funders who have made institutional commitments to promote gender equality through their investments have long recognized the challenge of equipping their technical staff with the right resources & knowledge to effectively implement gender-related directives. Beyond employing uniquely qualified gender specialists and focal points, institutions must ensure that all sectoral staff, both at headquarters and in field offices, embody basic gender capacities. The imperative of ensuring that all cadres of staff are able to act on their institutions’ gender strategies and other related policies is a significant component of gender mainstreaming. It requires thoughtful, targeted efforts in building gender awareness through capacity building.

In May 2022, select members of the Chroma Collective participated in a conversation to learn more about donor approaches to building their own staff’s capacity around gender integration. This conversation was another opportunity for cross-institutional learning within the Collective. While donors and funders are often concerned with ensuring that their implementing partners are well-positioned to integrate gender in projects, the focus of this discussion was on internal, institutional gender capacity building. The primary purpose of such capacity-building efforts is to enable and empower staff to design investments and oversee their implementation with the goal of effectively fulfilling gender mainstreaming directives and advancing gender equality objectives. Internal capacity building also includes continuous training of gender experts to sharpen their skills, support them to keep up with the latest global advancements in the gender and development field and enable them to bring new content and approaches to their agency’s work.

Members of two funding organizations, USAID and UNICEF, provided an overview of their institution’s experiences in internal gender capacity building. This brief summarizes key areas discussed and lessons that emerged from these two institutions’ experiences.

Gender Capacity Building is Driven by Institutional Gender Mainstreaming Mandates

Both USAID and UNICEF have a long history of gender mainstreaming. Their explicit gender-related policies created an imperative for training and put in motion the institutional vehicles to respond to such needs. For example, gender training at USAID started approximately 25 years ago, when the Agency had only a general gender Plan of Action in place. Gender capacity building organically emerged within specific sectors or sub-sectors (e.g. global health, family planning, HIV/AIDS) where gender integration was already underway, and where sectoral funds were available to support such training efforts. Over the years, as USAID’s gender equality mandates became more prominent, gender training expanded. The release of USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment policy in 2012 set the stage for more comprehensive and rigorous gender capacity building. This Agency-wide approach to learning is run out of headquarters and managed out of the Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, with dedicated financial resources. Similarly, at UNICEF, gender capacity building is embedded in its Gender Action Plan (current iteration is for the period 2022-025). The Plan articulates specific steps to ensure sufficient gender integration skills of staff at every level and across sectors. UNICEF’s Action Plan drove an internal process for identifying systems, standards, resources, and capacity needs of staff.

At the center of both institutions’ gender policy instruments is the requirement of gender analysis to inform program design and implementation. As such, gender analysis tools, methodologies, and skill sets emerged as the hallmark of gender mainstreaming capacity-building efforts at both USAID and UNICEF.

Multi-Faceted Capacity Building to Meet Evolving Needs

Gender capacity-building efforts at both USAID and UNICEF have continued to evolve to meet the growing complexity of gender-related programming.  Both institutions now offer a suite of training courses geared at different levels of knowledge, with sectoral specificity, and using a range of delivery modalities.   They have also each differentiated the gender knowledge needs of general staff, and the skills and resources necessary for gender specialists to fulfill their respective technical duties.

For general staff, USAID offers an e-learning course to all new employees, “Gender 101”, which offers a rudimentary introduction to gender (e.g. norms and roles and their impact on access, status, participation, etc.), terminology, and Agency requirements. It also offers another course on “Achieving Development Objectives through Gender Integration”, which aligns with USAID’s specific gender requirements in programming guidance. A third course focuses on fundamental components of gender-based violence prevention and response. USAID also launched a hybrid course in response to field Mission requests on Gender Integration and GBV, which was offered to its field staff and was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The GBV course and the Gender Integration course mentioned above were originally offered in-person until the pandemic, and are now offered virtually with a facilitator, to ensure participatory activities and active engagement of participants. To further encourage voluntary uptake of gender trainings, USAID now offers continuing education credits for staff who complete these courses. UNICEF employs a similar approach of providing easily accessible and tangible gender capacity building that is geared for its general personnel, although such courses do not count toward a continuing education program. UNICEF offers mandatory training for all staff called the GenderPro Foundational Credential, which is available on a digital platform and covers such topics as social construction of gender, power dynamics, gender analysis, and the promotion of gender equality in the UN system. Beyond this mandatory training, UNICEF offers gender modules within broader technical courses. For example, regional and country office staff are required to view a 5-6 minute video that focuses on why UNICEF works on gender and how it is relevant to UNICEF’s development objectives. In addition, gender modules are integrated into two mandatory courses for senior staff, one on policy planning procedures, and the other on results-based management. A more detailed (one-time) mandatory two-day training is given to all field staff, which focuses on gender integration in results management, and addresses gender policies and norms, the business case for gender integration, and human rights.

