The  Strategic Plan 2022 -2025 of UNFPA focuses on three transformative results and inter-connected outcome areas critical to its achievement:  

1. Reducing the unmet need for family planning by 2025
2. Reducing preventable maternal deaths by 2025
3. Reducing gender-based violence and harmful practices by 2025

Addressing discriminatory gender and social norms to advance gender equality and women’s decision-making is one of six output areas which contributes to each of the above transformative results. Human rights-based and gender-transformative approaches are also integrated as accelerators toward achieving the Strategic Plan’s outputs.

UNFPA senior leadership adopted the gender equality marker (GEM) in 2010 as an accountability tool for linking institutional investments to targeted outcomes as well as to track gender mainstreaming and gender empowerment expenditures across all areas of the organization and facilitate more gender-responsive planning and programming.”   As one of the early adopters of the gender equality marker, UNFPA has since evolved as one of the more advanced gender equality marker systems in the United Nations. It is often highlighted as a good practice because it tracks the gender-responsiveness of budget allocations and expenditures at the most granular level – the activity level.  

The UNFPA gender marker is based on the UNDG standard of a four-point scale - 0, 1, 2a and 2b - and is used to assess the extent to which gender equality is considered and addressed throughout the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation process. 

Table 1: Gender Equality Marker 

While there are value differences between the 0, 1, 2 codes, UNFPA does not draw a hierarchical distinction between a 2A or 2B coding score. Both values have equal merit as they reflect the twin-track approach to gender mainstreaming which includes both targeted and integrated strategies for achieving gender equality. Both programming approaches and financing strategies are needed to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women. 

UNFPA has developed tagging guidance that guides staff through a series of questions on the proper coding of activities, including administrative activities.   For example, administrative activities which may not contain any gender content on their own are coded based on the output to which they are contributing. So, if a series of activities contribute to an end result which is marked 2B, then all associated activities are marked the same. On salary related expenses, UNFPA guidance uses a similar logic. The salary of a gender advisor is considered 2B; whereas the coding of other staff salaries would be dependent on an estimated proportion of time they engage on gender equality-related issues. This information can be drawn from staff job descriptions or consultants’ terms of reference. 
 

The gender equality marker has been integrated as one of several “activity tags” into UNFPA’s Global Programming System and is implemented at the workplan activity level during the planning and budgeting phase.   Implementing the gender marker at this stage has the most value as it can inform and further strengthen gender equality considerations in project design. 

UNFPA guidance places primary accountability on senior managers - at corporate, regional and country level - for implementing the gender marker as a component of the annual workplans that they develop, implement and manage. In practice, however, the coding of activities in annual workplans cuts across different types and levels of personnel (i.e., thematic, operational or financial staff).   Even though approaches in terms of who and how activities are tagged to the gender equality marker vary across UNFPA’s offices globally, there is nevertheless a high degree of engagement with the gender tagging process organization-wide; with the quality of data entry being high.  

The gender equality marker is applied to approximately 80-85% of UNFPA’s organizational budget and across all revenue sources (core, non-core and institutional budget) . This includes programmatic, management and administrative budgets. It is also embedded in UNFPA’s enterprise resource planning system (ATLAS but migrating to Quantum in 2023), which allows for the tracking and monitoring of the gender-responsiveness of UNFPA’s financial allocations and expenditures. Because UNFPA codes at such a granular level, estimating financial expenditures to gender equality and the empowerment of women on the different gender equality marker codes is based on a straight-forward calculation. 

Under the former Strategic Plan (2018-2021), UNFPA set a financial target of 11 percent for its stand-alone outcome on gender equality (SP Outcome 3: Gender equality, the empowerment of all women and girls, and reproductive rights are advanced in development and humanitarian settings). It is important to note that this benchmark only applies to the focused area of work on gender and does not estimate the allocation for gender mainstreamed activities across UNFPA’s other Outcome areas.  In most years, UNFPA expenditures for gender equality and empowerment of women and girls have met and often exceeded this threshold. Indications from the Gender Marker data reveal that actual expenditures to be at least over 20 per cent of UNFPA's overall financial budget and spending. This should lead to an upwards readjustment of their target, as UNFPA incorporates more data into this process

To support accurate and consistent gender marker coding practices across the organization, UNFPA gender advisors, specialists or focal points provide guidance on the methodology and can support help reviewing the coding. Other measures UNFPA has put in place to support quality assurance include: 

• Integrating the gender equality marker as part of the corporate policies and procedures manual; 
• Developing, updating and widely disseminating written corporate guidance and tools  to support standardized approaches to coding, such as practical guides (i.e. activity tagging user guides) and tools (i.e. decision tree tools to aid staff in assigning the correct gender marker value for each activity.).  
• Delivering a series of organization-wide capacity-building workshops on the gender equality marker, including webinars or making pre-recorded instructional videos available. Regular and ongoing gender equality training is especially needed for operational staff who code and are not gender specialists. 
• Conducting annual periodic spot checks on a random selection of activities to identify and address any observed anomalies in tagging with concerned offices. 

