Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality

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  • UFGE Impact

  • UFGE Outputs

Spotlights

  • A girl can dream
    Africa Gender Innovation Lab (AFRGIL)

    Africa: Shaping the Region’s Tomorrow by Investing in Adolescents Today

    Decade-long AFRGIL evidence, including Pathways to Prosperity and A Girl Can Dream report, shaped WBG operations, driving $1.7 billion in financing to reach 43 million adolescents.

  • UFGE Bangladesh
    UFGE Flagship Country Program

    Bangladesh: Strengthening Workplace Harassment Laws Through Evidence

    UFGE-supported analysis on sexual harassment in agro-industries informed Bangladesh’s draft 2024 Sexual Harassment Bill and strengthened implementation of legal frameworks within local ministries.

  • Teacher with students
    Behavioral Science and Social Norms Program

    Brazil: Scaling School-Based Interventions to Shift Harmful Norms

    Behaviorally informed school-based interventions are scaling to challenge harmful norms and prevent violence, reaching 160,000 students across the Pantanal and Amazon by 2028.

  • Woman entrepreneur
    Strengthening Gender Statistics (SGS)

    Burkina Faso: Turning Data into Policy Action to Support Women

    New gender statistics inform Burkina Faso’s National Gender Strategy, strengthening baselines, targets, and monitoring, enabling ministries to integrate evidence into design and accountability.

  • Girls education
    UFGE Fast-track Country Program

    India: Expanding Market Access for Women-Led Enterprises

    Pilots with 4,000 women-led firms tested loans, procurement, and networks, informing the $84 million WBG Tamil Nadu and Bihar Rural Transformation Project design.

  • Working woman
    WBG Country Core Diagnostics and Macro-Fiscal Program

    Mauritania: Macro-Fiscal Evidence Advancing Labor Market Reforms

    UFGE-supported analysis found expanding women’s labor participation could raise GDP by up to 5 percent, informing WBG diagnostics and WBG Development Policy Financing reforms.

  • Moldova Country Climate and Development Report
    Gender, Climate, and Jobs Program

    Moldova: Advancing Women’s Economic Participation

    Analysis informed Moldova’s Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy and WBG Country Climate and Development Report, shaping a WBG Development Policy Operation supporting 300 women farmers.

  • Early education
    Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan Gender Innovation Lab (MNAAP GIL)

    Morocco: Shaping Regional Gender Priorities and Early Childhood Development

    UFGE support to MENAAP GIL shaped the WBG MENA Gender Action Plan 2025–30 and informed Morocco’s education program to expand preschool access.

  • Working woman
    International Finance Corporation (IFC) Morocco4Diversity Platform

    Morocco: Strengthening Women’s Economic Inclusion in the Private Sector

    The -IFC’s Morocco4Diversity Platform engaged over 20 companies, mapping women’s labor opportunities and advancing inclusive workplace reforms through Leaders4Equality and targeted advisory support.

  • Pakistan women
    South Asia Gender Innovation Lab (SARGIL)

    Pakistan: Digital Evidence to Improve Women’s Job Access

    SARGIL evidence exposed hiring bias, informing the $78 million WBG Digital Economy Enhancement Project, and Punjab’s job portal serving 127 million people nationwide.

  • Peruvian women
    Latin America and the Caribbean Gender Innovation Lab (LACGIL)

    Peru: Community Action to Prevent Violence Against Women

    The Leaders in Action program evidence shows how community sessions with household outreach can reduce intimate partner violence, informing government prevention strategies and strengthening norms.

  • Women farmers
    East Asia and Pacific Gender Innovation Lab (EAPGIL)

    Philippines: Evidence Informs Land Policy Reforms

    EAPGIL evidence on women’s exclusion from land ownership shaped the WBG SPLIT operation mandating joint titling, increasing women’s inclusion in land titles.

For earlier impact stories refer to the UFGE previous Annual Reports

UFGE Annual Reports

2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019  

2018 l 2017 l 2016 l 2015 l 2014 l 2013

Since 2012, UFGE has funded a total of 226 impact evaluations, generating evidence that help governments and companies invest effectively in policies and programs to unlock economic opportunities.

Completed Impact Evaluations (July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025)

Name of Impact Evaluation

Country

Description

Impact of Online Business Training and Peer Interaction for Women

Ethiopia

A randomized controlled trial in Ethiopia tested a business training program for women entrepreneurs delivered either in person or through a smartphone app. Although take-up was high across both modalities, completion rates were significantly higher for in-person training (71 percent) than for digital delivery (22 percent), yet neither approach led to improvements in business practices or performance. The findings highlight the limits of business training alone for women entrepreneurs and caution against assuming that digital platforms can easily scale impact.

Export and Agro-Pastoral Market Development Project

Niger

The Agro-Pastoral Export and Market Development Project provided matching grants for training, credit access, market facilitation, technical assistance, and targeted infrastructure to male and female farming and livestock groups. The intervention improved women’s organizational capacity and business knowledge, leading to increases in agricultural production. However, women continued to face major constraints, as their average plot size was less than one-third the size of men’s plots, and they made up only 10 to 20 percent of management committees, limiting their influence in decision-making.

Returns to Soft Skills Training for Recent Graduates

Rwanda

A 160-hour soft-skills training program designed by the University of Rwanda and the Rwanda Development Board improved graduates’ communication, networking, and interpersonal skills. The program accelerated youth entry into the labor market during COVID-19 disruptions, increasing income, hours worked, job search, and job networks up to 15 months after training. However, while it helped participants sustain employment through more permanent contracts in the informal sector, it did not facilitate transitions into formal jobs, and no gender differences in outcomes were observed.

Keeping Girls in School

Zambia

The Keeping Girls in School program piloted an empowerment intervention to reduce school-related gender-based violence across three districts. The evaluation found that although discussions of violence and bystander reporting increased, the program did not reduce overall violence, shift girls’ attitudes toward gender roles, or change norms around school-related gender-based violence. Implementation gaps, limited school-wide reach, and weak accountability mechanisms hindered effectiveness, underscoring the need for scalable approaches that engage teachers, parents, and communities more consistently.

Name of Impact Evaluation

Country

Description

Evaluation of Bab Amal – “A Door of Hope"

Egypt

The Bab Amal program tested a poverty graduation model that combined productive assets, training, temporary consumption support, service referrals, and coaching for rural households. The evaluation found sustained impacts 40 months after the intervention, including higher livestock ownership, women’s employment, household income, consumption, and food security, with 88 percent of households voluntarily selecting women as asset recipients. Even a lower-cost program variant produced positive though smaller gains, demonstrating potential for scalable and budget-efficient poverty reduction.

Job Talash: Barriers and Returns to Search on a Job Matching Platform 

Pakistan 

The South Asia Gender Innovation Lab partnered with a job search platform to test whether proactively calling job seekers to apply for positions would affect their behavior. Reducing this psychological barrier led to a 600 percent increase in applications for both men and women, with findings accepted for publication in the Journal of Labor Economics. The results are already informing policy discussions with the Punjab Labor Department as it designs a new province-wide job search platform.

Lightning Talks on Impact: Operational and Policy Uptake