This short ‘primer’ introduces Plan International Canada’s (CNO) architecture for gender transformative programming and measurement. The architecture consists of three useful tools:

1) A rights-based theory of change
Transformative change requires a rights-based approach which recognises that the realisation of rights is the ultimate goal of development programming that leads to the achievement of other development outcomes such as education, health, economic empowerment etc. In order to embed this approach across their programming, CNO use a framework for project design that places the rights of women and girls, and the agency and empowerment required to realize those rights as a central objective in and of itself as well as a pathway for attaining thematic outcomes. To achieve this they have developed a standardized logic model (LM) stream to be applied to all their projects.

2) A women and girls empowerment index (WGEI)
The WGEI measures changes directly associated with the root causes of gender inequality across five gender equality domains which are built into the Ranking Tool described in point three. These are: roles and responsibilities, resource access and control, participation and decision making, social norms, institutional change.

3) Gender equality scoring
The Scoring Tool assesses and ranks projects based on three specific areas: Project Design. This area examines the architecture of the project, based on the documents submitted at the design phase of development, as well the same design components at subsequent stages of implementation. Gender Equality Analysis Domains. This area assesses in detail the breadth and intensity of the change expected in the five domains used for gender analysis (see table to the right). Resources for gender equality programming. This area looks at how gender equality technical inputs and oversight have been included in the budget and staffing of the project.