Organizational Structure

The architecture of how gender roles, responsibilities, and activities are organized and coordinated across the organization

Hard Problems

Problem 1

Gender teams lack the power to hold other teams accountable for gender integration work.

Consequences

Gender teams have ambitious mandates but no authority to enforce them.
There is less incentive or need for sector practitioners to prioritize GM on top of their already demanding jobs.

Problem 2

Already stretched gender teams face a scope of work that is becoming increasingly broad and unclear.

Consequences

Gender teams are asked to do internal and external GM work, which require very different skills.
It’s difficult to support field/sector teams despite increasing demand and potential for impact.

What we heard

"If you only have a mandate to work externally with sector teams, and those external sector counterparts don't have the right commitments, then you're always knocking on the door, and it's going to be up to those people who think it's important. Those who don't, don't have to respond in the same way. There may be internal commitments within the gender team, but for them to really have teeth, the external counterparts also need to have commitments. "

“Part of the objective is to move more people to field offices, because, given the cross sectoral nature of our topics, it is more effective to be working hand in hand with the local office. Our organization is very decentralized with a lot of in-country presence. And so, all of the biggest opportunities both for mainstreaming and direct investments are there in those conversations with the government.”

“We are getting increased demand from clients but we don't have capacity. I am literally in a situation where my team members are saying we can't take on any more work. For me that is the biggest challenge - funding, resources, capacity to deliver. We don't have resources to innovate on new programs while delivering on the ones we have up and running. There is this tension between where we know we need to go and where we are right now, and what we need to get there, while delivering on what we are doing right now.”

Opportunities

for Problem 1

How might we create systems of accountability across gender and sector teams?

This might look like…

Algorithms for the optimal organizational design to realize gender goals.
Cross-organizational incentive systems for sector practitioners to work on gender goals.

for Problem 2

How might we help organizations better leverage the skillsets of their particular gender teams?