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Purpose

This tip sheet shows how to prepare a project gender action plan and how this ensures gender-inclusive design and implementation of Asian Development Bank (ADB) projects.

The tip sheet provides an overview of what a Gender Action Plan (GAP) is, the importance of a GAP and what to watch out for when preparing one. It also provides key steps and tips to strengthen project design and good practices for developing effective project GAPs. It concludes with a good practice example of a sustainable rural infrastructure improvement project in Bangladesh.

Overview

Key steps in GAP preparation include:

• Baseline data collection and setting targets: Without sex-disaggregated baseline data and gender analysis, it is not possible to identify realistic gender-based targets for the GAP and the design monitoring framework (DMF) that are relevant to overall project outcomes and outputs. In the absence of reliable national databases, developing project-specific baseline data is essential to understand the different roles, responsibilities, constraints, and needs of men and women in project areas for effective project design, progress monitoring, and impact evaluation.
• Focusing gender analysis in project design on: access and control; access to and control of resources; decision-making power; need and priorities and institutional capacity.
• Ownership of GAPs: To achieve gender-inclusive project results, project executing and implementing agencies need to fully understand and own GAPs. As a first step, detailed GAPs need to be developed jointly with project executing and implementing agencies using participatory approaches during the project inception phase, which will need to be followed by ongoing support, mentoring, and formal gender training during project implementation.

Usage: Guidance for project implementation

Themes: Gender/diversity analysis, Sex- and age-disaggregated data

Geographic scope: Region-wide; Bangladesh

Audiences: Technical staff; Gender and diversity practitioners

Resource type: Guideline