Gender Investment & Innovation

What is the GLIA Toolkit?

Entrepreneur Support Organizations’ Guide to Applying a Gender Lens

April 7, 2023

The following is an English translation of an original Japanese article issued in December 2021.

The Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA) Toolkit is a guidebook for Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) operating in Southeast Asian countries. It was developed to provide more support in line with the needs of women entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia by including ideas, innovations, and practical examples of how ESOs can help women entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia to overcome various challenges that they face and to advance their entrepreneurial activities. Developed jointly by SPF and the Frontier Incubators program of the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, it was published and made available on the website in 2019.

The toolkit is available in English, Burmese, Tagalog (Philippines), and Khmer (Cambodia) in the website. A mobile version and PDF version of the toolkit can also be downloaded from the URL given below. 

GLIA Toolkit https://toolkits.scalingfrontierinnovation.org/glia/introduction/introduction/

Due to various social barriers, the formal female employment rate is low in many Southeast Asian countries. While opportunities to work are limited, starting their own businesses to earn an income is a valid option for many women. Yet, in many cases, women entrepreneurs have less opportunities to grow their business and as a result, their businesses tend to remain in the smaller scale. In order for women to actively participate in society, it is necessary to create an environment that promotes social gender equality. The GLIA Toolkit was created to help creating that environment.

The GLIA Toolkit includes a framework for applying a gender perspective as well as practical guidelines and case studies focusing on (1) the organization of the Entrepreneur Support Organization (ESO), (2) the projects ESOs conduct, and (3) the ecosystem surrounding the ESOs. 

In order to ensure its effectiveness, pilot implementation of the GLIA Toolkit was rigorously conducted in its development phase with the help of six Southeast Asian ESOs— Instellar (Indonesia), ONOW (Myanmar), Phandeeyar (Myanmar), Xchange (Philippines), Agile (Cambodia) and SHE investment (Cambodia). Therefore, the content is in line with the needs of women entrepreneurs and in line with the contexts in each country.

In addition, in 2020, we continued our partnership with ygap, the lead for gender in the Frontier Incubators program, to develop new content and case studies to address the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and released GLIA Toolkit 2.0.

This GLIA Toolkit 2.0 includes impact indicators and new modules related to "Gender in Products and Services," "Negotiation skill," "Imposter Syndrome" and "Gender and Power" to measure the impact of support projects that incorporate a gender perspective. These courses can help ESOs to apply a gender lens into their work (e.g., applying a gender lens in product design) or to address the challenges and needs of women entrepreneurs (e.g., dealing with imposter syndrome).

The creation of the GLIA Toolkit 2.0 has also received significant cooperation from ESOs in Southeast Asia, with the participation of organizations such as Change Fusion (Thailand), Impact Hub Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Impact Palu (Indonesia), Makesense (Philippines) New Energy Nexus (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines), Villgro (Philippines), WISE (Vietnam), Instellar (Indonesia) and SHE Investments (Cambodia) in the pilot implementation.

We hope that the GLIA Toolkit will be widely used by ESOs in Southeast Asia to implement entrepreneurship support projects with a gender lens, thereby increasing the number of women entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and giving them access to resources on par with men entrepreneurs.

Gender Investment & Innovation

Impact Report: Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration (GLIA)

SPF, together with DFAT and ygap, developed the concept of GLIA with the goal of ESOs to experiment with approaches to integrate gender lens to their work. This Impact Report analyzed the progress made by ESOs and practitioners engaged with GLIA.

September 26, 2023

Gender Investment & Innovation