Working paper: A framework for building gender-sensitive identity systems

• by Arshi Aadil, Saloni Tandon, Sneha Sampath, Venkat Goli and Akhand Tiwari
• Mar 10, 2021
• 1 min
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One in two women in low-income countries lack official identification documents, which limits their financial, social, and political participation. This report explores the design and lifecycle of ID systems from gender and behavioral lenses and proposes a framework to make them more gender-sensitive.

The World Bank estimates that around a billion people across the globe lack a “legal identity.” The gender gap in terms of people’s access to official IDs is considerable in low-income countries, where one in two women do not have any official ID. This limits women’s financial, social, and political participation.

We attempt to look at the design and lifecycle of ID systems from gender and behavioral lenses and propose a framework to make ID systems more gender-sensitive. The framework draws on MSC’s experience of working on gender centrality projects across Asia and Africa.