Our challenge was to develop an innovation portfolio focused on accelerating the closure of gaps in women's economic empowerment. To pinpoint areas where strategic innovation is most needed, we implemented a sensemaking process. This involved analyzing available national quantitative data to create a gender gaps map and identifying gaps in current interventions through a solution mapping process. This process considered a wide range of solutions, including projects, programs, digital tools, platforms, and more. Our key  insights for identifying where innovation can strategically contribute to closing gender gaps are as follows: Targeting Root Causes: Effective innovations must address the fundamental drivers of gender gaps—such as entrenched norms, stereotypes, exclusionary paradigms, and unequal access to resources. Currently, 99% of mapped solutions from public, private, and civil society actors primarily address the symptoms of gender inequality (e.g., skills development, financial services, and health resources for women), rather than the root causes. Holistic Approaches: New solutions should adopt a holistic approach, covering multiple dimensions of women’s autonomy—economic, physical, and decision-making. At present, most solutions are fragmented, with 63% focusing solely on economic factors like entrepreneurship, business, and employability. These often overlook underlying issues such as gender-based violence and barriers to decision-making autonomy. Only 7% of current solutions integrate more than one aspect of autonomy. Expanding Reach: Currently, 54% of solutions target urban entrepreneurs and businesswomen, while only 20% address the needs of vulnerable groups such as recyclers, women in construction, female miners, indigenous women, women in markets, and those living with HIV, among others. This presents a significant opportunity for existing solutions to replicate or scale up. Besides, future innovation efforts should focus on expanding to include women in high-vulnerability contexts, taking into account their specific challenges and limitations. Transformations in Impact Measurement: Nearly half of the solutions measure impact by simply counting the number of women reached, indicating a lack of a transformative gender approach across the half of ecosystem institutions. This is a crucial insight, as it not only emphasizes the need to develop a way to measure ecosystem-wide progress toward closing gender gaps, but also suggests that it is highly likely that half of the ecosystem institutions are not genuinely committed to innovating for accelerating the closure of these gaps. The paht to ecosystem transformation Building on the previous insights, it is necessary to implement an inclusive process to develop an innovation portfolio. This approach prioritizes engaging women from diverse backgrounds, particularly those from prioritized vulnerable sectors, and fostering collaboration with diverse institutions that bring specialized expertise to address root causes and support the multifaceted dimensions of women’s autonomy.  In addition, upskilling initiatives for key ecosystem stakeholders are critical. These initiatives should aim to enhance transformative gender approaches and strengthen systems thinking skills, ensuring alignment and coherence in strategies designed to close gender gaps More info: https://www.undp.org/es/bolivia/co-laboratorio-de-soluciones-para-el-empoderamiento-de-las-mujeres

Building on the insights from this initiative, developing an innovation portfolio requires the involvement of diverse new actors, incluidin women from vulnerable sectors and institutiosn with strategic expertise.  Our handover process, therefore, engages multiple key stakeholders within the ecosystem rather than relying on a single institution. This collaborative approach aims to establish a critical mass of partners to co-develop and learn from the implementation of an experimental innovation portfolio. Institutions expressing interest in leading in this next phase include those from both the public and private sectors as well as from civil society. Additionally, the handover process incorporates an upskilling component to foster systems thinking skills among stakeholders, ensuring coherence and preventing gaps in approaches to closing gender inequalities.

Through a mapping analysis of current initiatives (solutions), significant data gaps for adopting a systemic approach to closing gender gaps were identified. These include the types of solutions being implemented—whether they address structural or symptomatic issues, or whether they take an integrated approach or focus on a single aspect. Additionally, the analysis revealed: Lack of data ecosystem impact: There was no data about measuring the ecosystem’s collective impact on closing gender gaps, particularly regarding the comprehensiveness and structural nature of solutions and the overall ecosystem coordination. Sector- specific contributions: Data was missing on the contributions of different sectors—private, public, academic, and civil society—toward closing gender gaps. Evidence highlighted civil society’s essential role, implementing 56% of all solutions. Solutions characteristics: There was limited information on solution characteristics, including the types of solutions (digital, training, financial, methodological), target profiles (entrepreneurs, young women, children, businesswomen), and impact measurement practices.

Systems thinking served as the cornerstone of this initiative, enabling a shift from fragmented approaches to a more holistic perspective—crucial for accelerating the closure of gender gaps. Through a collective intelligence call for existing solutions, we gained valuable insights into the ecosystem, effectively ‘sensing’ the dynamics across various interventions. Additionally, data visualization tools played a vital role in analyzing and presenting the gathered data, providing a clearer understanding of the gender solutions landscape within the ecosystem.

Innovation methods, particularly systemic approaches and collective intelligence, played a pivotal role in generating ecosystem-wide insights. These insights, emerging at an early stage in the ecosystem, highlight the need for a shift in the overarching approach. By leveraging these methods, we learned to move away from a development  paradigm focused solely on efficiency and short-term outcomes, embracing instead a model centered on lasting impact and transformative change across the entire ecosystem.