Project profile — Innovating for Gender Equality Fund

The Innovating for Gender Equality Fund aims to invest in innovations that specifically seek to improve gender equality and/or empower women and a portfolio of solutions promoting gender equality from which lessons learned and best practices could be identified, documented and shared broadly. The Innovating for Gender Equality Fund is a sub-fund of the Global Innovation Fund (GIF). GIF is a non-profit innovation fund whose mission is to find, fund and scale-up cost effective, evidence-based innovations having the potential to improve the lives of people living on less than $5 a day. GIF funds proposals from other organizations that aim to deliver development results more effectively, quicker or cheaper than standard practice, through grants, loans and equity investments ranging from USD $50,000 to $15 million.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) changed social structures to improve the status of women and girls, remove constraints on them, or improve their agency; and (2) achieved widespread adoption among development financiers to identify, implement, monitor, and evaluate gender equality.

Results achieved at the end of the project (December 2023) include: (1) built a successful portfolio of 10 innovations under the Innovating for Gender Equality Fund. This made structural change to improve the agency of 2.3 million women and girls; (2) mobilized an additional US$67 million from the private sector for the 10 innovations; (3) developed and effectively applied a new impact analysis methodology and a gender tool kit in all 10 innovations and beyond; and (4) enabled grantees and development financiers to benefit from GIF’s learnings through 6 partnerships, 41 presentations, and 8 evaluations to better identify, implement, monitor, and evaluate gender equality. This includes 5 randomized controlled trials.