Resource Library

The “How To” document provides an overview of the Technical Resource, including important terms and definitions, key messages, purpose, components, and linkages to further USAID strategies guidance.

This resource offers practical tools and resources to understand the gender digital divide and integrate the gender digital divide into gender analyses.

This desk review report provides an overview of the current status of the gender digital divide.

This worksheet serves as a reference when incorporating women’s economic empowerment and gender equality into a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) plan. It can help to identify areas where additional WEEGE work can be done and to coordinate efforts around WEEGE MEL. It outlines existing and new WEEGE-specific Developmental Objectives (DOs) and related Intermediate Results (IRs), sub-IRs and indicators and encourages people involved in Mission MEL planning to consider the linkages between the DO, IRs, sub-IRs, indicators and associated activities.

The indicators included in the filterable WEEGE Illustrative Indicators spreadsheet can be used to measure women's economic empowerment and gender equality. To optimize use of the indicators in the WEEGE Illustrative Indicators spreadsheet, collect data for all relevant groups and disaggregate accordingly. Depending on the indicator, this may entail disaggregating data by sex, race, ethnicity, location, age, marital status, legal status or any other relevant group or category.

Overview The resources listed in this section provide assistance to United States Agency for International Development (USAID) staff as they seek to improve women’s economic empowerment and gender equality (WEEGE), supporting them to monitor, evaluate and learn from their efforts.

Overview This document outlines the opportunities and challenges that USAID staff are likely to encounter as they gather, analyze and share data related to women’s economic empowerment and gender equality (WEEGE). The last several years has seen rapid growth in relevant gender data and reporting from governmental, international and civil society organizations. There has been an increasing recognition that the economic lives of women—as consumers, customers, entrepreneurs and businesswomen—must be taken into consideration.

Each unit of the WEEGE Technical Guide includes resources, samples and/or tools. Unit 6 includes two resources and two tools.

Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) is a critical part of MEL and provides an opportunity to advance the learning agenda for WEEGE among the agency, Missions, and implementing partners. CLA must be integrated throughout each phase of the MEL process. It ensures that decisions being made are based on data that are accurate, and enables decision-makers to alter their course of action (or planning) in a manner that best reflects current realities.

All the work from the aforementioned processes must be codified into a PMP or MEL plan. The PMP or MEL plan contents will vary slightly depending on how planning is carried out (select this link to ADS 201 for specific requirements), but it likely will require outlining specific goals, objectives, context and data collection plans, as well as a results framework.

Once the results framework has been established, indicators must be selected or developed that measure each DO or IR and sub-IR. Selecting indicators is a lengthy process and often entails choosing relevant foreign-assistance standard indicators (F-indicators), as well as identifying other indicators that may better measure degrees of success (or failure).

The next step in the WEEGE MEL process creates DOs that speak to and address the ToC. The DOs at the CDCS or RDCS level also will inform how project- and activity-level IRs, sub-IRs and indicators are selected, so it is important to dedicate time to determine what the DOs will seek to measure. The DOs should address the goals and ToC put forward by the Mission and provide clarity around how it intends to achieve those goals.

After a thorough understanding of the WEEGE context has been established, the next step in the process is to develop a WEEGE theory of change (ToC), also called a development hypothesis. One way to begin this process is by thinking about what things would look like in-country when WEEGE is strengthened. Statements such as, “We will know that WEEGE has been strengthened when x, y and z conditions are present,” can be helpful to think through when creating a ToC that will best describe a WEEGE landscape.

After gaining an understanding of WEEGE challenges and opportunities, the next step is to integrate that learning into a PMP (at the CDCS or RDCS level) or MEL plan (at the activity level). When initiating MEL planning, it is important to understand the broader challenges and opportunities of working with WEEGE data and designing WEEGE programming. To begin, it is important to understand a Mission’s mandate, funding, geographic areas of interest and targeted sectors.

The first step in integrating WEEGE into MEL planning begins with understanding the current WEEGE context, the availability of WEEGE data, and the interventions that have been successful, piloted or untested. Many more organizations are now collecting and analyzing WEEGE data and have identified opportunities and challenges for advancing WEEGE. Significant progress has been made, with many organizations recognizing the importance of not only integrating gender into development projects, but also measuring their impact.

This monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) unit is based on the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Automated Directives Systems (ADS) 201 and ADS 205 (refer to Figure 1).

Unit 6 addresses how to: understand WEEGE opportunities and challenges in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL); utilize WEEGE resources to inform a Performance Management Plan (PMP) or MEL plan; integrate WEEGE into the theory of change; establish WEEGE-specific DOs, IRs and/or sub-IRs; develop and select WEEGE-specific indicators; integrate WEEGE into PMP or MEL plans; and collaborate, learn and adapt to advance WEEGE.

This Integration Plan template is an optional tool to help implementing partners develop integration plans based on the findings of a gender analysis with a WEEGE lens. It is designed to create a consistent approach across activities, to help USAID better manage WEEGE integration across portfolios. It is a place to summarize an activity's initial research findings and to provide recommendations to turn those findings into actions.

USAID Agreement Officer’s Representatives or Contracting Officer’s Representatives (AOR/CORs) engage implementing partners (IPs) both formally and informally throughout activity implementation. These interactions are opportunities to reinforce and facilitate continuous integration of WEEGE and to support interventions and adaptations that ensure successful achievement of WEEGE outcomes. This tool offers suggestions on how AOR/CORs can integrate WEEGE into their collaboration with IPs.

ADS 205 includes a helpful list of questions that design teams should ask to ensure that gender is well integrated in each major solicitation section. This tool lists these questions, along with additional suggestions for including a WEEGE lens in the process of solicitation development.

This tool helps design teams ensure WEEGE is integrated into an activity design. It assumes that a gender analysis integrating WEEGE has been done to ensure that the design team has relevant information about the WEEGE context of the activity.

This sample presents modified excerpts from a health systems activity-level gender analysis to illustrate how WEEGE can be integrated. The findings are presented in two different formats: organized by ADS 205 domains, and organized by the actors in the health activity value chain.

Each unit of the WEEGE Technical Guide includes resources, samples and/or tools. This unit includes one sample and four tools. In this Unit, you will find:

Integrating WEEGE at the activity level requires an understanding of the opportunities and challenges women face in their local context, in order to design effective approaches and strategies, allocate resources to support them and identify and troubleshoot potential challenges.

An activity is generally defined as an “implementing mechanism that carries out an intervention or set of interventions to advance identified development result(s)”.