For gender advisors and focal points, USAID and UNICEF have developed more advanced capacity-building courses and resources. These are meant to ensure that gender specialists remain well-versed in the latest aspects of GM and can successfully meet the institutions’ gender requirements and policies. For example, in 2021 USAID developed a gender training and mentorship program, entitled “Advanced Gender Integration Leadership Course” or AGILE, designed specifically for gender advisors at headquarters and in field missions, to receive more rigorous training on gender integration, gender analysis, measurement and indicators, advocacy, and implementation across the project cycle. This course, developed in response to gender advisors’ requests for more advanced technical training, supports a cohort of gender advisors for a nine-month period. It offers didactic training, technical conversations, and one-on-one mentoring. There has been a steady demand for this training, which also fulfills continuing education credits. To date, three cohorts have undergone this AGILE training, which has also resulted in a stronger internal network of gender specialists who can support one another and mentor others. Similarly, UNICEF offers a GenderPro Credential specifically for their gender focal points. This required training is offered twice a year and is designed to standardize the gender skills of experts within the institution.

Both institutions recognize the growing sophistication of the gender and development field and the need to increase their staff’s depth of knowledge. As capacity-building goals evolve, institutions must plan ahead by expanding their menu of training courses. As such, USAID has a roster of courses it plans to develop and roll out in the next year or two. This includes a new COVID-19 and Gender e-learning course; an updated Gender 101 course that will reflect Gender Policy updates; an updated GBV course; a new training on Child, Early Forced Marriage (CEFM); and a new advanced Measurement, Evaluation and Learning blended learning course. In addition, up to four additional self-paced e-learning courses will be developed on gender and climate, menstrual health and hygiene, holistic approaches to women’s economic empowerment, and gender integration in solicitations. At UNICEF, efforts are underway to develop training for senior leadership that covers gender, diversity, and culture change. Finally, UNICEF is working in collaboration with UN Women to revise the “I Know Gender” basic course which is available to all UNICEF staff.

Capacity Building Modalities

E-learning courses offer flexibility and easy access to gender trainings for staff at both headquarters and in field offices. They also guarantee uniformity in content. For USAID, gender courses have been integrated into the “USAID University” digital platform, which automatically tracks who takes/completes the online courses. This helps the agency monitor staff compliance against requirements. It is important to note, however, that digital learning in and of itself doesn’t guarantee centralized monitoring since some training courses are offered in person within technical offices or bureaus, or at country or regional locations.

Further, it’s evident that gender capacity-building efforts also benefit from in-person interaction, where content can be adapted to contextual realities, and participants can interact with one another and learn through participatory exercises. Interpersonal engagement and reflection strategies are particularly important in exploring sensitive elements around gender norms and behaviors, power differentials, and intersecting identities. Both USAID and UNICEF offer some in-person learning opportunities, but they are more complex and costly to deliver.  In-person courses at UNICEF tend to be organized by regional gender advisors and are geared toward regional staff. Attendance decisions are decentralized and depend on the availability of regional or sector-specific funds as well as leadership approval. At USAID, all staff are eligible to take the in-person training courses on Gender Integration (ADS205) and on GBV.  Before COVID-19, these courses were funded by USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub, while participant travel costs were primarily covered by their country offices. The trainings moved to a virtual platform, which has been well received and has allowed for greater numbers of staff to participate. USAID will consider a return to in-person delivery as the COVID-19 situation changes.

Who Facilitates the Training?

Gender capacity building can be carried out by donor institutions’ own staff, or can be contracted out. The more complex and expansive the gender capacity-building programs are, the harder it is to keep it in-house. Sector-specific gender capacity building at USAID is still often carried out by USAID experts. Similarly, UNICEF utilizes its core gender advisors to conduct gender trainings for field-based or sector-based colleagues. For both institutions, this decentralized approach to capacity building reduces oversight and makes it difficult to track how many people have been reached.

As gender capacity needs have increased in complexity, both USAID and UNICEF have also turned to external contractors to support training efforts. USAID’s Agency-wide gender course offerings, including the AGILE program, were developed and are carried out by external partners with oversight from USAID. UNICEF’s GenderPro course (for internal staff), was developed and is managed by UNICEF, while the GenderPro course for external audiences is managed by the GWI Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University. These external entities have the expertise, resources, and time to create comprehensive content and use innovative adult learning approaches. One could argue that creating a budget line item for ongoing external sourcing of gender capacity building is, in itself, a sign of successful institutional gender mainstreaming:  donor and funding institutions recognize their internal staff’s demand for continuous learning, and in turn make the budgetary and logistical investment commitments that would ensure expanded gender skills and expertise of its staff.

What Difference Does Gender Capacity-Building Make?

The need to have all staff meet basic gender competencies is imperative if gender mainstreaming is to be achieved.  Similarly, the importance of gender experts deepening their skills cannot be questioned. However, it is challenging to successfully monitor and evaluate capacity-building efforts. The decentralized nature of training, when carried out within specific sectors or sub-sectors or at country or regional levels, makes it very difficult to reliably measure how many people completed various courses. Even harder is measuring the impact of such capacity-building efforts: what did participants actually learn, how have they applied those skills in their daily work, and to what end? USAID has a training metric to monitor the number of attendees across courses and to evaluate immediate outputs related to knowledge acquisition and participant satisfaction. There is also a specific metric for the AGILE course that is focused on the implementation of gender action plans the participants are required to develop as a part of their training. Neither of these metrics measures the longer-term impact of gender capacity building or sustained behavior change. At UNICEF, while recent capacity-building efforts have focused primarily on developing learning resources, the institution plans to home in on measuring outcomes. For now, UNICEF monitors the number of participants that successfully complete each course and collects feedback on the quality and usefulness of the training upon completion of a course via surveys.