Simplifying Gender. Strengthening Practice.
GenderWork Simplified offers practical gender work insights, frameworks, tools, and reflections for practitioners committed to doing better work.
It starts with the Gender Competence Assessment, ten realistic scenarios that show you where your practice actually stands, and the one dimension worth building next.
The Gender Competence Framework
“Awareness lives in what you know. Competence lives in what you do.”
Most gender training stops at concepts. Practitioners leave the room able to define gender mainstreaming, yet still freeze when a senior official dismisses their data, or when a results framework buries gender in an annex. This platform is built around the gap between knowing and doing, and how to close it deliberately.
Build gender competence, one practice at a time.
Take the free assessment, get the full guide, and follow the LinkedIn newsletter for practical gender tools and reflection prompts.
Gender work, without the jargon.
GenderWork Simplified exists to close the distance between gender theory and the everyday decisions of programming, so that good intentions become competent practice.
After years inside NGOs and donor programmes, a pattern kept repeating: gender was everywhere in the language and almost nowhere in the decisions. Workshops produced fluent vocabulary and unchanged practice. Frameworks were correct and unused.
GenderWork Simplified grew out of a simple conviction: practitioners do not need more theory. They need clear tools, realistic practice, and a way to see where they actually stand, so they can build competence on purpose rather than by accident.
Everything here is designed to be used, not just understood: the assessment, the framework, and the worksheets all point in the same direction, from awareness to applied skill.
Creator of the Gender Competence Framework, building on the established concept of gender competence, and the practitioner behind GenderWork Simplified.
To simplify gender and development concepts into practical tools, frameworks, and learning systems that individuals and organisations can apply immediately.
Curious where your own practice stands?
The Gender Competence Framework
A framework by Pamela Kiambi, building on the established concept of gender competence. It sets out five dimensions that, together, describe what competent gender practice actually looks like, and a practical system for assessing and building it in individuals and organisations.
Conceptual Competence
DepthUnderstanding gender frameworks deeply, not just their definitions. Knowing the difference between an instrumentalist “smart economics” framing and a rights-based one, and why it changes what a programme targets.
In practice: you can explain a concept to a non-specialist, engage the contested debates, and notice when a policy reduces “empowerment” to access alone.
Analytical Competence
The EyeApplying a gender lens to real situations, documents, and decisions. Seeing past a 60% participation headline to ask who controls the income, who sits on the committee, and whose time is assumed to be free.
In practice: you read budgets and results frameworks critically, and connect analysis to concrete recommendations.
Interpersonal Competence
The RoomNavigating conversations, resistance, and the emotional charge of the work. Holding your ground when data is dismissed in public, and moving a room without making anyone wrong in front of their peers.
In practice: you facilitate difficult dialogue, work with resistance rather than against it, and sustain yourself through the emotional demands.
Institutional Competence
The SystemUnderstanding how organisations enable or undermine gender work. Knowing who really makes decisions, building allies before the meeting, and framing the gender case in the register, values, evidence, or risk, that fits the audience.
In practice: you turn a results-framework annex into core indicators, and protect a gender post by tying it to donor markers and audit exposure.
Reflexive Competence
The SelfExamining your own positionality, assumptions, and blind spots. Treating the moments your instinct clashes with what people tell you as data worth following, and letting a colleague’s challenge change your defaults.
In practice: it runs underneath the other four and keeps them honest. A weekly reflective habit is how it grows.
Where the framework earns its keep
Programming
Move from gender-aware language to gender-responsive design, where the intervention changes who decides, not just who attends.
Monitoring & Evaluation
Choose indicators that detect real change, decision-making, time-use, control of resources, rather than counting heads.
Mainstreaming
Embed gender across strategy and systems by understanding how the institution actually decides, and where leverage lives.
Where do you actually stand?
Ten realistic scenarios, five dimensions, one honest profile of your practice, with a results dashboard and a priority for your next 90 days.
Download your report
Use the print / save-as-PDF option on your results to keep your profile and 90-day plan.
Go deeper on the framework
Revisit the five dimensions in depth to understand what your profile is pointing at, and where competence grows next.
Stay in practice
Get reflection prompts and practical gender tools through the LinkedIn newsletter, ‘genderworksimplified’.
Subscribe on LinkedIn →Tools you can use this week.
An eBook, worksheets, and reflection tools for gender practice. Practical, and designed to be applied.
From Awareness to Competence
A practitioner’s guide to the Gender Competence Framework, with the full framework, self-assessment, and a 90-day development plan you can start immediately.
Gender Analysis Canvas
A tool to interrogate any programme document: access, control, decisions, and time.
PDF · coming soonIndicator Check
Test whether your M&E indicators measure change or just participation.
PDF · coming soonThe Weekly Reflection
Three questions, ten minutes, to build reflexive competence into your routine.
PDF · coming soonLet’s talk.
For collaborations or questions, send a note and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you, we’ll be in touch.
Your message is on its way. In the meantime, you’re welcome to take the assessment or explore the framework.
Take the free competence assessment first, it’s the fastest way to see where your practice stands.