This interactive session reviewed the Gender and Youth Analysis Toolkit's essential components, including frameworks, checklists, and 25 tools designed to thoroughly capture the needs, interests, and opportunities of young women. Learn how to apply these resources to create an enabling environment for young women and marginalized groups, thereby contributing to economic and social development.

Watch the recording here.
View the slides here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Scroll down for post-event key takeaways.

About the Event

The current global youth bulge, rise of violent extremism, and high global youth unemployment have underscored the urgency of investing in youth. In general, young women are typically more disadvantaged than young men due to a variety of factors ranging from levels of education, limited access to resources and information, time-consuming household burdens, and gender and social norms. Creating an enabling environment for young women to have productive careers will not only contribute to the global economy, but it is likely to have positive economic and social impacts on households and communities.

Current guidance and templates for gender- and/or youth-focused analyses for economic growth activities fall short in providing the necessary information for designing and monitoring effective interventions. This interactive webinar aimed to bridge that gap by reviewing the Youth and Gender Analysis toolkit which provides examples of best practices and links to tools that program implementers can apply to ensure that information about young women’s needs, interests, challenges, and opportunities are adequately captured during the analysis process. The toolkit:

• Introduces different frameworks and demonstrates how they can be consolidated; 
• Presents a checklist for youth-focused gender analysis; and 
• Provides descriptions of and links to 25 tools from USAID, program implementers, and other donors that can be used to carry out or supplement youth-focused gender analysis

We were joined by Michelle Stern who serves as a Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) consultant where she provides technical assistance to donors and implementing partners related to gender equality, women’s empowerment, and positive youth development (PYD) throughout the project cycle, including start-up analyses to guide project design, staff training, development of relevant indicators, and assessments during life-of-project. She has a background in qualitative and quantitative research and analysis covering a broad range of topics related to economic growth, food security and community development.

The toolkit is designed to help ensure that youth- and/or gender-focused analyses during the start-up phases of economic-growth activities adequately capture the constraints and opportunities faced by young women. Our hope is that this webinar will help program implementers better analyze the cultural, political, economic, and social environmental factors impacting women, youth, marginalized groups, and other social groups relevant to their specific contexts.

Photo credit: Pexels

Post-Event Key Takeaways

The following takeaways are courtesy of Chisina Kapungu.

The Gender and Youth Analysist Toolkit provides descriptions and links to 25 tools across specific sectors. We hope it’s a resource that CoP members will find useful in their work. A gender and youth analyses explores several key domains which include:

• Laws, Policies, Regulations, and Institutional Practices that influence the context in which men and women act and make decisions.
• Cultural Norms and Beliefs, particularly gender norms and beliefs which are influenced by the perception of gender identity and expression that are often embedded in laws, policies, and institutions.
• Gender Roles, Responsibilities, and Time Use, which explores how labor is divided between productive (market) economic activity and reproductive (non-market) activity.
• Access to and Control over Assets and Resources, which examines the gendered nature of access to productive resources such as assets (e.g., land, housing), income, social benefits (e.g., social help to insurance, pensions), public services (e.g., health, water), and technology.
• Patterns of Power and Decision-Making examines the ability of women and men to decide, influence, and exercise control over material, human, intellectual, and financial resources, in the family, community, and country.

Intersectional Rapid Gender and Protection Analysis (IRGPA) developed by IREX will be launched at the end of 2023. An IRGPA is a research tool developed by local young researchers with different backgrounds, focused on GESI and Protection issues that may affect a youth program. It is used to conduct a youth-led research process to understand the local and relevant identity-based needs, roles, benefits, risks and resources which exist within the operating environment of a program and may affect staff, partners and/or participants as well as anticipated results. IRGPA challenges and opportunities include:

• It’s hard to find updated and disaggregated data at the community level for intersectional approach.
• LGBTIQ+ is a hard topic to address in different contexts due to taboos and discrimination.  
• Contextualization is important. 
• This framework makes Protection very practical (community, researchers, organization).
• Makes women, girls and non-gender conforming persons’ experiences visible in many male dominated contexts, such as the prevention of juvenile delinquency.
• Research process shifts power about who can do research and what research is valuable.
• Time constraints are one of the main challenges. 
• The process is as important as the product.
• Research skills building is important and needed. This takes time and resources.
• Administrative challenges (budget, logistics, etc.)

About the Community of Practice

The YP2LE Learning Network brings together diverse stakeholders who seek to learn more and share about youth development. As one of six communities of practice (CoPs), the Gender CoP helps members share and benefit from collective learning. Learn more about the Gender CoP and other CoPs on YouthPower.org and register to connect with these communities.

You must be a registered member of YouthPower.org in order to participate in the discussion group. Register today!

About YouthPower 2: Learning and Evaluation (YP2LE)

YP2LE is a USAID-funded activity focused on building and disseminating evidence on Positive Youth Development (PYD). YP2LE’s goal is to give program implementers, researchers, and young changemakers the information, tools, and resources they need to develop high-quality, impactful, and sustainable youth programs.