The UNDP commitment to gender equality is integral to all efforts to expand people’s choices, realize a just and sustainable world, and achieve the vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In tandem with the Strategic Plan, the UNDP gender equality strategy (GES) 2022-2025 seeks to mainstream gender equality and the empowerment of women across the five signature solutions, and through stand-alone interventions at each level of the organization. The GES raises the level of ambition by promoting integrated approaches to achieve broader and more transformative results; greater investments in data analysis and solutions to dismantle harmful norms and stereotypes and re-envisioned partnerships.  

UNDP has had a mandatory gender equality marker in place since 2009. It was one of the first UN entities to pilot the gender equality marker to track allocations and expenditures made to advance or contribute to the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. Under the previous UNDP Gender Equality Strategy (2018 – 2021), UNDP has also used the gender equality marker as a corporate mechanism to incentivize and drive institutional progress on gender equality. 

The gender equality marker is applied across the entire organizational budget, including core and non-core resources. It employs a four-point scale that ranges from 0 (no contribution to gender equality and the empowerment of women) to 3 (gender equality as the principal objective) and is used to code both development and management outputs, irrespective of whether they were designed to contribute to the advancement of gender equality.    Gender marker ratings are based on the nature of the output and not on the amount of resources allocated to it. See Table 1.

Table 1: Gender Equality Marker Scale

UNDP does not draw a hierarchical distinction between a gender marker score of 2 (significant contribution) or 3 (primary objective) as integrated and targeted approaches to gender mainstreaming are complementary and contribute to UNDP’s mandate.

Although project managers are responsible for ensuring that all development and management outputs at the project level are coded against the gender equality marker at the planning/budget allocation stage, the UNDP Guidance (2016) recommends that the coding process be conducted as a collective exercise with the project or cross-functional team; this helps to build greater staff and institutional capacity on gender mainstreaming. In assigning the gender equality marker code, staff (or teams) assess the intended contributions of outputs to gender equality and the empowerment of women based on what the project document explicitly contains (“code what you see”). In addition, gender equality marker scores should be supported and informed by a gender analysis.   A gender analysis is an important vehicle for systematically integrating gender equality considerations in the design and planning of interventions, including in the results and budget frameworks.   It forms an integral part of UNDP’s quality assurance approach to programming. Moreover, gender equality and the empowerment of women is one of the programming principles of the UNDP Social and Environmental Standards.

The gender equality marker is operationalized through UNDP’s enterprise resource planning system (ATLAS/Quantum), which records the gender equality marker code for each project output and tracks expenditures throughout the project cycle. By linking the gender equality marker to the financial reporting system, UNDP can monitor expenditures during project implementation and modify the gender equality marker accordingly, though this does not occur in a systematic manner. In addition to being able to aggregate gender-equality related expenditures across outputs, UNDP’s ERP system can also disaggregate the number of outputs by gender marker code; and identify patterns of resource allocation and financial expenditures in each programme/project as well as across UNDP’s focus areas, country offices and regions.   

Financial targets: In its Gender Equality Strategy (GES (2022 -2025), UNDP set a bold financial benchmark for progressively allocating 70% of organizational resources to advancing gender equality and/or the empowerment of women. This target encompasses both core and non-core resources and includes allocations for outputs scored as a GEM 2 (gender equality as a significant objective) or a GEM 3 (gender equality as a primary objective). The GES further stipulates that core funding allocated to Regional Bureaus (Track 2 Funds) and to crisis response (Track 3 Funds), including country offices in crisis contexts, will gradually achieve 15 per cent of allocations to advancing gender equality and/or empowering women as a primary objective.  This represents a significant shift in ambition from the previous Gender Equality Strategy (2018 – 2021), which had set a 15% financial target for interventions with gender equality as a principal objective only.  Moreover, to ensure adequate funding for gender equality, new global, regional, and country office programmes and projects are required to identify, at their design stage, at least one stand-alone gender-specific component and to allocate at least 15 per cent of the total resources of the initiative to this component.  

UNDP, through the Global Gender Team, has focused on building organization-wide awareness of and capacity to use the gender equality marker as a planning and monitoring tool.   It has updated guidance and developed supplementary tools to support greater consistency and accuracy in the assigning of gender equality marker codes.  It has also offered webinars and online trainings to staff and gender specialists at global, regional, and country level. UNDP has also integrated the gender equality marker rating into various UNDP corporate results-based management tools, such as the UNDP Programme and Project Quality Assurance Standards. 

