USAID Planning and Programming Gender Requirements

High-level planning requires USAID staff to conduct a mandatory gender analysis to inform strategic plans and assistance objectives. This analysis is built around two key questions: how the different roles and status of women and men within the community, political sphere, workplace, and household affect the work to be undertaken, and how the anticipated results of the work will affect women and men differently. Project and activity planning also necessitates a mandatory gender analysis to inform the design of activities and projects. The findings of this analysis must be integrated into the scope of work/program description for an activity that will be implemented through a contract or cooperative agreement. Gender issues must be integrated into the technical evaluation/selection criteria for any solicitation financed under the project or activity. Activity Approval Documents must outline the gender issues that need to be considered during activity implementation and describe what outcomes are expected by considering these issues. In project and activity procurement, the Contract/Agreement Officer must ensure that gender issues are integrated into the different components of a request for proposal (RFP) or request for application (RFA). This includes the Statement of Work, project deliverables, key personnel qualifications, and monitoring and evaluation requirements. If it is determined that gender is not an issue, a statement explaining the rationale for this conclusion must be included. The Contract/Agreement Officer must also ensure that once gender has been integrated into the solicitation components, gender is also reflected in the corresponding technical evaluation criteria. Project and activity monitoring and evaluation require performance management systems and evaluations at the assistance objective and project/activity levels to include gender-sensitive indicators and sex-disaggregated data. This ensures that the impact of USAID's assistance on women and men is accurately measured and reported.