UNFPA reports on an annual basis to its Executive Board on the high-level results related to gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, as part of the entity reporting on the implementation of the Strategic Plan. This reporting includes progress on UNFPA's Gender Equality Strategy (i.e., gender equality and empowerment of women policy) as well as on the gender marker.  Expenditures related to regular and other resources are reported on each GEM code and include global, regional and country as well as other programme activities. In addition, UNFPA reports on the gender marker by the type of assistance (i.e., development, humanitarian) as well as by region.   

Results of financial resource tracking also inform central strategic planning processes. The UNFPA gender marker data informed the development of the former Strategic Plan (2018-2021) as well as the current one (2022-2025). The data revealed that UNFPA allocates and expends a substantial amount of funding to GEEW, which laid the groundwork for continuing to have a stand-alone focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women. 

There is also scope, as yet not sufficiently exercised, for UNFPA staff at any level to use and analyze the gender marker data to build capacity and improve gender mainstreaming in projects, to monitor progress, and/or to raise additional funds.  UNFPA staff can generate gender marker data in real-time along several dimensions, including the number and percentage of activities and percent of expenditures by code and by country, program cycle, Strategic Plan output, target population.   Gender marker data can also be generated to compare allocated budget versus expenditures.

Gender marker data has shown that UNFPA has allocated and spent a substantial amount of funding to gender equality and the empowerment of women across its thematic areas.  In the period 2014-2020, the total amount of expenditures assessed using the Gender Marker exceeded USD 11 billion; with just over USD 1 billion per year of UNFPA expenditure making a significant contribution to gender equality (GM2A and GM2B combined). 

Implementation of the gender equality marker has also improved the quality of funding to gender equality and the empowerment of women. The proportion of UNFPA activities rated as GM2A (significant objective) or GM2B (principal objective) has steadily increased, with the highest rise seen in GM2A activities. In addition, the proportion of GM01 and GM00 activities has declined at similar rates. Another observable and positive trend has been the shift in budget utilization from GM01 (partial contribution) to GM2A (significant contribution), suggesting that programme design has become more gender-responsive over time, including in non-gender focused areas of work.  

As Figure 1 indicates, in the period 2014-2020, 59 percent of activities were rated as making the highest contribution to gender equality – either by targeting gender equality (16%- GM2B) or as gender mainstreamed under other areas of work (43% - GM2A); with 33% making a limited contribution (GM01) and the remaining 8% making no contribution (GM00).

Figure 1: Distribution of gender marker ratings for all activities, 2014-2020

In 2021, $729.7 million or 67.2 percent of total programme expenses were incurred to further activities that either had gender equality/women’s empowerment as their primary objective or made a significant contribution to gender equality (2020: $705.0 million or 68.6 percent).  

In addition to senior leadership commitment to tracking financing for gender equality, investing and strengthening internal, cross-functional partnerships on the use of a gender equality marker with the leadership and staff of departments such as the Gender and Human Rights Branch (gender unit), finance or management has been key to its promotion and uptake. 

As an indicative tool, the gender equality marker has enabled UNFPA to track its investments to gender equality and the empowerment of women and helped highlight funding deficits. It also demonstrates UNFPA’s commitment to GEEW and has contributed to a better understanding of how investments in different areas contribute to reducing inequalities.   

More intentional practices and accountability for integrating gender dimensions in the programming cycle are needed, even when gender equality and the empowerment of women is central to the organizational mandate. The GEM has proven to be an invaluable tool for raising the awareness of programme and technical staff on the importance of designing gender-responsive programmes and for building staff capacity on gender analysis, planning and programming. UNFPA’s gender-related programming has improved as a result.  

Implementing a gender equality marker has also highlighted the importance of ensuring that a gender analysis informs the planning process. UNFPA interventions that undertake a gender analysis as part of gender mainstreaming efforts are better positioned to improve the lives of women and girls. 

Targeted and on-going trainings are needed to support greater staff capacities and a greater degree of standardization on how staff apply the gender equality marker and tag activities, as well as analyze and use the data.

There is no single view on the correct GEM code. What is important is that staff (and partners) discuss and reach agreement on the extent to which each output (or activity) is likely to contribute to gender equality and to document the coding process through evidence-based justification statements.