Strengthening the collection of high-quality, regular, and disaggregated data is key to improving the use of data for evidence-based policymaking.

Creating an enabling policy and regulatory space and promoting informed interventions to further amplify the potential for data-driven decisions that drive meaningful progress.

The UNCDF Gender Disaggregated Mapping Tool is a resource designed to accompany institutions in assessing — and addressing — their issues in regard to gender disaggregated data. No matter how far along your institution is on their data journey, whether that's enhancing existing gender policies, improving current data functions or simply starting at zero, our tool covers all the bases.

Gender disaggregation is particularly relevant to identifying challenges to women’s digital and financial inclusion and income equality. It also provides stakeholders with the necessary information to design policies, regulations, strategies, programs, products and services that respond to broader inclusive policy goals, address the needs of vulnerable groups, and contribute to overall financial stability.

Watch the video below to get an overview of how the tool works.

Beyond its goal of reducing gender gaps, possible applications of this assessment tool include:

Improving gender policies and strategies through the use of GDD;
Using its insights to enhance and better evaluate the impact of financial inclusion efforts;
Better shaping G2P programs;
Enhancing employment and entrepreneurship programs;
Strengthening the understanding and design of solutions to over-indebtedness.

Rather than being an isolated objective, collecting and analysing gender disaggregated data should be seen as part of a greater effort to enhance the overall impact and sustainability of different sets of policies and regulatory interventions on people's livelihoods.

Download the UNCDF Gender Disaggregated Data Mapping Tool (Excel) here →

Use this assessment tool if…

You and your institution are starting to work on evidence-based gender policy

You are striving to enhance the relevance and use of gender disaggregated data in your everyday work;
You do not know how to build a gender-intentional policy and data ecosystem;
You would like to identify potential challenges and possible solutions;

You and your institution have been collecting, analysing and using data in your daily activities

You have limited awareness of your institution's level of preparedness around gender disaggregated data, including current gaps and main challenges linked to the collection, validation, storage, analysis and use of gender disaggregated data;

You want to use this assessment to understand your data system, map possible gaps, and prioritise next steps based on their relevance;

You and your institution have experience with driving evidence-based gender policies

You are aware of current gender disaggregated data gaps;
You want to use this assessment to validate those gaps or dig further into their main causes.

You and your institution wish to improve your supervisory practices

You want to provide critical insights into supervisory practices within your organisation to improve transparency and more targeted use of gender disaggregated data for reporting purposes;
You want to promote accountability and efficiency across your regulated entities by expanding gender disaggregated data;
You want to expand the use of gender disaggregated data to allocate resources efficiently, improve informed-decision making, and ensure financial inclusion and stability and mitigate risks.

Why use it?

This tool is useful for:

Identifying availability, quality, state of technology and architecture of gender disaggregated data within financial authorities, government institutions, financial service providers or other strategic partners across data management cycles;
Demonstrating the need for increased capacity to collect, aggregate, and use gender disaggregated data, which eventually might help shape policy and regulatory and supervisory response in coordination with like-minded actors;
Reviewing data dissemination practices and sharing strategies, with focus on gender disaggregated data, to create a systematic approach to more impactful and inclusive public policy.

Who is this tool for?

This tool is for anyone who wants to understand and improve their gender disaggregated data journey, data architecture and data management cycle.

More specifically, this tool is designed for:

Policymakers: Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Technology and Skills, Ministry of Economics and Development, ICT Ministry and others who have an interest in gender-disaggregated data, etc.
Financial sector authorities: Legal and regulatory department, banking and supervisory department, statistics department, payments departments, financial Inclusion Departments, Fintech departments, etc.
Financial service providers: Banks, payment providers, fintechs, insurers, etc.

How to use the tool?

The tool is divided into four easy steps. Full instructions can be found in the ‘Intro’ tab in the Excel.

Download the Gender Disaggregated Data Mapping Tool here (Excel) →

→ Get familiar with the structure of the Excel sheet to better understand the prerequisites, functionalities and processes in this tool.
→ Indicate which type of stakeholder you represent, highlighting your institution, your data mandate, performed data functions, etc.;
→ Define your problem statement in regard to gender disaggregated data.
→ Start the assessment. Depending on your problem statement, turn to tabs 1-7 and respond to the questions provided.
→ You may choose to complete all sections, or only some of them.
→ Each section has a column that allows you to choose the priority level, which automatically creates a summary of your top priorities (see “Next steps” tab).
→ Available sections are:
- Policies
- Data
  - Collection
  - Validation
  - Storage
  - Analysis
  - Usage
- Staffing
→ Once the assessment is complete, turn to the "Next steps" tab.
→ This tab will provide you with an overall understanding of some high-level next steps to reflect upon after completing the assessment.
→ To review all your questions in order of relevance, turn to the tabs marked:
a) Urgent
b) Important
c) Less urgent
You will find a list of all questions sorted according to the priority level assigned to them.

Partners & Resources

To develop this tool, we have built upon the work of esteemed partners such as ACCION, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), Data2X through the Women's Financial Inclusion Data Partnership, the Financial Alliance for Women, Mastercard Data and Services, FinEquity, the Center for Global Development, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank, Toronto Centre, UN Secretary-general's Special Advocate For Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGA), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and others.

We are particularly grateful for the extensive feedback and peer-review received by our esteemed partners at CGAP (Tatiana Alonso Gispert, Juan Carlos Izaguirre, Yasmin Klaudia Bin Humam, Aveesha Singh, Diana Ioana Dezso), IFC (Jose Felix Etchegoyen), BTCA (Gisela Davico), at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Ariadne Plaitakis, Lilian Tan).

These organisations provide a comprehensive overview of the complexities and opportunities associated with gender disaggregated data and demonstrate how different stakeholders can benefit from it. By leveraging their expertise, this tool aims to enable policymakers and regulators to harness the full potential of gender disaggregated data in shaping more inclusive and effective policies.

Below you can find additional valuable resources from these organisations.

ACCION