Gender Equality Seal for UNDP Entities

The Gender Equality Seal incentivizes UNDP Country Offices to integrate gender equality into all aspects of their development work. Upon completing a range of specific standards, participating UNDP Country Offices can achieve either a Gold, Silver or Bronze level certification. By engaging with the Seal, UNDP Country Offices are better positioned to support government partners and accelerate progress towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

To receive a Gender Equality Seal, standards must be met in the following seven areas:

Management Systems;
In-house Capacities;
Enabling Environment;
Communications and Knowledge Management;
Programmes;
Partnerships; and
Gender Equality Impact/Results

Country Office achievements are marked by a range of significant contributions to gender equality. For instance, with the support of UNDP Panama, women are for the first time being granted access to land ownership titles along the Panama Canal. At UNDP Malawi, the Office has carried out exemplary work partnering with civil society on women’s political empowerment, establishing a Gender and Elections Engagement Room and a Violence Against Women in Elections monitoring tool, both of which have supported a 23% increase in women’s representation in the Malawi Parliament. The UNDP Kyrgyzstan office has been a key player in the development, approval and implementation of the Domestic Violence Prevention Law, the ban for marriage under 18 years old, and the ban on bride kidnapping.

Additionally, the Gender Equality Seal serves as a learning platform to support UNDP Country Offices with technical guidance to build a strong foundation for gender mainstreaming and to establish baselines, fine-tune strategies, document innovations and showcase the impacts of interventions for gender equality.

Launched in 2011, the Gender Equality Seal has worked with 82 UNDP Country Offices across all regions. Upon completion of every Gender Equality Seal round, the UNDP Gender Team hosts an Awards Ceremony to recognize the progress of participating Country Offices’ work on transformative gender results.