At regional and country levels, Gender Advisors/Focal Points/Specialists are available to provide technical and quality assurance support to senior managers on the application and/or validation of the gender equality marker codes. They also help to further strengthen the gender equality dimensions of UNDP programming by identifying gaps and recommending adjustments to project planning. Engaging other key staff such as results-based management or monitoring and evaluation specialists in the quality assurance process can further enhance the monitoring and reporting on gender equality marker results and promote their integration into planning and decision making for better accountability. 

UNDP also implements the Gender Equality Seal in 84 country offices (or 70% of all UNDP offices) to maintain quality standards for gender mainstreaming and to strengthen the overall gender capacities of staff. The Gender Equality Seal provides senior managers with a framework to guide and ensure that country offices adhere to quality programming standards and benchmarks in seven key areas.  Examples of such standards include:

• Capacities: Dedicated and experienced gender advisors or specialists are integrated into and are members of the management team. 
• Programmes/projects: Appraisal processes ensure that all programme or project documents have substantive gender analysis and meet gender programming guidelines AND at least 70% of programme expenditures directly contribute to gender equality results (GEN2 + GEN3).
• Gender equality results/impact: An in-depth portfolio review of a country programme is undertaken at least once every four years.  According to the UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2022-2025, these participatory portfolio reviews with partners seek to understand gender equality from a systems perspective, connect diverse interventions to achieve broader gender equality goals, and optimize the programmatic, human and financial architecture for gender equality.” 

UNDP has used gender equality marker data to measure its corporate commitment to gender equality and to monitor allocations and expenditures against its financial targets.  Even though UNDP applies the gender equality marker to its entire organizational budget, UNDP only reports on gender equality expenditures related to programmatic outputs.   Twice a year, the Gender Steering and Implementation Committee (GSIC) conveys the UNDP senior management team on corporate performance on gender equality, including progress towards meeting financial targets. The GSIC is UNDP’s highest-level organizational body on gender equality and the empowerment of women and is chaired by the Administrator. UNDP also reports on the Gender Equality Marker as part of annual, corporate reporting processes, such as the UNDP Annual Report to the Executive Board, the Results-oriented Annual Report (ROAR), and the Annual Report on the Gender Equality Strategy.  Gender equality marker data will also be used in conjunction with data from the results-oriented annual report and the Gender Equality Seal to create a ‘gender data powerhouse’ that provides reliable and timely gender-related data to UNDP regional hubs and country offices.  

On average, UNDP invests more on gender equality than other development actors.   Gender equality marker data shows that resources allocated to gender equality nearly doubled in the period from 2014 to 2021 rising from 33.8 % in 2014 to 64.5 % in 2021 in programmes where gender equality was either a principal or significant objective.  (See Figure 1). Much of this growth is attributed to an increase in gender-mainstreamed programmes (GEN 2); while the proportion of programmes having gender equality as a principal objective grew more steadily, from 4.8 % in 2014 to 7.5% in 2021.  

Figure 1: Gender Equality Marker Trend Data, 2014 - 2021

In 2021, UNDP’s Gender Steering Implementation Committee commissioned a forward-looking review of UNDP financial resource allocations and mobilization for gender equality. It found that while UNDP’s overall gender equality work is not underfunded, it is only its stand-alone gender equality programming that is under-resourced. This finding is in keeping with global trends on financing for gender equality, where the evidence points to a greater prioritization and mainstreaming of gender concerns with other development objectives than in dedicated financing for gender equality. 

Based on this, UNDP is developing a resource mobilization strategy aimed at creating new modalities and financial targets, strengthening gender expertise, enhancing thought leadership, and developing a concrete offer with services and products to ensure adequate financing for gender equality, with special attention to crisis-affected settings. The strategy will utilize the gender equality marker data as evidence for showcasing on one level the organizational resources allocated to financing for gender equality and on another level to make the case for increased resources to match UNDP’s transformative vision for gender equality and the empowerment of women. 

The gender equality marker has enabled UNDP to track allocations and expenditures for gender equality results; monitor and analyze trends by region, country, and outcome; improve planning and decision-making; and improve overall reporting and accountability on gender equality and the empowerment of women. 

Making the gender equality marker mandatory has heightened awareness on the need to integrate gender equality in budget allocations at the programme/project planning stage and has strengthened gender equality considerations in UNDP’s programming.

Additional investments in improving capacities on results-based programming and budgeting as well as in quality assurance systems can further improve the consistency and accuracy of gender marker coding. Developing a deeper understanding of what gender equality looks like in different sector contexts is also needed.

While there may be no single view on the correct code, what is important is that staff, project teams and/or implementing partners (when relevant) discuss and reach agreement on the extent to which each output is likely to contribute to gender equality and that the coding process be documented through evidence-based justification statements, particularly in cases where there are coding challenges or ambiguities.