Agency. Individual agency is the capacity to make decisions about one’s own life and act on them to achieve a desired outcome free of violence, retribution, or fear (Klugman et al. 2014; World Bank Group 2015). Collective agency is women’s and girls’ ability to speak and act collectively on their interests and participating in governance. It can also be defined as “women and girls gaining solidarity and taking action collectively on their interests, to enhance their position and expand the realm of what is possible” (Van Eerdewijk et al. 2017, 25).

Collective action. It “represents concerted efforts of public and private sector actors, community groups, civil society, global advocacy groups, and international agencies, among others, toward better gender equality outcomes” (World Bank Group 2024, 13).

Empowerment (of women and girls). It concerns women and girls gaining power and control over their own lives. It involves awareness raising, building self-confidence, expansion of choices, increased access to and control over resources, and actions to transform the structures and institutions that reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality (UN Women 2024). It can also be defined as “the expansion of choice and the strengthening of voice through the transformation of power relations, so women and girls have more control over their lives and futures” (Van Eerdewijk et al. 2017, 64).

Gender. It refers to the social, behavioral, and cultural attributes, expectations, and norms associated with being male or female (World Bank Group 2015).

Gender-based violence. An umbrella term for any harmful act that is perpetrated against a person’s will and that is based on socially ascribed (that is, gender) differences between male and female persons. It includes acts that inflict physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering; threats of such acts; coercion; and other deprivations of liberty. These acts can occur in public or in private (IASC 2015; World Bank Group 2015).

Gender equality. It refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities, and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born female or male. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs, and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men (UN Women 2024).

Gender gaps or gender inequalities. “Gender inequalities” are to be understood as “the gaps between male and female outcomes and opportunities” (Cuberes and Teignier-Baqué 2011, 1) that depend on the social construction of gender identities, roles, and power relations. Men and boys can also be discriminated against because of gender identities, roles, and relations—for example, they can be affected by discrimination and violence if they do not conform to the socially accepted “ideals” of masculinity. “Gender gaps” is used as a synonym for “gender inequalities,” as it is used by the World Bank Group gender strategy, which considers “gender gaps” as gaps in gender equality.

Gender mainstreaming. In 1997, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, in its agreed conclusions 1997/2, defined gender mainstreaming as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring[,] and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic[,] and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality…. Gender mainstreaming does not replace the need for targeted, women-specific policies and programs or positive legislation, nor does it substitute for gender units or gender focal points” (UN 1999, 24).

Gender norms. Gender norms are a specific subset of social norms that relate to how men, women, boys, and girls are “supposed” to act and behave throughout the various stages of the life cycle, in a given group or society. They are generally implicit and can be part of the invisible social status quo: they are embedded in formal and informal institutions, nested in the mind, and produced and reproduced through social interaction. They play a role in shaping women’s and men’s (often unequal) access to resources and freedoms, thus affecting their voice, power, and sense of self (Cislaghi and Heise 2020).

Gender power relations. A specific subset of social relations between women and men as social groups, including how power—and access to and control over resources—is distributed between the sexes (EIGE 2016).

Gender transformative. Interventions or approaches that aim to address the root causes of gender inequalities by transforming gender norms, roles, and relations, while working toward redistributing power, resources, and services more equally (UNFPA 2023). A gender-transformative intervention aspires to tackle the root causes of gender inequality and reshape unequal power relations; it “move[s] beyond individual self-improvement among [girls and] women and toward transforming the power dynamics and structures that serve to reinforce gendered inequalities” (Hillenbrand et al. 2015, 5).

Institutions (or institutional structures). They can be defined as the social arrangements of formal and informal rules and practices that shape social roles and relations (including gender roles and relations), influencing the expressions of individuals’ agency, as well as the distribution of resources. Institutional structures can be found in the arenas of household and family, community, market, and state and nonstate organizations. They encompass formal laws and policies, unwritten social norms, and the ways these are practiced in the context of social relations (Van Eerdewijk et al. 2017).

Intersectionality. Intersectionality acknowledges that power relations and discrimination are determined by the intersection between gender and the other social factors that shape social identities in each society (such as age, ethnic group, religion, class, disability, and sexual orientation). An intersectionality approach considers the other social variables (such as age, ethnicity, class, geographic area of residence, and so on) that intersect with gender in shaping social power relations, social discrimination, and vulnerabilities (Crenshaw 1989; Lutz 2015).