UN Women’s work on women’s economic empowerment has a broad and ambitious mandate and aims to strengthen women’s economic rights and respond to pressing global needs. This independent corporate thematic evaluation was undertaken to assess the relevance, effectiveness, coherence, efficiency, and sustainability of UN Women’s contributions to women’s economic empowerment by advancing gender responsive laws, frameworks, policies, and partnerships, and proposes recommendations and insights to strengthen this area of work.

This publication is a collaboration between the UN Women’s Independent Evaluation Service and the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health to explore the link between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 and SDG 5 (gender equality), as part of a system of interconnected SDGs and indicators within these goals.

This toolkit serves as an introductory reference for those working on care as a means to achieve gender equality, the empowerment of women and girls, and the Sustainable Development Goals and to promote the rights and wellbeing of care providers and recipients. It follows the “5R framework for decent care work”: Recognize, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work, and reward and represent paid care work.

The focus in this guide is climate and disaster risk finance and insurance, a thematic area where gender analysis has been less widely implemented than in some other sectors. This guidance note is part of a capacity-building initiative aimed at enhancing the capacity of sector specialists and gender focal points to produce and utilize gender analysis in their work.

The Independent Evaluation Service conducted a meta-synthesis of UN Women's evaluations—evidence and lessons on types of UN Women support. This report collates insights and evidence on the key types of support provided by UN Women during the strategic plan period 2018 to 2021. The evaluative evidence is organized around normative support, integrated policy advice and thought leadership, capacity development and technical assistance, and advocacy and social mobilization.

In 2021, the Independent Evaluation Service condcuted the corporate evaluation on UN Women’s policy advaocy work. The evaluation team assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and coherence of UN Women’s policy advocacy work to deliver high-impact and transformative results in line with the UN Women Strategic Plan 2018–2021. Findings from this evaluation are expected to contribute to strategic decision-making, organizational learning and accountability, and implementation of the UN Women Strategic Plan 2022–2025.

The “Intersectionality resource guide and toolkit” aims to help both organizations and individual practitioners and experts address intersectionality in policies, practices, and programmes. It may be used by entities, individuals, or teams to assess their own knowledge, attitudes, and practices at a programme level, as a supplement to existing design, adaptation, and assessment processes, or at policy level, to better understand and address the different and intersecting effects of policy on marginalised persons.

The 2020 gender accountability framework report marks the third monitoring cycle of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)’s 2017 gender policy. It provides a snapshot of the IASC’s output in the calendar year 2020 and allows for cross comparison with the baseline established with the 2018 report.

In recent years, UN Women has increased its focus on innovation, based on the recognition that innovation and technology frequently do not benefit men and women equally but can potentially be leveraged for women’s empowerment. This evaluation assessed what innovation means for UN Women, the value added of UN Women’s work in this area, as well as its innovation initiatives, and the systems, processes, and culture to support innovation.

This checklist is intended to guide stakeholders on how to prevent and respond to gender-based violence against women, girls, and gender non-conforming persons with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies.

In 2021, the Independent Evaluation Service conducted the corporate evaluation of UN Women’s UN system coordination and broader convening role in ending violence against women (EVAW) as part of its Corporate Evaluation Plan. The evaluation provides an overall assessment of UN Women’s UN system coordination and broader convening role in the area of EVAW and includes a forward-looking analysis with a view to informing UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022–2025.

UN Women and Women Enabled International developed this “know your rights” guide in consultation with women with disabilities. The purpose of this document is to provide a user-friendly guide for women with disabilites across the globe to understand their rights in accessing support when experiencing gender-based violence and to enable them to advocate with States for their rights.

The Gender Equality Working Group of the Sustainable Development Goal 3 Global Action Plan on Healthy Living and Well-being for All, chaired by UN Women, along with the Gender and Health Hub at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, developed a guidance note and a checklist of key actions to respond to gender-related barriers to vaccine access for countries to prioritize in COVID-19 national deployment and vaccination plans.  

This training manual is designed for actors involved in the prevention and countering of violent extremism (P/CVE) in Europe and Central Asia including state officials, members of non-governmental organizations, community activists, staff of UN agencies, international and regional organizations to help them understand violent extremism’s gender dimensions.

UN Women introduced the flagship programme initiatives (FPIs) as a means of consolidating and scaling-up the entity’s programming modalities to be fitter for purpose in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and United Nations reform. In 2020, the Independent Evaluation Service, in collaboration with the Internal Audit Service, assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and coherence of the FPIs and their integration as thematic priorities of the Strategic Plan 2018–2021.

This meta-synthesis brings together evidence from evaluations of UN Women’s organizational effectiveness and efficiency outputs. In addition to highlighting progress, the synthesis captures commonly identified drivers of change in the form of good practices and innovation, as well as impediments.

UN Women has played a key role in supporting the development and implementation of National Action Plans (NAPs) on women, peace, and security (WPS) as the main tool by which global WPS frameworks are translated into actions and outcomes at national level. The corporate evaluation of WPS NAPs assessed the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and extent to which human rights and gender equality principles were integrated to meet WPS commitments and adopt accountability frameworks.

This document sets out the evaluation policy of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). The policy governs the independent evaluation function of UN Women and applies to all initiatives supported and funds administered by the Entity.

This implementation package is a suite of practical resources and tools to support the implementation of the RESPECT Women: Preventing Violence against Women Framework. The package is built upon the global evidence base, expert recommendations and practitioner consensus to support policy makers and practitioners in developing ethical and effective VAW prevention programming.

The United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE), chaired by the Executive Director of UN Women, has responded to the call of the Secretary-General for coordinated action during the COVID-19 pandemic. This compendium captures key messages and efforts of UN entities as they address the gender dimensions of the pandemic, aligned with the five pillars of the UN framework for the immediate socioeconomic response to COVID-19.