Setting Strategic Gender Equality Targets Guide

Successful Target Setting for Gender Equality  

Organizations can make strategic changes to promote gender equality that benefit its workforce and bottomline. Setting and articulating clear milestones enables an organization to define the incremental steps needed over a period of months or years to realize gender equality goals. It also allows an organization to monitor, evaluate, analyze, and determine whether gender equality initiatives are on track to achieve longer term impact. In order to strategically set targets and ensure resources are being used efficiently, it’s important to monitor progress towards each target to determine whether or not gender equality initiatives are helping the organization achieve its overall vision.

Through its Engendering Industries program, USAID created a practical guide to help organizations prioritize actions and measure progress toward gender-equality at time-bound intervals. It guides human resource (HR) professionals, diversity and inclusion officers, and senior leadership on how to set, monitor and achieve Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) targets. It also provides a useful checklist for success, resources, and examples of gender equality milestones and targets. 

This guide should be used alongside Delivering Gender Equality: A Best Practices Framework for Male-Dominated Industries, a USAID resource that helps organizations establish a roadmap for sustained progress in integrating gender equity throughout operations and corporate structures. The Best Practices Framework, which outlines over 130 actions known to increase gender equality in the workplace, guides the evidence-based implementation of strategic activities at each phase of the employee life cycle.