New interactive guide helps incubators and accelerators promote a gender-smart 
entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southeast Asia


On February 13, 2020, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) in partnership with 
Frontier Incubators program, an initiative of the Australian Department of 
Foreign Affairs and Trade, launched the Gender Lens Incubation and Acceleration 
(GLIA) Toolkit at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) Southeast Asia 
Summit. This practitioner-focused resource aims to assist entrepreneurship 
support organizations (ESOs, also known as incubators, accelerators, and 
intermediaries) in Southeast Asia to be more inclusive of all genders.

Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20200210/2715262-1LOGO

Globally, women entrepreneurs are under-represented in many lucrative 
high-growth sectors and are more likely to run smaller scale businesses. 
Closing the gender gap to enable equal participation of women and men in 
entrepreneurship could lead to an increase in the global economy of up to 5 
trillion USD. However, the world of entrepreneurship and investment is still 
not equally accessible to or inclusive of all genders. ESOs play a pivotal role 
in driving gender-equitable change by supporting social impact enterprises and 
ensuring that capital flows toward businesses that bring value to women.

The GLIA toolkit aims to help ESOs in Southeast Asia curate their own 
customized gender strategy by providing practical guidelines, case studies, and 
frameworks outlining strategies for applying a gender lens to their 
organization, program, and ecosystem. An interactive version of the toolkit is 
available online (in Burmese, English, Filipino and Khmer) as well as in mobile 
and PDF formats.

https://toolkits.scalingfrontierinnovation.org/  

"The GLIA toolkit has been designed by practitioners, for practitioners, in a 
truly collaborative effort," said SPF President Shuichi Ohno. "This is the 
first step in our plans to work with ESOs to support women-led and inclusive 
businesses in Asia at scale. We hope to continue to do more to build a 
gender-smart entrepreneurial ecosystem in Asia together."

This toolkit is the result of a 12-month collaboration between SPF's Asia Women 
Impact Fund and Frontier Incubators program, an initiative of the Australian 
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and was delivered by a consortia of 
SPF, ygap, Conveners.org, and SecondMuse. To validate and contextualize the 
guidelines, frameworks, and recommendations for Southeast Asia, the GLIA 
toolkit also underwent a rigorous pilot testing phase conducted by six leading 
ESOs across the region: ONOW Myanmar, Phandeeyar, Instellar, xchange, SHE 
investments, and agile development group.

Asia Women Impact Fund (AWIF)

In 2017, SPF announced the formation of the Asia Women Impact Fund (AWIF), 
which aims to invest up to 100 million USD from its endowment to work toward a 
future where all women in Asia are empowered to reach their full potential. The 
fund aims to realize this vision by making investments to achieve favorable 
outcomes for women across Asia and to support women entrepreneurs in Southeast 
Asia. For additional information, please visit: https://www.spf.org/awif/

Frontier Incubators

Frontier Incubators is a capacity-building program for impact-focused 
incubators and accelerators in the Asia Pacific region. It is a part of the 
Scaling Frontier Innovation program, an initiative of the Australian Department 
of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which supports social enterprises to scale their 
development impact in the Asia Pacific region. 

Please direct all inquiries to:
Media Relations Division, Sasakawa Peace Foundation
Email: spfpr@spf.or.jp
Phone: +81-03-5157-5398

SOURCE: The Sasakawa Peace Foundation