Interactive resources for incubators and accelerators
Interactive resources for incubators and accelerators
Interactive resources for incubators and accelerators

GLIA Toolkit...

Introduction

The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) toolkit is an interactive resource, to guide accelerators and incubators (or ‘intermediaries’) through the journey of uncovering how our activities impact, and are experienced by, different gendered groups. This toolkit will equip us as intermediaries with the mindset, strategies, and frameworks to amend and improve both our organisation and program to increase accessibility and inclusivity of our work by all genders.

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Welcome to the GLIA Toolkit

Hello and welcome to the Gender Lens incubation and acceleration toolkit, or as we like to call it the GLIA toolkit. My name is Manita Ray, and I am the Chief Executive Officer of ygap. ygap is an intermediary and we support local entreprises who work across Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

Hi my name is Audrey and I’m ygap’s Regional Director for the Pacific Islands. I also lead on all of our gender work across Asia and the Pacific.

We designed this toolkit together with two other organisations, SecondMuse and Conveners.org, with the support of the Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, their Scaling Frontier Innovation program as well as the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and the Asia Women Impact Fund.

As intermediaries who work in Frontier Markets, we hold a lot of power to create a lot of impact and the reason is we work very closely with the entreprises that we know are the source of the impact. But we also act as translators with the wider ecosystem and as such, we’re in a great position to apply a gender lens to our work to create that impact.

What this toolkit does, is provide practical tools and frameworks that we can apply to our work as intermediaries to create maximum impact.

You might be wondering what this toolkit is all about, and how does it apply to me?

Well, let me ask you some questions. Are you an incubator or accelerator program? Do you support early stage impact enterprises? Do you want to drive gender equality in your work as well as create sustainable change within the communities that you work in?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then this toolkit is for you. As Manita mentioned, this toolkit is a practical guide that aims to support you to consider gender within all of your work. This includes within your organisation, for example coming us with strategies to make your organisational culture more inclusive of all genders to ensure all voices are heard regardless of gender and decision making level; within your program, for example coming up with strategies to make your marketing collateral appeal to all genders; or within your engagement with the ecosystem, for example trying to influence funders or investors or even policymakers to make the ecosystem more accessible and inclusive of all genders.

None of us are experts in this, in fact, this is the first time we’ve created a toolkit like this, so it’s really exciting that you can be a part of it.

So, welcome on the journey! Let’s do this together and if you have any questions about how to use the toolkit, what it can be used for within your organisation or how to actually apply it, always reach out.

Thank you.

At present, entrepreneurship, like all parts of society, is an uneven playing field. It is not equally accessible by, or inclusive of, people of different genders. Other factors like ethnicity, language and personality type also affect the opportunities people have, but gender is our focus because the issues associated are so pervasive.

By addressing these issues, making support more inclusive, and making entrepreneurship more accessible, we can realise the full economic and impact potential that comes from engaging all genders equally.

As intermediaries, we work directly and deeply with entrepreneurs as well as the ecosystem that supports them. In doing so, we are in a unique position of power. We have the opportunity to drive and influence gender-equitable change by identifying and solving for disparities and gaps that exist between people of different genders.

This can be done using two distinct approaches:

  • 01.

    Directly

    By creating equal access to our programs and organisations to all genders, and fostering an inclusive environment that responds to their needs and unlocks their skills, experience, and potential.

  • 02.

    Indirectly

    By influencing the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem in our respective regions to consider gender within their activities, whether it’s our government’s policies or our investors’ investment theses, to promote larger-scale change.

Practical Tip

By using a combination of both direct and indirect approaches, we will be able to increase participation of all genders within our work, helping us to better meet our desired business and impact outcomes, and unlocking greater potential for all entrepreneurs (see Gender and Sustainability section for further details).

The Toolkit

The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) toolkit can help us as intermediaries to gain a better understanding of:

Report: the impact of the GLIA Program

  • 1.

    This report shares the progress and trends for inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem development and the impact of the GLIA program (toolkit and trainings) in contributing to gender-focussed knowledge transfer including peer-peer learning, ecosystem-level progress and real-world applications by ecosystem players including practitioners, ecosystem builders and funders. 

     

    Access the report here >

     

     

  • While social entrepreneurship was the focus of the program in which this toolkit was developed, the resource is appropriate for any organisation running incubation or acceleration programs or acting as an intermediary for entrepreneurs. Much of the material is relevant to any organisation.

Case Study: xchange

  • 1.

    xchange is an impact investor and incubator in early-stage social enterprises in the Philippines. Our mission is to assist in the emergence of the entrepreneurial impact ecosystem in the Philippines.

     

    “We felt that in order for xchange to have the credibility to promote the application of a gender lens in our engagements with the broader ecosystem, we needed to look inward first. Specifically, we wanted to ensure that everyone within our organisation understands how to apply a gender lens to their respective work and engagements.” – Greg Perez, Director at xchange

     

    In this case study, find out how exchange has used the toolkit to start applying a gender lens to their organisation.

     

    Read more >

Read more case studies here.

Next:

Gender and Sustainability

Find out how applying a gender lens has been proven to generate positive business and impact outcomes.